Panchsheel Treaty

The Panchsheel Treaty, formally the Agreement on Trade and Intercourse Between the Tibet Region of China and India, was signed in Beijing and its accompanying principles announced in a joint statement by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in New Delhi on 18 June 1954. Its preamble set out five principles, known in Hindi as Panchsheel, meaning five virtues or restraints: mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. Conceived as a framework for relations between India and a China newly under Communist rule, the principles were intended to let states with different political systems coexist without conflict, and Nehru argued that their general recognition would make war between nations far less likely. The five principles were subsequently endorsed by the 1955 Bandung Conference of Asian and African states, in an expanded ten-point form, and they went on to shape the language later used by the Non-Aligned Movement founded in 1961. Despite this promise, Sino-Indian relations built on the treaty collapsed within less than a decade, culminating in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 over their disputed Himalayan border.