Introduction
The region of Arunachal, a sparsely populated Himalayan borderland, had long eluded the firm control of any pre-modern state. Only in 1912-13 did British India negotiate treaties with the ethnic groups (the Abors, Daflas, Mishmis, etc.) to create the Balipara, Sadiya, Abor, Mishmi and Tirap Frontier Tracts, together the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), thereby laying the basis of modern Arunachal. Even then the region “had largely remained unadministered during British rule,” governed indirectly through frontier deals rather than direct administration. Likewise, the Chinese Qing dynasty exercised at most symbolic control over the region, and despite expansive Qing-era maps, which showed Arunachal (Lhoyü) as a part of the Qing Dynasty, “no areas of present Arunachal Pradesh, which were mostly forested then, were ever administratively controlled by the Qing.” Throughout most of history, British and Indian cartographers omitted Arunachal from maps of India, while still depicting Myanmar, right up until the 1920s.
This raises the question: if neither empire truly ruled the land, why do both modern China and India now claim it so strongly?1 Constructivist IR theory offers a clue. Identity-driven narratives can transform historical ambiguity into absolute certainty. States seek ontological security, a stable sense of self over time, which compels them to craft coherent stories about their territory and history. Arunachal’s murky past provides a blank canvas for such storytelling. Rather than factual administration, each government’s claim is anchored in a national narrative that makes the disputed territory “forever” part of the self.
The McMahon Line and Competing Histories
The first contested claim emerged with the 1913-14 Simla Conference, where Britain, Tibet and China discussed the frontier. British and Tibetan plenipotentiaries agreed on a Himalayan crestline, later called the McMahon Line, which London described as the “geographic, ethnic, and administrative boundary” between India (Assam) and Tibet. In practice the British saw it as a natural frontier; after the conference, India’s Survey of India routinely drew that line on maps. China, however, withdrew its signature almost immediately and later denounced the Simla agreement as illegitimate. In a 1959 letter to Nehru, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai explicitly called the Simla Convention part of “imperialist aggression” and the McMahon Line a product of British “aggression… never recognised… and therefore decidedly illegal.”
After Indian independence in 1947, the McMahon Line became New Delhi’s accepted border. Maps showed the disputed hill tracts as de facto administered by British India, with the agreement cited as the legal basis for the boundary. In contrast, Beijing’s official history rejects any inherited British treaty. Chinese leaders argue Tibet had no independent authority to cede territory, and that any colonial-era border was an imposition. As the Encyclopedia Britannica records, in the late 1950s China claimed nearly the entire upland of Assam (NEFA), insisting the British had drawn McMahon by force. Notably, the postage stamps issued by Azad Hind, the Indian National Army fighting for India’s independence, also did not depict Arunachal as part of India.
Independence, Integration, and Identity
What is interesting is that neither country’s nationalist movement originally centered on Arunachal. At independence the region was merely a remote northern part of Assam; Indian leaders had little connection to it during the freedom struggle. After 1947, however, the emerging Indian state moved to consolidate NEFA within its borders. In 1950, India took responsibility for frontier administration, and by 1972, NEFA was formally declared a Union Territory (renamed Arunachal Pradesh). In 1987, it became a full state. India emphasizes this continuity and integration: the Survey of India has consistently marked the frontier as part of Assam in its maps, published annually since the late 19th century.
Indian politicians and media portray Arunachal as willingly part of India’s nation-building project — its citizens were granted Indian citizenship, local leaders sit in state assemblies, and the slogan “अरुणाचल हमारा Arunachal Hamara” (“Arunachal is ours”) is widely invoked by India. Even in the most recent spat, India’s Ministry of External Affairs insisted flatly that “Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India.” This in turn also led to India undermining the indigenous culture of the region, enforcing Hindi as the sole language and temporarily banning all religions — except for those that conformed with Hinduism. India also did this, by sending in Hindu priests to make the indigenous customs more Hindu, as could be seen with the religious movement of Donyi Polo that was started in the state. Although this did endanger the indigenous culture of the people, this helped India solidify its grasp on the people. As more and more Indian shows were streamed on television, the indigenous community came to see themselves more and more closer with India.
