The reasons for the closure of the Indian Consulate in Lhasa in December 1962 remain unclear.
For an event as significant as the end of India’s presence in Tibet, the events surrounding the closure of the Consulate General of India in Lhasa in December 1962 remain a small footnote in the history of that page. period, forgotten immediately after the war before that year.
In attempting to lift the veil on what would turn out to be a landmark event in the history of India’s relations with Tibet and China, a new book reveals that it was India that made the fateful decision to close the Consulate in Lhasa, a decision transcendental that, The book concludes, remains a mystery and is still never fully explained, and one that India would come to regret as it made numerous unsuccessful attempts to reopen its presence in Lhasa and return to Tibet following the normalization of relations with China in 1988.
The end of an era: India exits Tibet is the fourth volume of an extensive research work by the South Indian scholar Claude Arpi, who has drawn on official documents to write the most detailed history to date of the relations between India and Tibet from 1947 to 1962.
In the book, Mr. Arpi points out that information about the Lhasa Consulate and this period in history remains scarce. “Unfortunately,” he laments, “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MEA) still keeps jealously classified all documents related to 1961-62.”
However, it does reconstruct the chain of events that led to the fateful decision, which was eventually relayed “on a laconic note” from the MEA to a shocked Chinese embassy in India, saying that it had “decided to discontinue the Consulates in Lhasa and Shanghai from on December 15, 1962 “.
Mr. Arpi writes that even the Indian Embassy in Beijing seemed to remain in the dark. The then Charge d’Affaires PK Banerjee wrote in his memoirs that Delhi accepted the call in Shanghai “because there was hardly any work to be done.”
That was certainly not the case in Tibet, at a time when, not only was being in Lhasa crucial after the war, but there was also the unfinished business of 3,900 Indian POWs in Tibet.
In the memoirs, Mr. Banerjee suggests that one reason could have been that Delhi was “anxious” to close the Chinese consulates in Mumbai and Calcutta because they were “engaged in activities other than consular work”, but that does not explain why. Delhi would voluntarily close. Lhasa.
What we do know is that in the run-up to the war, Indian officials in Lhasa began to face increasing harassment from the Chinese authorities. On October 9, 11 days before China launched its offensive, the consulate’s telegraph lines were cut, as were its telephone lines and messaging communications. All outsiders were barred from entering the Dekyilinka area where the mission was located, while supplies of basic goods such as milk and eggs were also stopped.
On November 4, 1962, the MEA in a note complained that this treatment was “against all established norms” and its staff were subject to “the most deliberate harassment by local Chinese authorities.”
However, after the ceasefire on November 20, 1962, this would stop, Arpi notes, without making it clear why the shutdown still took place. “These are some of the many unanswered questions,” he writes.
Arpi traces the closure to India’s gradual withdrawal from Tibet, where it also maintained commercial agencies in Yatung, Gyantse and Gartok under the 1954 agreement on trade and sex, now famous as the “Panchsheel” agreement, and its decision to not renew the agreement when it expired in April 1962.
Beijing had offered a renewal, but India’s argument was that with each panchsheel principle violated by then – the MEA highlighted China’s actions in Aksai Chin from 1957-58 – it could not renew. Trade agencies, where Indians were subjected to increasing restrictions, were closed, and by the end of the year the consulate would follow.
Later, India would try unsuccessfully on numerous occasions to return to Lhasa. In 2006, Arpi notes, when both sides agreed to open new consulates, India suggested Lhasa but had to settle for Guangzhou, while China returned to Kolkata. As trade flourished, India had also returned to Shanghai and China reopened Mumbai, but Lhasa was still off limits.
In 2015, an agreement was reached for India to open a consulate in Chengdu and for China to open one in Chennai, although that remains stalled. That year, India had returned to seek Lhasa, but was rejected again, unable to return to the city that it left under a cloud of mystery.
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