New Delhi: Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan on Friday claimed that former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru recognized Tibet as part of China as he wanted to build good relations with China.Speaking at the Bharat Himalayan Strategic Forum in Dehradun, General Chauhan recalled how the Panchsheel Agreement was signed between India and China and said, “With regard to independence, the British left and it was actually India that decided where the front line would be. Nehru probably knew that we had something because the McMahon Line was in the east and we had some kind of claim to the Ladakh region but it was not here. So that’s why he wanted to join a front.” Panchsheel Agreement, while for China too. When they liberated Tibet, they moved to Lhasa. Both ends of this particular area are extreme. “
“So they wanted stability, probably in this particular region. Independent India aspired to have good relations with China. In 1954, India recognized Tibet as part of China. The two countries signed the Panchsheel Agreement,” he added.General Chouhan also said that India must rethink how it views its Himalayan borders, especially the central part of Uttarakhand.“The Himalayas serve more as a zone of interaction than as a border of exclusion. Uttarakhand is a civilized landscape where the sacred and the strategic have long coexisted,” the CDS said.In fact, a think tank like BHISM is the right place as it is uniquely positioned in Dehradun to develop static thinking that is terrain-aware, systems-oriented and has a long-term perspective,” he added.
