Refugee tragedy in the making
Shobha Tsering Bhalla
Today, May 16, 2005

THE decision last month by India and China to form a strategic partnership and end their decades-old border dispute could not have come sooner.

For far too long the border problem has been festering between the two giants who could have been economic allies and whose overdue friendship could have been a boon for Asia. 

Instead, since 1959, the issue of who has legitimate claim over which part of the 4,000km border that India shares with China has bedevilled relations. On a visit to India in April, China's Premier Wen Jiabao signed an accord that is expected to help the two countries negotiate territorial claims. 

But the problem is that many parts of the India-China border are not demarcated and there is much confusion over the Line of Actual Control (LAC). 

Early demarcation of the LAC is one of the best options for stabilising the border regions and securing a working boundary that the military forces on both sides would respect.

India claims China occupies 38,000 sq km of its territory in Kashmir which was illegally ceded to it by Pakistan in the 1950s. Beijing claims that the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to it and, until 2003, also claimed Sikkim ！ my home state. 

Sikkim was a semi-independent principality but a protectorate of India, a political curiosity that India inherited from the British. It joined India through a plebiscite in 1975.

In a sign of warming ties, China recently acknowledged Sikkim's Indian status by releasing a map showing Sikkim as a part of India.

But the Arunachal Pradesh issue remains unresolved. Since 1959, China has indicated to India many times that it wants a portion of Arunachal Pradesh ！ the Tawang tract ！ and it would accommodate India on Aksai Chin in the country's northwest. 

Tawang's attractiveness for China arises from its viability for the political development of Tibet. The place has enormous spiritual and political significance as it is the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and temporal leader. 

But it is unlikely that India will trade off Arunachal Pradesh ！ or more specifically Tawang ！ for the barren, uninhabitable Aksai Chin region. 

Tawang is lodged well on the Indian side of the LAC and China recognises this. Moreover, Arunachal is part of a thriving democracy and its people are well integrated into India's multi-hued socio-cultural fabric while still retaining their unique norms and mores. I observed this first-hand as a youngster. 

I lived in Arunachal Pradesh for a large part of my childhood as my father was an official there. 

On trips home from boarding school, I watched Hindi films with other officers' children. We would huddle under a vast tent surrounded by equally mesmerised Galong, Aka, Mishmi or Monpa tribe members, depending on which district my father was posted to at the time.

They looked like they could have come out of central casting for Apache tribespeople ！ they wore feathers, furs and loincloths and some rode horses. Yet they identified with the Bollywood heroes and sang the Hindi refrains with gusto. 

But while they could speak pidgin Hindi or Assamese, they clung to their tribal ways ！ not with the swagger of ethnic chauvinism but because it was the way of their fathers. 

So, even as "modernisation" crept up on them, they kept in touch with their past and spoke their own languages, safe in the knowledge that they could continue to do so as long as Donyi-Polo (their Sun-Moon God) shone down on them.

Will they still be able to do that when the boundaries are finally demarcated? 

They are simple folk, these pastoral border peoples ！ unused to barbed wire and the heavy hand of politicians.What will happen to them if those in charge of demarcating boundaries are not sensitive to their cultural geography?

Will there be large-scale population displacement like there was during the partition of India, when a British cartographer drew his pencil down a map with devastating indifference?

Whatever happens, the decision makers must ensure three things: A demarcation of borders only through unpopulated areas, the demilitarisation of the borders once they are demarcated and access for each others nationals who are native to areas within those borders.

That is, if China and India want to avoid a refugee tragedy in the order of what happened in Kosovo, Albania and Eritrea.