India-China border dispute impacts semi-nomadic families who depend on the land

Kunjan Dolma begins her day just a few hours before dawn. She tends to her sheep in an open-air shed amid the cold desert hues of Ladakh, a union territory in northwest India.

“I have around 200 sheep, and I make a living by selling their wool and milk at the local market,” she said, as she milked one of her sheep before heading to the mountains to find grazing land for her cattle.

Dolma lives with her husband and teenage daughter and spends most of spring and summer traversing across the mountains of eastern Ladakh in search of green pasture for their sheep.

The family belongs to the Changpa community, a group of semi-nomads who live in eastern La Changthang Valldakh. During the winter, they live in Chushul, a high-altitude village about five miles from India’s border with China.

“The land in and around Chushul is good for our sheep. I’ve been coming here during the winter for over 26 years,” Dolma said.

But a long-standing border dispute between India and China threatened the Dolma family’s livelihood. On Monday, the two countries finally reached an agreement on the “patrolling arrangements” and ​​military stand-off at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). But the dispute has taken a toll on semi-nomadic families in the area.

“If we take our sheep and goats near the Chinese border, the military stops us and advises us to find grazing lands elsewhere. We have lost important winter pastures in recent years, but we have begun adjusting to the restrictions,” she explained.

Border tensions between India and China date back to October 1962, when the Asian superpowers fought a deadly monthlong war along an ill-defined border. The war was triggered by differences over the ownership of a territory known as Aksai Chin on the west of the Indo-China border and the region of Arunachal Pradesh on the east. 

The war ended in November of that year, with China declaring a ceasefire and militarily occupying Aksai Chin, which India continues to claim. In the east, Chinese troops retreated about 12 miles behind the border.

No major war has been fought since the 1960s. However, occasional standoffs continue along the border — which India claims is 2,167 miles long, but China says it is around 1,243 miles. 

In May 2020, a border clash in the Galwan river valley in Ladakh, saw Indian and Chinese soldiers also fighting with sticks and stones.  

Rigzhin Dorjay, a farmer who has lived in Chushul all his life, clearly remembers the border clashes.

“When the 2020 clashes took place, I trekked up to the mountains to give the Indian military officers securing our border food and rations,” Dorjay, who is now 55 years old, said. 

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said that military disengagement has begun taking place at the Indo-China border. 

He said that border patrolling issues need to be solved for relations between India and China to improve.

Retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, who was with the People’s Liberation Army of China and is now a senior fellow of the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, said that the United States has also been playing a role in the bilateral dispute to a small extent.

“The United States is having competition with China. Given India’s heavy weight as such a large, powerful country, the United States wants to make the best use of that,” he said. But, he added, India is cautious and will not let American involvement sour Indo-China relations further.

Preparing a kettle of butter tea — a Ladakhi staple — Dorjay said he hopes a solution will also help farmers like him who are unable to cultivate land near the border. 

“I have around four kanals (0.5 acres) of land and cattle. I mainly cultivate crops like barley and peas and this year the harvest was good. But can no longer land near the border with China,” he said.

Konchok Stanzin, the councilor of Chushul at the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council in Leh, Ladakh’s capital, has been trying to help the nomads and farmers.

“We have been highlighting the needs in the border area. For nomads, the border villages are not that liveable. So, we have to provide the basic facilities like communication, health and education, pasture development, fodder development,” he said.

Stanzin’s initiatives are part of a development program introduced by India’s central government to help nomads and farmers. 

Currently, Ladakh is one of eight union territories in India. This means the Indian central government directly governs it. Land rights activists and environmentalists say statehood for Ladakh would protect the interests of Ladakh nomads.

But Stanzin said that statehood for Ladakh would not solve border disputes. 

“It is a perception fight. I think China has a different line of perception and India has a different line of perception. … We demand more [aid] packages, more infrastructure and administrative setup in the border area,” he said.

Some people in Chushul feel that education can also play a role in bringing about peace.

“If a teacher educates children about places and cultures in the right manner, hostilities will not exist and peace will prevail,” said Tsringandhu, who only wanted to share part of his name. He teaches the Ladakhi Bhoti language, an offshoot of the Tibetan language.

“When we educate children, we [can] tell them that the land across the border is China, and is not an enemy country.”