To stop other powers from interfering in British India, Calcutta worked out a series of treaty-based security arrangements with the neighbouring regions such as Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. The regimes there were offered protection in return for denying their space to other powers.

The partition of British India inevitably resulted in two different sets of conflicts. The successor states quarrelled with each other over the new boundaries within the Subcontinent. They also got embroiled in a series of conflicts on the outer frontiers of the Subcontinent. If the former has obsessed us for the last six decades, we are now being called upon to pay attention to the second category of conflicts. They can be understood in four different dimensions.

The first is the problem of extending full sovereignty over the spaces beyond the inner line. Pakistan, for example, claimed the Durand Line — negotiated between British India and Afghanistan — as its boundary. Yet, it failed over the last 60 years to establish its writ over the tribal regions east of the Durand Line. Having allowed extremist forces from around the world to use these territories as sanctuaries for running their many different wars, Pakistan today is in danger of losing what little control it has exercised over its tribal regions.

Second, the Subcontinent’s outer boundaries became a contested terrain. Afghanistan was not willing to accept the Durand Line as the border with Pakistan. Every government in Kabul since 1947 — including that of the Taliban — sees the Durand Line as an imposition by British India. Similarly, China, which became our neighbour, refused to accept the McMahon Line that the British drew between Tibet and India.

... contd.