The historical manipulation of Tibet’s relations with Monyul is a front that China plays against India on the China-India border dispute over the Indo-Tibet border. China has misinterpreted the history of Tibet’s relations with Monyul to assert its territorial claim in the region.

-by Dr Tsewang Dorji for South Asia Monitor

The geopolitics of naming of places in the northeast Indian border state of Arunachal Pradesh is one of the Chinese strategic geniuses for expanding its territorial sphere of influence in Tibet and the Himalayas. The Sino-Indian dispute over the Indo-Tibetan border emerged with the disappearance of Tibet as a strategic buffer between China and India. Soon after the occupation of Tibet, China started to expand its influence in the Himalayan regions.

Chinese strategists projected Tibet as its palm and Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Arunachal Pradesh as five fingers. By controlling Tibet, China asserts its claim over Monyul (a Tibetan term for ‘lowland’), also known in British India, and then India over the North Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA), later Arunachal Pradesh. Chinese claim over  Arunachal Pradesh was based on its sovereignty claim in Tibet which it forcibly occupied in 1950.

Since 2017, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs has released a list of 60 geographical names of Arunachal Pradesh with a view to “standardizing place names” in the official map of China. Many in the Indian strategic community have seen it as a Chinese aggressive behavior against India. In response to that, India is likely to rename 30 places in Tibet.

Outline of geopolitical dispute

Chinese strategists and diplomats are creating many fronts for protracting the Sino-Indian border conflicts to make space to expand its sphere of influence in the Himalayas. The historical manipulation of Tibet’s relations with Monyul is a front that China plays against India on the China-India border dispute over the Indo-Tibet border. China has misinterpreted the history of Tibet’s relations with Monyul to assert its territorial claim in the region.

According to the White Paper published by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India (GOI) in 1962, the Chinese delegate produced 30 documents in Chinese and Tibetan from the period 1680 to 1953 to support their claim over Monyul during the Sino-Indian border talk in Rangoon, Burma. For instance, the 5th Dalai Lama’s edict of 1680 was one of the documents that China showed during the border talk. China was using independent Tibet’s historical documents to claim the Indian territories. Click here to read more.