Demchok sector


The Demchok sector is a disputed region centered on the villages of Demchok, Ladakh and Dêmqog, Ngari Prefecture, situated near the confluence of the Charding Nullah and Indus River. It is part of the greater Sino-Indian border dispute between China and India. Both India and China claim the disputed region, with a Line of Actual Control between the two nations situated along the Charding Nullah.
The Charding Nullah was mentioned by the name "Lhari stream" in a treaty between the Kingdom of Ladakh and the Ganden Phodrang government of Tibet in 1684 and stated as the boundary between the two regions. British surveys placed the border in 1847 between the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and Qing Tibet on the stream, while British maps from 1868 onwards placed the border downstream and west of Demchok. After independence in 1947, India claimed the southern watershed of the river as its boundary, which has been contested by the People's Republic of China whose claims coincide with the British maps. The two countries fought a brief war in 1962, after which the Demchok region has remained divided between the two nations across a Line of Actual Control.

Boundaries

At the bottom of the valley, the Charding Nullah branches into a 2 km-wide delta as it joins the Indus River. During the British colonial period, there was a village on both the sides of the delta, going by the name Demchok. The southern village appears to have been the main one, frequently referred to by travelers. The Chinese spelt the name of the village as Dêmqog. Travel writer Romesh Bhattacharji stated in 2012 that they expected to set up a trading village, but India never renewed trade after the war. He stated that the southern Dêmqog village has only commercial buildings whereas the northern village has security-related buildings.
The watershed east of the Koyul Lungpa river, near the village of Koyul, is at the western boundary of the disputed sector, with China's claim line running along the crest of the ridge.
Both the Indians and the Chinese have track roads going up the valley on the two sides of the Charding Nullah, reaching up to the Charding–Nilu Nullah Junction. Occasional stand-offs between the two forces at CNNJ are reported in the newspapers.

History

Treaty of Tingmosgang (1684)

The Ladakh Chronicles mention that, at the conclusion of the Tibet–Ladakh–Mughal War in 1684, Tibet and Ladakh agreed on the Treaty of Tingmosgang, by which the extensive territories in West Tibet previously controlled by Ladakh were removed from its control. Ladakh was reduced to approximately its present extent. The original text of the Treaty of Tingmosgang no longer survives, but the summary in the Chronicles of Ladakh recorded that the frontier of Ladakh with Tibet was fixed at the "Lha-ri stream at Demchok".
Most sources agree that this border involved cession of territory for Ladakh. Ladakh had earlier annexed the entire West Tibet under its ruler Sengge Namgyal. The reduction of Ladakh was in effect a retaliation by Lhasa. The traditional border between the two regions prior to these conflicts is not clearly known.
According to Alexander Cunningham, "A large stone was then set up as a permanent boundary between the two countries, the line of demarcation drawn from the village of Dechhog to the hill of Karbonas."
Roughly 160 years after the Treaty of Tingmosgang, Ladakh came under the rule of the Dogras, who launched an invasion into the West Tibet leading to the Dogra–Tibetan War. The war ended in a stalemate. The resulting Treaty of Chushul in 1842 bound the parties to the "old, established frontiers".

British boundary commission (1846–1847)

After the Dogras joined the British suzerainty as the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the British government dispatched a boundary commission consisting of P. A. Vans Agnew and Alexander Cunningham to define the borders of the state with Tibet in 1846–1847. The Chinese government was invited to join the effort for a mutually agreed border. However the Chinese declined, stating that the frontier was well-known and it did not need a new definition. The British boundary commission nevertheless surveyed the area. Its report stated:
The "rivulet" is evidently the Charding nullah. The Tibetan frontier guards prohibited the commission from proceeding beyond the rivulet.
The commission placed the border on the Indus at Demchok, and followed the mountain watershed of the Indus river on its east, passing through the Jara La and Chang La passes. This appears to be the first time that the watershed principle was used in the Indian subcontinent for defining a boundary. Scholar Alastair Lamb remarks that it was probably unknown to the Asian inhabitants of the region, but something like it was necessary for connecting the known landmarks to create a boundary line.

''Survey of Kashmir, Ladak, and Baltistan or Little Tibet'' (1847–1868)

Between 1847 and November 1864, the British Indian government conducted the Survey of Kashmir, Ladak, and Baltistan or Little Tibet, which was reproduced in a reduced form in the Kashmir Atlas of 1868 by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. Even though this was not an official boundary commission, the survey made several adjustments to the boundary, including in the Demchok sector. Lamb states:
Lamb interprets this as a "compromise". According to him, the British gave up territory in Demchok to include other territory near the Spanggur Lake.
In reality, the British knowledge of Ladakh was quite limited at this early stage. Maharaja Gulab Singh was zealous of his independence and the British distrusted his "expansionist" tendencies. Indian commentators state that the revenue records from the period of the survey show that the Demchok area was administered by Ladakh. This information did not apparently filter down to the survey team.

Late colonial era (1868–1947)

Subsequent to the Kashmir Atlas of 1868, the British gained much knowledge of Ladakh. Frederic Drew entered the service of Kashmir as a geologist in 1862, publishing his seminal work Jammoo and Kashmir Territories in 1875. The text of the Ladakh Chronicles, only known to Europeans since 1847, was published by Moravian missionary Karl Marx in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal between 1891 and 1902. However, no revisions were made to the border at Demchok in the light of the new discoveries. During the two World Wars, some maps from world powers including China showed the borders depicted in the Kashmir Atlas during the two World Wars.
According to Lamb, the majority of British maps published between 1918 and 1947 showed Demchok as being in Tibet and that "in the Demchok region the British line followed a course very close to that of the present Chinese claim".
On the ground, the traditional boundaries continued to be followed. The Kashmir government disregarded the British maps and the Tibetan claims to Demchok seem to have persisted. Lamb states, "by the time of the Transfer of Power in 1947 nothing had been settled."

Modern claims

Since the 1950s, Indian maps do not agree entirely with either the 1846–1847 survey or the 1868 Kashmir Atlas: the Indian claims lie east of Demchok, whereas the 1846–1847 British boundary commission placed the border through the middle of Demchok, and British maps from the 1860s onwards showed the border to be west of Demchok. The Chinese claims coincide with British maps that placed the border west of Demchok. The Chinese claims also coincided with the borders used by the 1945 National Geographic and 1955 United States Army Map Service maps.
Prior to the Sino-Indian War of 1962, India had established a border post to the south of the delta. As the war progressed, the post was evacuated and the Chinese forces occupied it. It has also been referred to as "Lari Karpo" and "Demchok Lari Karpo" in Tibetan documents.
After the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the village of Demchok was divided in two parts, with Demchok, Ladakh administered by India and Dêmqog, Tibet Autonomous Region administered by China. The split did not divide any of the resident families.
Sources vary on whether the larger sector is administered by China or India.