Not-so-friendly neighbourhood

India’s 6,100 km-long coastline and 1,400 km of island territories border Sri Lanka, Maldives, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar.Because of the arbitrary division of territory at the time of Independence, 125 km of the frontier with Bangladesh — comprising 78 km of West Bengal, 3 km of Assam, 8 km of Mizoram and 36 km of Tripura — remain disputed.

In addition, there are several Bangladeshi enclaves in India and vice-versa. In 1992, however, India granted a `corridor’ to Bangladesh through the Tin Bigha area. This thin strip of land, around 2 km long connects Panbari enclave in India with Angarpota and Dahagram in Bangladesh.

India shares its second longest border with China, extending from the North-west of Kashmir to the tripartite junction of India, Burma and China near the eastern Talu Pass. The unresolved territorial dispute, over which the two went to war in 1962, centres around 50,000 sq km of territory at three places along this border.

This includes the Western section, where Kashmir borders Tibet and Xinjiang province to the East and North (comprising the Aksai Chin area); the Central section, where the North Indian States of Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh border Tibet; and the 1,000 km Eastern section where the North-Eastern State of Arunachal Pradesh borders Tibet.

China refuses to ratify or recognise the McMohan line between the two countries and has built a fully operational road across the Aksai Chin region linking Tibet with Sinkiang.

Both sides, however, ended three decades of diplomatic and military confrontation five years ago following an agreement to work towards demarcating the 4,096 km long line of actual control (LAC) through Joint Working Groups (JWGs) and Sino-Indian Experts Group comprising diplomats, surveyors and military personnel. And, while both sides concede the territorial dispute will take time and patience to resolve, they are committed to continuing dialogue to resolve mutual differences.

In nine JWG meetings so far, the onus has been on multi-level Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) centred around withdrawing troops from the border with a view to ultimately demarcating it.

Last November, both countries signed the “agreement on CBMs in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas”, agreeing to reduce troops and not launch a military attack.The border with Pakistan, however, is the most volatile. Kashmir remains the most contentious border dispute, as only 200 km of it is demarcated with the Line of Control (LoC) extending for 790 km. Another 98 km stretch across the snowy wastes of the Siachen glacier at a height of over 20,000 feet, the world’s highest battlefield where Indian and Pakistani troops daily exchange artillery and small arms fire.

With Sri Lanka to the South, tension exists over the Kacchativu island in the Palk Straits, covering an area of 6 sq km, located around 19 km from the Indian coast and 17 km from Sri Lanka.

India relinquished its claim over the island in 1974 on the condition that access would not be denied to Indian fishermen and Hindu pilgrims wanting to visit the temple located there but there continue to be numerous reports of harassment by the Sri Lankan Navy.

India’s maritime boundaries, meanwhile, stretch deep into the Indian Ocean — a coastline of 7,500 km and 1,200 km of island and rock territories in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. The 1982 International Law of the Sea, which came into force in 1994 also gave India responsibility over a vast area of ocean and sea.

Through it India was given sovereignty over 12 nautical miles (nm) of territorial sea and the provision of a contiguous zone of 24 nm. In addition, it was granted a 200 nm Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for its mainland and island territories and a continental shelf of 200-350 nm.

These changes in the International Law of the Sea increased India’s responsibility from 83,200 km of sea to around 2.8 million sq km or over two-thirds of the total area of its land mass. India also became the first developing country to be given the status of a `pioneer investor’, which provided it an additional area of 150,000 sq km in the central Indian Ocean area for deep sea bed mining.

This compelled India to demarcate its maritime boundaries with the seven States with which it shares adjacent or opposite coasts. Since the 1970s, 12 bilateral and trilateral agreements have been signed with five of seven its maritime neighbours — Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Treaties with Pakistan and Bangladesh, however, are outstanding.Deliberations with the military junta in Myanmar begun in 1976, proved more difficult because of its isolationist attitude but an agreement on the delimitation of the maritime boundary in the Andaman Sea, the Coco’s Channel in the Bay of Bengal was eventually signed in 1986. This was followed seven years later by an agreement on the determination of the trijunction point between India, Myanmar and Thailand in the Andaman Sea.

But India’s maritime boundaries with Pakistan and Bangladesh are yet to be demarcated. A major reason for this lapse was that both neighbours favoured the `equitable’ rather than the `equidistant’ principle used by India for demarcating maritime boundaries.

The former involves determining the median line on the basis of equal distances from the shore, whereas, the latter means adjustments of the median line, taking into account the physical characteristics of the coast line. But given the recent upswing in bilateral relations, Indian officials were optimistic about finalising maritime boundaries with Bangladesh.

The two neighbours, however, have yet another problem to untangle. Both lay claim to New Moore/South Talpatty island and the oil-rich delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers which flow into the Bay of Bengal. This dispute concerns the extent of the maritime zone rather than the island itself. For, if India is given sovereignty over the island it can, in keeping with international law, claim an additional 16,000 sq metres of the oil rich continental shelf.

In 1981, this dispute led to a standoff between three Bangla-deshi gunboats and an Indian survey ship in the area and ended with India despatching a frigate to the island to scare off the Bangladeshi Navy.

The India-Pakistan dispute, however, involves not only the delimitation of maritime boundaries but the resolution of Sir Creek, a marshy, oil rich area on the Sind-Gujarat coast. In 1994, India sent Pakistan a proposal to start delimiting the maritime boundaries from the sea on the basis of the `equidistant’ principle, leaving the Sir Creek dispute for later. Pakistan, however, refused to respond but the issue is likely to come up at the forthcoming diplomatic talks.