History Headline: Aksai Chin, from Nehru to Shah

Sixty years ago, from the very spot Amit Shah reiterated the Indian position on Aksai Chin, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had informed the nation, belatedly, about what the Chinese had been up to in Aksai Chin, “where not even a blade of grass grows”.

(From left) Nehru with Chinese premier Chou en-Lai, Chinese foreign minister Chen Yi and Union minister Swaran Singh in New Delhi in April 1960. (Express Archive)

37,244 square kilometres of land. That’s almost Bhutan, almost Kerala, almost Manipur and Nagaland put together. That’s Aksai Chin, the north-eastern end of India’s crown under Chinese occupation for many decades now, the first move made much before the Sino-Indian war of 1962. It’s a cold desert of salt flatlands called the Soda Plains, watered by the Karakash, the Black Jade river. China claims much of it lies in Hotan County of Xinjiang. The China National Highway 219, running over 2,000 km, connects Yecheng in Xinjiang to Lhatse in Tibet via Aksai Chin. An asphalt road since 2013, it was a gravel track when it was completed in 1957.