China-India relationship: bonhomie to hostility and then to rapprochement

China and India, the two great ancient civilizations, coexisted in peace and harmony for millennia. But as postcolonial modern nation-states, with the exception of a very short period of bonhomie in the early 1950s, relations between the two Asian giants have been marked by conflict, containment, mutual suspicion, distrust, and rivalry. The focus of this paper is to elucidate the bilateral relations between China and India in the historical perspective wherein the main emphasis is laid on the period between 1950 up to the end of Cold War in the early and mid-nineties. The main objective has been to highlight the factors which led to the bitterness of relations between the two states despite their sharing of identical views and objectives in the early fifties. Besides the paper also analyses the factors which compelled the two hostile states to soften their attitude and normalize their deterring relationship in the mid-seventies. A historical-comparative-analytical approach has been adopted to study the facts with optimum level of objectivity.