This short survey of India-China Relations, 1950-1960, has been written more for the general reader than for the select band of scholars and administrators. I have, there fore, deliberately refrained from burdening the book with too many details and footnotes and have attempted to state the essential facts and the conclusions emerging from them within as short a compass as possible.
"The key to Sino-Indian relations lies hidden in the soil of Tibet. It is on the rocks of the Roof of the World that our friendship with China will flourish or founder". This is what I had stated some years ago in course of a Jadavpur University Extension Lecture. Strangely enough, this obvious proposition was then greeted with derision in certain political and intellectual circles in Calcutta. Subsequent events have, however, confirmed the validity of this view. Tibet may or may not be the "roof of the world", but it is certainly the roof of India. Any strong expansionist power, entrenched in Tibet, holds in its hands a loaded pistol pointed at the heart of India. Tibetan developments, therefore, find a prominent place in the story which I have recounted. In fact, the title of the book might as well have been "Tibet in India-China Relations".
This survey may be considered controversial on the grounds of its subject matter. It will be no less controversial on account of the readiness with which I have called a spade a spade, when necessary. I frankly confess that I have looked at the whole problem of our relations with China from the standpoint of an Indian who loves his country, its freedom and its democratic way of life. I do not deny that there may be other points of view different from mine.
A major part of the book was written while I was in the United States for a few months in 1960, working at the Indiana University, Bloomington, and the University of California, Berkeley. I am thankful to the Library staff of these Universities, in particular to Mr. Cecil Byrd, Associate Director of the Indiana University Library, for their ungrudging assistance while I was working on the book. I am also grateful to Professor Joseph L. Sutton, Chairman, Asian Studies Program, Indiana University, for his encouragement, friendly comments and help in getting the book published by the Indiana University Press, though under a slightly different title, for circulation in America and Europe. My deep appreciation is also due to at least three friends and young colleagues in Calcutta-Mr. Kalipada Banerji, Dr. R. K. Vasil and Mr. Prasanta Kumar Guha -for their assistance in correcting the typescript and proofs and preparing the index.
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