Events &
Issues
New Delhi, 18 January 2010
Ladakh Revelation
HALT CHINESE PUSH-OVER
By Proloy Bagchi
It is now
official. Despite a denial by Defence Minister A K Antony, local officers in
Ladakh, in Jammu and Kashmir,
have arrived at the conclusion that during the last 20 to 25 years the country
has lost a “big chunk” of land to the Chinese along the Line of Actual Control
(LAC). The line separates India
with the illegally occupied Indian territory
by the Chinese. It was a finding of the Ladakh district administration, in
association with the Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the organisations
which man the LAC. They concluded “We are withdrawing from the LAC and our area
has shrunk over a period of time”. Stating that the “The Chinese are pushing us
back from our own territory” the note suggested that the boundary question
“should be settled once for all”.
Obviously,
the survey was carried out as a sequel to several instances of Chinese
aggressive posturing on the LAC last year. Two Chinese choppers violated the
Indian airspace and buzzed the village
of Demchok in Ladakh. Beijing even objected to
construction of a road up to the village which is well within the LAC. The
J&K Government, apparently, feeling a little unsure of the entailing
consequences, promptly stopped the work.
Then again,
Chinese troops breached the unmanned border and intruded 1.5 km deep into the Indian
territory in the Chumar sector east of Leh, and painted “China” on stray rocks and boulders.
The Indian border patrol discovered the signs of Chinese intrusions last July.
Sniffing a story to catch the Government on the wrong foot, the media went on
an overdrive, with the electronic media telecasting pictures of the boulders
with “China”
writ large on them in Cantonese. Keen to bring down the temperature, the Defence
Ministry played down the reports of incursions.
Similar
reports had earlier emanated from the eastern sector of the India-China border.
However, in October 2009 it was a different ball game on display. Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh happened to visit Arunachal Pradesh, a state that borders Tibet, the
status of which the latter holds in dispute. His visit, essentially for
canvassing for elections to the State Assembly, brought forth a virtual torrent
of undiplomatic verbiage. Expressing its “strong dissatisfaction” over Singh’s
visit, China demanded New Delhi to address its
“serious concerns and not trigger disturbances in
the disputed region so as to facilitate the healthy development of China-India
relations”. The whole thing was quite inexplicable as Singh was not the
first Prime Minister to have visited the State.
This was not
all. Even the visit of Dalai Lama to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh early in
November last came in for adverse notice of the Chinese. Their Foreign Ministry
issued a strong statement expressing dissatisfaction over the permission given
by New Delhi to the Tibetan leader to visit
Tawang and its spokesperson branded Dalai Lama as “anti China” merely
because he visited the monastery located therein. The more than three centuries
old monastery is one of the biggest outside Lhasa. Singh clarified that the Tibetan
spiritual leader was an honoured guest in India and was free to travel
anywhere within the country. The latter’s visit to Tawang, however, sent the
mercury soaring in Beijing.
Mild-mannered
as he is, Manmohan Singh, made a mention of the recent Chinese belligerence during his State visit to Washington last November with his
characteristic mildness. While addressing a US
think tank, he pointed out that India
had taken note of a “certain amount of assertiveness” on the part of China lately.
He went on to say that he did not “fully understand” the reasons for these
recent actions.
Some Indian
China-watchers say that Beijing’s cussedness
insofar as India is
concerned is Dalai Lama-centric, that is, they are annoyed with India for
having given asylum to the Tibetan spiritual leader. It seems, during his Delhi
visit in 1956 Zhou Enlai, the then premier of the People’s Republic of China,
gave a very broad hint to his Indian counterpart, Jawaharlal Nehru, that any
Indian assistance to the Tibetan leader would be treated as an unfriendly act.
The
continued rebellion in Tibet
in the early 50s perhaps gave the Chinese a hunch that the Dalai Lama would
eventually seek assistance from India.
And, when India played host
to Dalai Lama in 1959, Mao is reported to have ticked off India as an
enemy. That, perhaps, explains the Chinese policy of keeping the Indo-Chinese
border on the boil even after China
resolved its land border disputes with 12 of its neighbours, including Russia, North
Korea and Vietnam
despite brief skirmishes with each.
That apart,
one has to reckon with the Chinese irredentism. According to Michael
Richardson, a former editor of the International
Herald Tribune, China is the leading proponent of irredentism and it lays
claims on vast territories – both land and maritime – on grounds of vague
ethnicity. Claims against India,
substantial as they seem to be, are perhaps receiving special treatment.
Bill Powell,
writing in the Time magazine (August
10, 2009) said that with its growing economic importance China has increasingly “started throwing its
weight around”... and “push other governments to see things China’s way”.
From India’s viewpoint,
that, perhaps, is a more accurate assessment of China. While it has been objecting
to developmental activities within the LAC in Ladakh calling it disputed, China has
merrily been carrying out infrastructural development on its side of the LAC as
if that is not disputed. Worse, having gobbled up Aksai Chin in 1950s, China has
occupied large swathes of land in Ladakh. One doesn’t know whether it is
Chinese irredentism or Chinese expansionism?
Even if he
does not understand the new Chinese “assertiveness”, Manmohan Singh has to
appreciate the fact that he is up against a bully. Playing down the Chinese
aggressive posturing only betrays the softness of the Indian State.
The Prime Minister, therefore, would do well to prepare the country to meet any
eventuality vis-a-vis China.
Its military unpreparedness, as was splashed all over recently, to meet the
threats from its northern and western neighbours had alarmed the nation. The
country needs to shore up its defences.
True, it may
not be possible to match the military might that the Chinese have built
up over the last couple of decades but New
Delhi can surely manage to develop enough deterrent
capability to dissuade anyone from treating it as a push-over. There are enough
resources available within the country. Singh only has to evolve a political
consensus to clamp down on large-scale waste and rampant corruption, both at
the Centre and in the States. The attitude towards corruption, particularly in
the high places, has to change. Besides, decisive steps, as promised, to
recover the billions of dollars illegally stashed away in tax havens abroad are
urgently needed. If the country is economically and militarily strong none
would ever think of messing with it.--- INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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