The chief minister of an Indian state at the center of a territorial dispute between China and India told Beijing on Thursday to stop interfering in plans for the Dalai Lama to visit the area.
The Tibetan spiritual leader is scheduled to visit the Tawang monastery in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh as well as the capital Itanagar in November.
China recently said it firmly opposed the visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which it claims nearly in full.
“China has no business to interfere with the Dalai Lama’s proposed visit to Arunachal Pradesh,” the state’s chief minister Dorji Khandu said. “We welcome the Dalai Lama’s visit and will ensure that his trip is successful.”
The mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh shares a 1,030km unfenced frontier with China, with the two countries separated by the McMahon Line, a disputed border known as the Line of Actual Control.
India and China fought a border war in 1962, with Chinese troops advancing deep into Arunachal Pradesh and inflicting heavy casualties on Indian troops.
“Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India, and the Dalai Lama is free to go anywhere in India,” Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said recently, reacting to the Chinese objections.
India’s border dispute with China was inherited from British colonial rulers, who hosted a 1914 conference with the Tibetan and Chinese governments that set the border in what is now Arunachal Pradesh.
China has never recognized the 1914 McMahon Line and claims nearly all of Arunachal Pradesh.
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