• Nirupama Rao, former Foreign Secretary of India and Author.
• Ananth Krishnan, China Correspondent, The Hindu (Discussant).
• Ashok K. Kantha, Director, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi (Chair).

Nirupama Rao’s  book ‘The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China 1949 to 1962’ (Penguin Random House India, 2021) is a history of the diplomacy between India and China during a crucial period of their early nationhood. This year, 2022, we mark sixty years after the momentous events of 1962 that culminated in the brief, but bitter, conflict between India and China, fought in the high Himalaya, across terrain that is the most forbidding in the world. Public memory of the war is hazy and often , incomplete, shot through with numerous stereotypes and insufficient ‘capture’ of what happened in that eventful year. A new generation of Indians, particularly millennials, have had no exposure to what happened in 1962. Given the current state of India’s relations with China, and all the attendant complications in that relationship, telling the story of the years between 1949 and 1962 in India-China ties is of relevance to the understanding of the disputes between these two nations. A more in-depth understanding of the Tibet factor in the complex relationship is also relevant to the study of diplomacy between India and China. Drawing from her deeply researched book which delves into primary archival resources, Ambassador Rao will discuss the complex nature of the history she presents.