India and Tibet : vol.1 / Page 362 (Color Image)

0362	India and Tibet : vol.1

296 THE TREATY CONCLUDED

to send accredited negotiators before June 25 and the

continued opposition of the Tibetans -- which might, I

thought, be considered by His Majesty's Government

sufficient justification for departing in some slight degree

from the policy which on June 2, before they were com-

pletely aware of the nature of the Tibetan position,

commended itself to them. Lord .Lansdowne had said

in April in the House of Lords, referring then to the

policy laid down in the telegram of November 6, 1903,

that he did not mean to say that, whatever happened,

we were never to move an inch beyond the limits therein

laid down." And I thought that the policy settled in

London, before Government were aware of the conditions

I should find at Lhasa, would admit of some little

elasticity.

Then, as regards the nature of the pledges themselves.

The pledges given were that, 64 so long as no other Power

endeavours to intervene in the affairs of Tibet, they [His

Majesty's Government] will not attempt either to annex

it, to establish a protectorate over it, or in any way to

control its internal administration."

The question was, 44 Did the right to occupy the

Chumbi Valley for seventy-five years, as security for the

payment of an indemnity, involve a breach of this pledge ?"

Burma, in somewhat similar circumstances, we had an-

nexed, but that meant turning out the native rulers,

constituting a Government of our own, and stationing

garrisons at the capital and throughout the country. Over

Native States in India we established protectorates, but that

necessarily involved subordinating their foreign relations to

our own. In many of them we controlled the internal

administration, but only by agents of Government being

deputed especially for that purpose. Would the occupation

of Chumbi, a valley lying altogether outside Tibet proper,

on the Indian and not on the Tibetan side of the watershed,

a valley which had not always belonged to 'Tibet, mean

annexing Tibet, establishing a protectorate over it, or

controlling its internal administration ? This was the

question I asked myself, and I answered it in the

negative. I said to myself it involved none of the

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Citation Information

OCR Text

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books