When two neighbors attempt to formalize an arrangement over land a third party claims as its own, the act of institution-building becomes itself a provocation. India's swift rejection of the Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission, convened for the first time in Islamabad in September 2026, is less a new development than the latest chapter in a territorial dispute rooted in a 1963 agreement New Delhi has never recognized. At stake is not merely cartography but the deeper question of whether sovereignty can be transferred, negotiated, or legitimized by parties who, in India's view, had no righ