This is a documentary study—compilation of 2523 documents spread over five volumes—introduced and edited by Avtar Singh Bhasin, formerly of the Historical Division of the Ministry of External Affairs. The 60-page introduction recapitulates the relationship covered by the documentation.
These volumes have been published in collaboration with the Ministry’s Policy Planning Division. This is a welcome development and, hopefully, presages the willingness of the Government departments to be more accessible to scholars. With this compilation, the author has now documented India’s relations with all of India’s major neighbours. The author suggests in his Preface that, having accomplished this task in the twenty-five years post-retirement, it is now time to call it quits.
The ‘ups and downs’ of India-China relations are well-enough known. These volumes document the initial suspicion on each side of the other; the ‘bhai-bhai’ phase of the mid-fifties; the recurrent border problem and breakdown of negotiations in the late fifties followed by the Chinese invasion in 1962; the decade-and-a-half long hiatus in relations; the rekindling of normalcy in the seventies; expanding cooperative approaches through the eighties and nineties; the nuclear tests; the return of anxieties in the 21st century as China galloped away ahead of India economically and militarily.The source material is rich and will surely spawn multiple narratives.