China’s post-1949 narrative, however, took the opposite tack. After Mao’s rise, Beijing nullified pre-1949 treaties and reaffirmed earlier Qing claims. Chinese officials renamed the province on paper as Zangnan (藏南, “southern Tibet”) and began issuing maps treating Arunachal as part of Tibet Autonomous Region. In 1959 Zhou Enlai dispatched Indian maps showing Arunachal as Chinese territory. Today’s PRC rhetoric frames Arunachal as “South Tibet” that must eventually be returned to China. Official statements make this clear: at a May 2025 press briefing, China’s foreign ministry stated bluntly “Zangnan is part of China’s territory” and that standardizing Chinese names there “is fully within China’s sovereign rights.” Beijing also emphasizes Tibet’s long historical ties to China (presented as uninterrupted) and downplays local ethnic identities. In this case, it is indeed true that most of the ethnic groups of Arunachal do share their origins in the Sichuan river basin, and China in many ways uses this part of history to solidify their claim. However, most of Arunachal was unexplored until the Britishers arrived, and the Qing Dynasty had never ever held any true control over administration in this region. Chinese discourse, however, continues to treat Arunachal not as a frontier, but as an ancient province of the Chinese nation: only “occupied” by colonial-era India.
Contemporary Narrative Strategies
These contrasting historical framings are actively reproduced through today’s politics. China has made “cartographic normalization” a pillar of its strategy. Since 2017, Beijing has repeatedly published lists of Chinese names for Arunachal localities, framing this as routine to “standardize” geographic names in Zangnan. For example, in May 2025, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs issued official Chinese names for 27 places in Arunachal ranging from mountain peaks to villages, explicitly identifying them as in “Zangnan of China.” Chinese media describe this as a technical exercise under China’s sovereignty. Experts note it is part of a broader “renaming” campaign: media outlets report each batch (6 names in 2017, 15 in 2021, 11 in 2023, 30 in 2024, etc.) as a way to “boost claims and normalize its occupation” of the region. State commentary ties this to China’s narrative about Tibet where China is pushing terms like “Xizang” instead of “Tibet” and changing place names so “consistent usage” of Chinese nomenclature erases the notion of a separate Tibetan identity.
India’s discourse counters forcefully but differently. Official spokesmen denounce Chinese renaming as a provocation.2 The MEA called China’s latest naming attempt “vain and preposterous,” declaring that no change of labels can alter the fact that Arunachal “will always remain… an integral and inalienable part of India.” Indian media have invoked terms like “cartographic aggression” to describe China’s actions. Domestic speeches and news stories emphasize Arunachal’s Indian statehood, economic development, and cultural integration. For instance, in 2022 Prime Minister Modi invoked Arunachal’s 50th anniversary of Statehood Day to highlight its progress under Indian rule and reassert its Indian identity. Front-page news articles repeat that India “rejected” China’s naming moves and reaffirm that Arunachal is “in every sense” Indian territory. In short, Indian strategic narratives present the region as a democratic success story and an unshakeable part of the national framework: in direct contrast to China’s historical/civilizational arguments.
China’s official narrative emphasizes that Arunachal (called Zangnan in Chinese accounts) is inherently Tibetan and “part of China’s territory.”3 However this argument falls through since the majority ethnic group in Arunachal is Tani, which is inherently non Tibetan. The Tani community is also called Lhoba, which China recognises as distinct from the Tibetan identity. These claims are thus solely made to be reinforced with imagery of the remote Himalayan landscape and symbolically tie the region to Tibet’s topography, instead of it being factually accurate. Indian narratives, by contrast, stress national unity and legal continuity. New Delhi insists that no unilateral act, not even assigning new names to mountains and rivers, can change Arunachal’s status. However, what is lost in these claims and counterclaims is the indigenous names of the region, which are often replaced with “Indian or Chinese” names.4 Both sides thus frame the same terrain in absolutist terms: one as sacred Chinese-Tibetan heritage, the other as sacred Indian soil.
