Management of Indian Border Disputes, a Complex Task

In July 1947 a British lawyer named Cyril Radcliffe, who had never visited India before, arrived to chair the commissions that would divide Punjab and Bengal. He had five weeks. Working with outdated maps and census figures, he drew a line that cut through villages, canals, railway lines and even individual houses. The boundaries were announced on 17 August, two days after independence, and were followed by an explosion of violence and the flight of some fifteen million people. The Radcliffe Line is the origin of India's longest and most troubled border, and an example of how the management of Indian borders is a complex task with deep roots.

India has land borders of about fifteen thousand kilometres with seven countries, Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Afghanistan, and a coastline of over seven thousand kilometres. The borders pass through deserts, rivers, jungles, marshes and the highest mountains in the world. Some are agreed and demarcated, some are agreed and not demarcated, and some are disputed. No other major country has such a variety of neighbours and conditions to manage, and the challenges differ along each frontier.

The border with Pakistan, which runs for about three thousand three hundred kilometres, includes the international boundary in Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat and the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. The latter was the result of the ceasefire of 1949 and the Simla Agreement of 1972, and the question of the status of Kashmir remains unresolved. The wars of 1947, 1965 and 1971 and the Kargil conflict of 1999 were fought over it. Siachen, the highest battlefield in the world, has cost both sides lives lost mainly to the weather. Infiltration and cross border terrorism make the fence and its surveillance a daily problem.

With China, the dispute involves two sectors. In the west, India claims Aksai Chin, which China holds. In the east, India regards the McMahon Line, drawn in 1914 at the Simla Convention, as the boundary, which China has never accepted, and claims territory in Arunachal Pradesh. The two fought a war in 1962. Since then the Line of Actual Control, which is not defined on the ground, has been the working frontier, with periodic face offs. In 2017 Indian and Chinese troops confronted each other at Doklam, near the Bhutan tri junction, for seventy three days before a negotiated withdrawal. The episode showed both the risk and the capacity for management.

The episode showed both the risk and the capacity for management.

Success stories exist too. India and Bangladesh inherited a complicated border in which more than a hundred enclaves of one country lay inside the other, with residents who were stateless in practice and lacked basic services. After decades of discussion, the two governments ratified the Land Boundary Agreement in 2015, and on 1 August of that year they exchanged 111 Indian enclaves to Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves to India, and gave the residents a choice of citizenship. In 2014 an international tribunal settled the maritime dispute in the Bay of Bengal, awarding most of the disputed area to Bangladesh, and India accepted the verdict. Patient bilateral work and acceptance of arbitration resolved problems that had lasted since 1947.

Other borders have different problems. The boundary with Nepal is open, and people cross freely, but disagreements exist over the Kalapani region and the course of the Kali river. The boundary with Myanmar cuts across ethnic groups such as the Nagas, who live on both sides, and allows insurgents to find sanctuary. The border with Bhutan is stable and cooperative. Along the Bangladesh border, which runs for over four thousand kilometres, the challenge is illegal migration, smuggling and cattle trafficking. The management of a border is not a single problem but dozens.

A range of tools is used. The armed forces guard the Line of Control and the Line of Actual Control, while central armed police forces, such as the Border Security Force and the Indo Tibetan Border Police, patrol the others. The government has built fences, floodlights and, on trial in 2016 and 2017, a comprehensive integrated border management system with sensors and cameras. The Border Area Development Programme finances roads, schools and health care in the districts near the frontier. Roads in border regions, such as those built by the Border Roads Organisation, improve the speed with which forces can be moved and the lives of the residents.

Difficulties abound. The terrain defeats fences and makes surveillance costly. The infrastructure on the Chinese side has often been ahead of India's, which leaves the army at a disadvantage. Border populations feel neglected, and the young migrate away. The agencies that guard the frontier sometimes work at cross purposes, and the long standing allegations of corruption and smuggling weaken the system. Domestic politics also shapes the management of disputes, because compromise on territory is seen as weakness, while the failure to compromise freezes the problem. Parliament resolved in 1962 to free every inch of Indian territory from occupation, which narrows the range of settlements.

Border management is, in the end, about people as well as territory. Villages on both sides share language, kin and markets, and the line divides families. The people who live near the border carry the burden of shelling, curfews and displacement, and their cooperation is crucial for security. Policies that treat them as suspects rather than partners tend to fail. The success of the enclave exchange came partly because it attended to the residents and their wish for papers, schools and electricity.

India has to protect its territory and also cope with a world in which borders matter less for trade and more for security. This requires a mixture of strength and negotiation, of defence and development, which is hard to maintain through changing governments. A border can be drawn in five weeks, as Radcliffe showed. Whether it can ever be fully managed, in a sense that satisfies the claims of history, the fears of states and the needs of those who live beside it, is a question that more than seventy years of effort have not closed.