When after a year, India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on 4 July 2024 for a formal discussion on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, he said there is a “need to redouble efforts to achieve complete disengagement” in eastern Ladakh. While the Indian minister underlined the border issue as a singular focus, wanting resolution to issues along the Line of Actual Control, ensuring peace and stability, his emphasis was on the newlyminted principles of “mutual respect, mutual sensitivity, and mutual interests”.

Not to be outdone foreign minister Wang Yi, and a highranking member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Political Bureau, brought to centrestage the 70th anniversary of the Panchsheel principles of peaceful coexistence, acknowledging the historic principles formulated in 1954. It was India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision of the world which was rooted in the term ‘Panchsheel’, five virtues or principles. At the SCO Summit, India made no mention of the 70th anniversary of Panchsheel. While the Chinese communique did not contradict the Indian statement, it indicated that there was no common meeting ground with Beijing.

China reaffirmed that the border issue should proceed on a parallel track to the resumption of ties. “We must adhere to positive thinking, on the one hand properly handle and control the situation in the border area, on the other hand actively resume normal exchanges, promote each other, and move towards each other,” it stated. Readers may not be aware of the Buddhist origins of Panchsheel which found mention in China’s statement: the virtues it refers to are good conduct, abstinence from killing living beings, good character, behaviour and adherence to truth. For Nehru it denoted sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality, and peaceful coexistence of every kind, political, ideological, military and economic between nationstates.

He acknowledged the Buddhist roots of Panchsheel, especially in the post-World War II era when the disasters of war and atomic age were rampant. Seventy years ago, in 1954 Panchsheel was codified in international relations in the treaty between India and China; it also figured in the Preamble to the Constitution of China. Foreign minister Wang can now be credited with bringing Panchsheel once again to the global diplomacy chessboard. Even though Nehru’s relations with China and its Communist leadership were fraught with paradoxes, controversies and the brutality of invasion, there is no doubt that Indo-Chinese relations in times of peace and war, through the 1950s and 1960s, were the centre-point of the entire world. Observed Dr S Gopal, Nehru’s finest biographer in Volume 2 of the three-volume biography, “Nehru, as a committed socialist, had expressed his faith, admiration and friendship with China. At the same time, he had advocated an attitude of ‘cautious friendliness’ towards China.”

The diplomatic evolution of Panchsheel may be traced in Nehru’s words: “It should be made manifestly a friendly approach, and there should be no support of the enemies of China or formation of any bloc which could be regarded as anti-Chinese or anti-communist.” On 25 October 1950, Nehru wrote to KM Panikkar, Ambassador to China, that he did not expect armed attack on India by China from Tibet, but he did not rule out infiltration by groups or even occupation of disputed areas. Nehru’s attitude from the outset was that the frontier was firm, well-known and beyond dispute. In Parliamentary debates on 20 November 1950, Prime Minister Nehru said, “Tibet is contiguous to India from the region of Ladakh to the boundary of Nepal and from Bhutan to the Irrawaddy/Salween divide in Assam. The frontier from Bhutan eastwards has been clearly defined by the McMahon Line which was fixed by the Simla Convention of 1914.

The frontier from Ladakh to Nepal is defined chiefly by long usage and custom… Our maps show that the McMahon Line is our boundary and that is our boundary ~ map or no map. That fact remains and we stand by that boundary, and we will not allow anybody to come across that boundary.” The issue of frontier modification and intrusions became dominant in 1953 and on 5 March 1953, Nehru noted, “China should be in no doubt that any modification of or intrusion across the frontiers would be unacceptable to India and India should be strong enough to prevent this… No major challenge to these frontiers is likely in the near future. If we are alert, no challenge will take place within a reasonable time and possibly even later.” At the height of the Korean crisis on 23 January 1951, Prime Minister Nehru wrote to Chou En-lai (later written as Zhou Enlai), “… nor is it wise to try to humiliate other countries. We in India and China have suffered enough humiliation in the past and have resented it and fought against it. We should follow a different course and try to secure a stable peace through a peaceful and cooperative approach.

This would be no sign of weakness but of strength and confidence in ourselves.” Now seven decades later, the world of diplomacy is acknowledging the India-China treaty, signed in April 1954, a historic milestone in Prime Minister Nehru’s international relations. It provided for the withdrawal of all Indian influence from Tibet. Nehru had no regret about this, for it embarrassed him to lay claim to the succession of an imperial power which had pushed its way into Tibet.

Anxious to make the agreement purely non-political, the Chinese at first resisted mention of the Five Principles or Panchsheel, which they themselves had elaborated, but ultimately agreed to it as a concession. A map in People’s China, on too small a scale to permit precision, showed the boundary with India as a settled one, and roughly followed the alignment as depicted on Indian maps from Kashmir to Bhutan.

Even in the eastern sector, while the delineation was unclear, no large territorial claims were made. Nehru saw in this map further justification for not raising the border issue with China. Through June-July 1954, India and China continued to raise high the platforms of their friendship. On 25 June 1954, Chou En-lai, the Chinese Premier, arrived in New Delhi for talks with Nehru. Three days later on 28 June, a communiqué was issued by the Prime Ministers of India and China, outlining Five Principles or Panchsheel for the regulation of relations between nations.

It was on 13 July that Prime Minister Nehru urged the inclusion of China in the United Nations, a sign of his growing solidarity and friendship with China. In the years 1953 to 1955, Nehru’s faith and loyalty towards the Chinese seemed unshakeable. These were the ‘Hindi Chini bhai bhai’ years. On 31 July 1954, the Indo-China Truce Commission met in New Delhi.

On 14 October a two-year trade agreement between India and China was signed. Under the trade agreement signed in Delhi, India would export 19 lakh pounds of Virginia tobacco to China and import 90 tons of raw silk from the latter annually. Speaking in the Lok Sabha on 31 March 1955, Nehru described Panchsheel as Asia’s challenge to the world: “The Asian-African conference at Bandung would throw this challenge, in all its baldness and straightness, and every country.” While the Non-Alignment Movement remains Nehru’s major contribution to global politics and international relations, the philosophy behind the movement was Panchsheel.

It was evident in the Bandung Conference from 22–23 April 1955 when Nehru demonstrated the importance of Asia and Africa in the world. He initiated NAM along President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, President Sukarno of Indonesia, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia. In his speech, Nehru elaborated with some impatience on the meaning and virtues of nonalignment for the countries of Asia and Africa.

“Nato might have advantages for Western Europe, but to the rest of the world it assumed the face of colonialism… For the newly free and underdeveloped countries, potential strength lay not in piling up arms, but in industrial progress and the fostering of a spirit of self-reliance. Peace might well come through strength, but not, for the Bandung countries, through military strength or alliances.” From the India-China treaty of 1954 to the Bandung Conference when Prime Minister Nehru held forth to the comity of nations, to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in 2024, global diplomacy has indeed come a long way. Panchsheel principles, whether hailed, ignored or buried, remain a credible part of India’s contemporary history.

(The writer is author, researcher on history and heritage issue and former Deputy curator of Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya)