India-China Border Conflict: China’s Victim’s Psychology’ Versus India’s “Tough Posture”

Abstract

The study looks into misjudgements and miscalculations, both from India and China before the outbreak of a brief border war in 1962. The Chinese perception that Nehru wanted to make Tibet as a “protectorate” or “buffer” between India and China by accepting the British legacy in Tibet, and the Indian perception that China showed mistrust for India from day one have been found holding no grounds after siphoning through vast Chinese, Indian and Western sources. The author maintains that these perceptions were wrongly perceived as both India and China prior to the 1959 tried hard to avoid conflict and attempted to resolve the crisis; however, China’s “victim’s psychology” was brought into full play in the backdrop of India’s “tough posture” on border on the one hand and macro and microenvironments outside and inside China on the other when it decided in favour of a punitive action against India. Besides, some plausible solutions to the border resolution have been weighed and have suggested that the “package deal” still remains the best possible solution to the problem.