Boundaries and Borderlands

The Simla Convention of 1914, held between Great Britain, China, and Tibet, demarcated the border between India and Tibet and gave birth to the McMahon Line. This volume critically examines the legacy of the 1914 Convention and explores its relevance in scholarly discourse about the status of Tibet and Sino-Indian relations more than a hundred years later.

The book discusses the significance of the Simla Convention, both in terms of the geopolitics of boundaries as well as the people and the liminal borderlands they occupy, encapsulating the culture and diversity of the trans-Himalayan regions. The book explicates how colonial legacies, namely, the 1914 Simla Convention, have become virtual straitjackets, hardening the positions on the boundaries between India and China. It also looks at the debilitating consequences of the nation-state framework on more substantial investigations of the borderlands. Rich in archival material and drawing from the authors’ fieldwork in the Himalayan regions, this book analyses muted voices of the inhabitants of the region to bring into focus the larger question of the political, economic, religious, ecological, and social life of the Himalayan peoples, which has enormous implications for both India and China.

This volume will be of interest to students of history, international relations, sociology, strategic studies, Asian studies, and anthropology.

Alka Acharya is Professor and former Chairperson at the Centre for East Asian Studies (Chinese Studies) School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, India. She has been teaching courses on Chinese Foreign Policy and Political Economy to the Masters and MPhil students and guiding doctoral research since 1993. She was on deputation as Director and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), New Delhi, from 2012 to 2017 and was editor of the quarterly journal China Report (New Delhi), 2005–2013. She is the joint editor of the book Crossing a Bridge of Dreams: 50 years of India-China and author of the book China & India: Politics of Incremental Engagement, published in 2008, and she has contributed chapters to many books and journals. She was nominated by the Indian government as a member of the India-China Eminent Persons Group (2006–2008) and member of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India for two terms (2006–2008 and 2011–2012). Her current research focuses on India-China-Russia Trilateral Cooperation and the Chinese strategic response to the post-cold war Asian regional architecture.