ABSTRACT
As may be easily envisaged, many Indian writers contend that Chinese claims are contradicted by the "facts of history" .14 The Indian analysts in general judge a tenth century division of an independent kingdom there as the first known document which laid down a boundary between Ladakh and Guge in West Tibet. 15 It may be amplified that later agreements referred to this old, established or traditional frontier. The Indian interpretation conforms with these ancient chronicles, in so far as the main identifications are concerned. 16 Although Ladakh was independent for some centuries, it fell prey intermittently to foreign attacks and invasions, one of them prompting the Ladakhis to bring the Moghul emperor into play. When Akbar (1556-1605) conquered (1586) Kashmir and the Ladakhi king embraced Islam, striking all his coins in the name of the Delhi sultan, that country's fate was well-knit with that of the Moghul Empire and Kashmir. Some European travellers, though not all, who have also visited Ladakh, seem to share the same view about the boundary. 17 The borders now defended by India do not seem to be different from what it apparently used to be some two hundred years ago. Further, the Treaty of Amritsar (1846) contained some significant clauses (Articles 2 and 4) that laid down, once more, the eastern frontier of the Kashmir state. Lieutenant Henry Strachey's maps (1847-48), reproduced by the Government ofIndia, confirm the evidence disclosed above. 18 In 1855, Lieutenant Montgomerie, to be aided by Colonel W. H. Johnson, Goodwin Austin and others, was put in charge of a survey to map the territories of Maharaja Gulab Singh. The completed survey, extensively collaborated by W. H. Johnson, included the northern
and the north-eastern border regions, which showed that the Maharaja's territories were found to extend up to the Kuenlun Mountains or the Chinese border. Frederic Drew, who travelled to every corner of Jammu and Kashmir and was also made (1871) the Governor of Ladakh, not only found the Montgomerie-Johnson survey the foundation of every map of the region constructed since, but he himself attached to his own book a series of maps none of which support the Chinese claims. 19 Other official Indian maps of later dates show that Aksai Chin and the Lingzitang plains belong to Kashmir.20 There is also the possibility that the Chinese, in the 1890s and now, may be confusing the Aksai Chin north of the Lingzitang plains with another Aksai Chin to the east of these plains, the latter apparently never included in Kashmir. British Indian strategic interests demanded that there should be some Chinese and Afghani (the Wakhan Corridor) territories between expanding Tsarist Russia and the northern frontier of India. There seems to be no convincing evidence supporting the contention that the frontier between Chinese Turkistan (Sinkiang) and Ladakh in Kashmir ran along the entire length of the Karakoram Range.