Through this analysis, we can see the constructivist mechanisms at work. Each country has woven Arunachal into its identity-claim narrative, transforming historical uncertainty into ontological necessity. China’s “Southern Tibet” story and India’s “eternal integral state” slogan serve to reassure national audiences that their country has neither ceded pride nor contract status. As Lu Yang notes of the India-China case, mutual defense of narrative identity has become “routinized” — each side reinforcing a victim/perpetrator storyline that makes disengagement psychologically difficult.5 In short, both governments need Arunachal to symbolize their national cohesion.
Conclusion
These identity-driven narratives create stiff constraints on diplomacy. When the land is cast as part of “the self” of the nation, ceding even a sliver is seen as a betrayal. As Mitzen (2006) argues in the ontological security literature, actors (including states) guard a stable self-identity; uncertainty or concession can be profoundly unsettling.6 For India, agreeing to Chinese claims would undermine its self-image of a democratic republic protecting its frontier tribes. For China, recognizing India’s hold would undermine the core narrative of a unified Chinese motherland. In practical terms, hardening of language, whether calling McMahon a colonial affront or Arunachal “forever Indian” makes compromise politically costly.7
Moving beyond this impasse requires engaging the narratives, not ignoring them. Scholars suggest a narrative-based approach to peacebuilding: to ease ontological anxiety, each side must see the other’s history as plausible. One proposal is a “multi-layered historical reconciliation,” a process by which India and China collectively acknowledge past traumas and map their memories onto one another. For example, both governments could support joint scholarly forums or cultural exchanges in Arunachal/Tibet that highlight the perspectives of indigenous ethnicities, demonstrating that the borderland has overlapping heritages. Confidence might also grow if bilateral dialogue explicitly addresses public narratives, refusing cartographic aggression as a tactic while separately discussing resource or security concerns in less charged language. If nationalists on both sides come to see the conflict as a constructed storyline rather than a zero-sum inheritance, new policy space may open.
Ultimately, sovereignty claims live in stories as much as statutes. China and India have transformed a once-ambiguous zone into “Chinese” and “Indian” realms through strategic framing and rhetoric. These entrenched narratives now bind each state’s hands: the identity payoff of victory is too great to yield, and the identity cost of compromise too high. Only by consciously reframing the meaning of Arunachal, from a contested prize to a shared threshold of cooperation, could policy makers break free of the current stalemate. As Lu Yang suggests, identifying and addressing the narrative dimensions of the dispute may be the key to an eventual thaw in this Himalayas standoff.
- Sarmah, M. (2021). Is China’s territorial claim on Arunachal Pradesh justifiable? World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, 25(4), 78–89. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48654881. ↩︎
- Kumar, A. (2023, May 5). दो-दो मोर्चों पर चीन क दविुविधा: भारत–चीन बॉर्डरर्ड के हालात पर एक नज़रि या. Observer Research Foundation (ORF) हि दं. https://www.orfonline.org/hindi/research/chinas-two. ↩︎
- 廖小韵, 郝晓光, 胡小刚, & 刘根友. (2012). 从一幅早期地图看藏南问题研究的重要性 测绘科学 (Science of Surveying and Mapping), 37(Suppl), 1–4. http://www.hxgmap.com/lunwen/h47.pdf. ↩︎
- 段彬. (2020). 印度对中国藏南地区的同化政策探析(1951—1959) [Analysis of India’s Assimilation Policy toward China’s Zangnan Region (1951–1959)]. Journal of Boundary and Ocean Studies, 5(2). http://www.cibos.whu.edu.cn/res/soft/2020/f167f11263760e65.pdf. ↩︎
- Lu, Y. (2016). Ontological Security and India-China Relations: From Border War to “News War” (ISAS Working Paper No. 227). Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.
Hansen, E. G. (1967). The impact of the border war on Indian perceptions of China. Pacific Affairs, 40(3/4), 235–249. ↩︎ - Mitzen, J. (2006). Ontological security in world politics: State identity and the security dilemma. European Journal of International Relations, 12(3), 341–370. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066106067346. ↩︎
- Singh, J. J. (2019). The McMahon Line: A century of discord. New Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA). ↩︎
Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Bomdila, Arunachal Pradesh,, Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made