‘Can’t you hear Manipur’s cries?’ In MP’s plea to PM, mention of a Tawang hero. Who was Major Khathing?

he proceeded in doing service to the nation way back in the 1950s, he ever thought that this nation would let go of his people.”

Who was Major Bob Khathing?

A Naga from Manipur, Khathing served as an assistant political officer of the erstwhile North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), which eventually became modern-day Arunachal Pradesh.

Before World War I, Tawang was under the administrative control of the then independent Tibetan government. In 1914, officially described as the Convention Between Great Britain, China, and Tibet, represntatives from the three countries met and delineated the Indo-Tibetan boundary. The boundary drawn then is called the McMahon Line.

The McMahon Line delimited the respective spheres of influence of Tibet and British India in the eastern Himalayan region in what is today India’s Northeast and northern Myanmar. The border in this region was undefined prior to the signing of the convention.

As per McMahon line, Tawang was included in British India.

After World War II, Tibet “requested postponement of the extension of the British administration to Tawang,” writes military historian Shiv Kunal Verma in his book 1962: The War That Wasn’t.

The Tibetans continued to exercise control over Tawang, with dzongpen or local governors collecting tax from the tribal Monpa villages in the area.

This situation persisted after Indian independence too.

Then, in 1950, China started invading Tibet, and gaining ground. As the word got to Delhi, Khathing was summoned by then Assam governor Jairamdas Daulatram and told to take a column of Assam Rifles up to Tawang to establish an administration there, writes Verma.

In February 1951, when he arrived at Tawang, Khathing was received by a representative of the dzongpen.

Describing the sequence of events, Verma writes that three days later it was announced that “the Tsona dzongpen or any other official of the Tibetan government could no longer exercise authority over the villages south of Bum-la that lay on the McMahon Line”.

Verma adds that after Khathing and his fleet arrived, “the dzongpen immediately referred the matter to Lhasa (the religious and administrative capital of Tibet), while informing the Indians that they had no idea the area had been ceded to India in 1914”.

Verma writes: “In no mood to wait for Lhasa’s reply, Khathing started establishing his own administration by setting up the Assam Rifles post and touring most Monpa villages”. He is said to have also issued orders to the various village chiefs, started building bashas (temporary shelters) and also visited the lamas in the Tawang Monastery.

Lhasa,Verma writes, instructed the head dzongpen to “dig in and hold his ground”.

“Accordingly, the Tibetans ordered all village chiefs to assemble at Tawang. However, by then, Bob Khathing and the Assam Rifles had made a favourable impression on the Monpas. To further underline his authority, Khathing staged a flag march where fifty men with their rifles and gleaming bayonets marched through Tawang… The meeting called by the dzongpen was a failure, with few village chiefs backing the Tibetans. Seizing the moment, Khathing put in an appearance and firmly told the Tsona dzongpen and the other Tibetan officials that they would be escorted to the Indian border post at Khenzemane… New Delhi now had administrative control over the whole of NEFA,” he writes.

Khathing was awarded the Padma Shri in 1953. Earlier, in 1944, he had gotten the military cross by the British empire.

Tawang Now

Tawang, and nearly all of Arunachal, continues to be claimed by China. It is one of the more serious dispute points between the two countries in the overall border question.

On December 9, 2022, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha that troops of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out an incursion (“atikraman”) across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Yangtse area of Tawang sector, and attempted to unilaterally change the status quo.

Four days later, Rajnath told Parliament that the Army had resisted this attempt by China to change the status quo and pushed back PLA soldiers. Both Indian and Chinese soldiers had suffered some injuries in the clash, he said.

On March 9, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the strategically significant Sena Tunnel, a key border infrastructure project as it connects Guwahati to the strategic Tawang sector round-the-year. It is aimed at aiding faster military movement to the LAC.