Only a few days ago, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal reacted to China’s infrastructure build-up in the Shaksgam Valley region, reiterating that it is an Indian territory.
The valley, supposedly a site of a new China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, is part of the Jammu and Kashmir territory which is presently under Chinese control. The Chinese side, as expected, was quick to retort and justified the valley’s ownership as part of the 1963 China-Pakistan Border Agreement, under which Pakistan ceded an area of over 5000 sq km.
The fact that the Siachen Glacier’s northern edge overlooks Shaksgam Valley should be enough to alarm Indian security forces about the presence of Chinese and Pakistani troops.
Shaksgam’s link to Jammu and Kashmir is known, but how exactly India owns the valley remains less explored.
After the first Indo-Pak war on Kashmir ended with a ceasefire in 1949, the Hunza kingdom of the Gilgit region came to be included in the PoK region. As India reported the Pakistani aggression in the United Nations and sought its withdrawal from the entire state, the Pakistani side was nearly successful in convincing the UN to exclude the Gilgit region from the Kashmir affair.
A string of notes were exchanged within the Indian foreign office to ascertain our exact claims to Gilgit, Hunza, and even Chitral (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but once a tributary state to the Maharaja).
Since the British notoriously interfered with the administrative taxonomy of the Himalayan frontier, the Dogra empire’s relationship with its tributary kingdoms underwent several changes over the years. Nevertheless, the Hunza kingdom acknowledged the suzerainty of the Maharaja.
Hunza’s authority over Shaksgam (among other adjoining pastures like Raskam and Taghdumbash Pamir) was also acknowledged by the Chinese, with whom Hunza shared tributary ties since the second half of the 18th century.
The Shaksgam Valley thus belonged to the Mir of Hunza, and was mostly used as a grazing land for Hunza’s animals during the summer season. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the British had been putting pressure on the Chinese to occupy territories on the north of Hunza to prevent potential ingress by the Russian empire, that had reached the fringes of the neighbouring Pamirs. The Chinese side never responded to the British pleas.
Meanwhile, by the 1930s, British anxieties about the northern frontier were aggravated by the Soviet Union’s invasion of Xinjiang, extending the threat to the Dogra empire’s defences.
In order to appease the Chinese, British authorities compelled the Mir of Hunza to give up his claims on the valley. The Mir was ordered to stop the use of Shaksgam as a grazing area and further discouraged from paying tribute to the Chinese. Thus, by 1937, the tributary system between Hunza and China was put to an end, and the Mir’s grazing lands were raided by the Chinese authorities.
As this area became part of PoK immediately after independence, the Historical Division of the MEA, in 1951, published a meticulous study titled ‘Studies on the Northern Frontier’, that for the first time, gave the Indian version of its northern frontier, backed by historical claims. It is not sure whether the full version of the study has been declassified, but its excerpts can still be located in the Teen Murti Archives.
The study later became the basis of our northern frontier in the Western Sector in 1954. To recall, while India’s official map before 1954 showed the eastern sector based on the McMahon Line, the western sector consisting of the Ladakh-China border remained undemarcated.
After Shaksgam Valley became part of the PoK, archival records point to repeated harassment by Chinese forces in the Hunza-Xinjiang border region through reconnaissance and intrusions. The Chinese government constantly raised the issue with the Pakistani government.
After years of resistance, the 1962 war provided Pakistan an opportunity to trade Shaksgam away in lieu of a strategic partnership that strengthened the security umbrella for Pakistan. The credit for Shaksgam’s sacrifice to China goes to Pakistan’s then foreign minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who outmanoeuvred Ayub Khan to reach out to the Chinese leadership, laying the foundation for the Sino-Pak strategic relationship.
It is unfortunate that our frontier, with all its rich and intricate historical and cultural legacy, remains poorly studied. Archival records related to Kashmir and the broader Himalayan region are spread across libraries in India and the UK. Our academic research on India’s borders has been underfunded and politicised since independence itself, discouraging passionate researchers from taking it up as a career option.
Prateek Joshi is finishing his PhD from the University of Oxford, where his research looks into the early years of Indian foreign policy