This was the net result of the policy of conciliation and forbearance towards the Tibetans and of reliance on the Chinese Central Government, which had been pursued from 1873.
Now that five years had elapsed since the Trade Regulations were concluded, and they were, according to their provisions, subject to revision, the Government of India began to consider any practical measures for securing fuller facilities for trade. The Convention of 1890 and the Trade Regulations of 1893 were intended to provide these facilities, but so far none had been obtained; and the Indian Government thought that, as the Tibetans attached great importance to retaining the Giagong piece of territory in Northern Sikkim, and as we had no real desire to hold it, there might be advantage in conceding that point if the Tibetans would, on their side, make some equivalent concession. They might, it was thought, concede to us the point for which we had contended when negotiating the Trade Regulations, and recognize Phari as the trade-mart in place of the quite useless Yatung. Lord Salisbury[11] agreed that some action was necessary, but it seemed to him that, as during recent years Chinese advisory authority in Tibet had been little more than nominal, and the correspondence of the Government of India even seemed to show that it was practically nonexistent, it would be preferable to open direct communication between the Government of India and the Tibetan authorities.
Lord Curzon therefore commenced, in the autumn of 1899, a series of attempts to open up direct communication with them. Ugyen Kázi, the Bhutanese Agent in Darjiling, who was accustomed to visit Tibet for trade purposes, was first employed to write a letter on his own behalf to the Dalai Lama, suggesting, in general terms, that a high Tibetan official should be sent to discuss the frontier and trade questions. This letter met with an unfavourable response. Captain Kennion, the Assistant to the Resident in Kashmir, who annually visits Leh and the Western Tibet frontier, was then charged with a letter from the Viceroy to the Dalai Lama, which he was to give to the Tibetan officials in Gartok; but six months after this was returned to Captain Kennion, with the intimation that the officials had not dared, in the face of the regulations against the intrusion of foreigners into Tibet, to send it to Lhasa. These two methods having failed, Ugyen Kázi was entrusted with another letter from the Viceroy to the Dalai Lama, which he was himself to present at Lhasa. In August, 1901, he returned from Lhasa, reporting that the Dalai Lama declined to reply to it, stating as his reason that the matter was not one for him to settle, but must be discussed fully in Council with the Amban, the Ministers, and the Lamas, and the letter was brought back with the seal intact.