It is time to put some facts on the table and not get trapped in pro-Congress or anti-BJP rhetoric, which is the way most debates seem to be going these days. Wading into the debate of how much land has been taken by the Chinese PLA in the last decade is a tricky issue, especially since Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having falsified facts about China’s incursion and occupation of the Indian territory in Ladakh.

On this contentious subject, it is best to get the experts aboard. Delhi University historian Dr VC Bhutani, a China expert of long-standing, has extensively researched official records at the National Archives of India, the Assam government, of which NEFA was a part, the Tibetan archives at Dharamsala, and the India Office Library in London. His recently published book on the ‘History and Politics of the Northern Frontiers of India’ highlights how China never ruled over Tibet so much so that, in 1913, the Tibetans ‘chased all Chinese out of Tibet, and the few that remained would have been butchered to a man but for the intervention of the British.’

Sadly, China occupied Tibet in 1950 and then laid claim to Aksai Chin. In 1960, Pandit Nehru should have made an agreement to settle these disputed boundaries, but he sent phlegmatic people like Morarji Desai and Govind Ballabh Pant, who were the last persons who could have helped towards a settlement, to talk with the then Chinese premier Chou En-lai. Chou En-lai also met RK Nehru, in 1960, 1961, and the early part of 1962. RK Nehru did warn the government that China was drifting towards war, but no one listened to him. Bhutani believes the Chinese claims on Arunachal Pradesh voiced in later years were an afterthought.

But other defence analysts take a different view. Dr Bharat Karnad, the national security expert........

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