How do we go ahead and change the pattern of the ungainly Indo-Chinese dance?

How can New Delhi and Beijing achieve a steady state of equilibrium that gives both sides the comfort of predictability, and confidence in each other?

That’s a question nagging not just India’s foreign policy mandarins, but students and practitioners of diplomacy worldwide.

The India-China territorial dispute is a 4,056-km-long problem that stems from British expansionism in the early 20th century. Imperial Britain tried to push its line of control and carve buffer zones around the jewel in the crown. In 1913-1914, representatives of China, Tibet and Britain negotiated a treaty in India: the Simla Convention. Sir Henry McMahon, the foreign secretary of British India at the time, drew the 890 km McMahon Line as the border between British India and Tibet during the Simla Conference. The so-called McMahon Line, drawn primarily on the highest watershed principle, demarcated what had previously been unclaimed or undefined borders between Britain and Tibet. The McMahon line moved British control substantially northwards and became something the Chinese never accepted. Independent India inherited the dispute and despite Nehru’s bhai-bhai, a full-scale war erupted in 1962. China occupied the Switzerland-sized barren area of Aksai Chin in northeastern Ladakh and the PLA stomped into Arunachal Pradesh. Since then, the frontiers on both sides have simmered. Another war almost blew up in 1987. Agreements on maintaining peace were signed in 1993 and 1996 but frequent violations are reported. China occupies approximately 38,000 sq. km of Indian territory in J&K. In addition, under the so-called China-Pakistan “Boundary Agreement” of 1963, Pakistan ceded 5,180 sq. kms. of Indian territory in POK to China. Beijing claims approximately 90,000 sq. km of Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh and about 2000 sq. km. in the Middle Sector of the India-China boundary. Beijing does not recognise Arunachal Pradesh. The border has never been officially delimited and none of it features in the mountainous area marked on a map.