McMahon Line

McMahon Line, frontier between Tibet and Assam in British India, negotiated between Tibet and Great Britain at the end of the Shimla Conference (October 1913–July 1914) and named for the chief British negotiator, Sir Henry McMahon. It runs from the eastern border of Bhutan along the crest of the Himalayas until it reaches the great bend in the Brahmaputra River where that river emerges from its Tibetan course into the Assam Valley.

Delegates of the Chinese republican government also attended the Shimla Conference, but they refused to sign the principal agreement on the status and boundaries of Tibet on the ground that Tibet was subordinate to China and had not the power to make treaties. The Chinese have maintained this position to the present day and also have claimed that Chinese territory extends southward to the base of the Himalayan foothills. This frontier controversy with independent India led to the Sino-Indian hostilities of October–November 1962. In that conflict the Chinese forces occupied Indian territory south of the McMahon Line but subsequently withdrew after a cease-fire had been achieved.

India regards its interpretation of the McMahon Line as the legal national border, but China rejects the Simla Accord and the McMahon Line, contending that Tibet was not a sovereign state and therefore did not have the power to conclude treaties. Chinese maps show some 65,000 km2 (25,000 sq mi) of the territory south of the line as part of the Tibet Autonomous Region, known as South Tibet in China. Chinese forces briefly occupied this area during the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and later withdrew. China does recognise a Line of Actual Control which closely approximates the McMahon Line in this part of its border with India, according to a 1959 diplomatic note by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai.

The 14th Dalai Lama did not originally recognise India's sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh. As late as 2003, he said that "Arunachal Pradesh was actually part of Tibet". In January 2007, however, he said that both the Tibetan government and Britain recognized the McMahon Line in 1914. In June 2008, he explicitly recognized for the first time that "Arunachal Pradesh was a part of India under the agreement signed by Tibetan and British representatives"

When India and Pakistan became independent in 1947 through Partition of India, all the territories that had been part of British India had been transferred to the two new countries, causing the prevailing boundaries of British India to be inherited. The maps of the period showed the McMahon Line as the boundary of India in the northeast.

Editorial Desk