After at least 26 violations of Indian air space in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) by Chinese helicopters in recent months, including two air-dropping canned food, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers have come up with an innovative way of sending aggressive messages by painting their country’s name on rocks in Indian territory. Reminiscent of dogs marking their territory by urinating, it takes quite an effort for soldiers to negotiate a couple of kilometres across a guarded border in high altitude terrain to paint rocks.
Both the air and land intrusions have been in Southeast J&K, in the general area of the barren land at Chumar, east of the picturesque Morari Tso (lake), Zulung La (pass) and the 22, 420-feet-high Mount Gya, meaning ‘‘fair princess of snow’’, located at the tri-junction of Ladakh, Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, and Tibet.
These intrusions happening in August, a month packed with Sino-Indian negotiations at New Delhi, followed by the Indian Army’s GoC-in-C Eastern Command, Lt Gen V K Singh, visiting Beijing and even Lhasa, capital of Tibet, is not surprising, but the fact that they are in J&K, where Pakistan has been brewing trouble for 62 years, is a new development which — to the uninitiated at least — raises some worrisome questions.
Incursions are quite typical of China punctuating its diplomatic dialogue — in an atmosphere of warmth et cetera — with India with some aggressive cross-border action. Former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee’s visit to Beijing was timed with a Chinese patrol coming at least 16 km inside India and intimidating an Indian detachment. Another act the PLA is famous for is creating tension during normal deployment on the border without any incursion, by sparking off a dispute over just a few feet of territory.
In 2000, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Mukut Mithi accused China of violating the LAC and crossing into Indian territory. Mithi had said that Chinese-built mule tracks had been discovered by Indian Army soldiers near the Kayela Pass. ‘‘They come in the guise of hunters, cross the LAC and at times even claim that parts of Arunachal belong to them,’’ he had said.
In May 2007, BJP MP Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal Pradesh made a startling claim that China had moved 20 km into the Indian territory, amounting to 9,000 sq km. ‘‘It has been continuing for a long time. I have written to the Government of India and raised the issue in Parliament. The Government of India is not accepting the incursion openly. But defence personnel do acknowledge that this is happening and that the Chinese are occupying our land,’’ said Rijiju, and he claimed that the Ministry of External Affairs had admitted to Chinese occupation of Arunachal Pradesh. About 140 incursions reportedly occurred in 2007.
The Chinese build-up and incursions with release of maps in the early 1950s, brought to the notice of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru by the Indian Army’s top brass, were trashed by him based on his belief in Panchsheel and Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai which ironically amounted to ‘‘bye-bye’’ with the 1962 Chinese aggression. According to Achamma Chandersekaran, neice of Major TP Francis, an expert in 29 languages, who was one of the official interpreters during Zhou En Lai’s visit to India in 1962, his interpretation did not go along with the interpretation that others gave. He predicted that China would attack India in six months. With nobody in the government, including Nehru, who met him, willing to go along with his interpretation, Major Francis resigned in protest. China did indeed attack India within six months. The Indian Army lost 1,860 personnel; everything from potatoes to postage became dearer; Nehru was broken; and the then Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon was at long last given marching orders.
As expressed in Parliament by Pranab Mukherjee, when he was External Affairs Minister, there is no clearly defined boundary separating China and India. To quote Mukherjee, ‘‘China illegally claims approximately 90,000 sq km of Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh and about 2,000 sq km in the middle of the India-China boundary.’’ China also controls 38,000 sq km of territory India claims in Jammu-Kashmir.
After 1962, there were a large number of incursions and violent attacks by the PLA at Nathula and Chola in Sikkim in September and October, 1967 and at Sumdorong Chu Valley in Arunachal Pradesh in 1984 and 1987 — all aggressively retaliated by the Indian Army. Thereafter, the first major step forward was Rajiv Gandhi’s path-breaking visit to China in 1988. This was followed by other high-level visits on both sides. Narasimha Rao took the process forward in September 1993 by signing a Treaty of Peace and Tranquillity between the two countries, which also signified India quietly accepting the loss of 90,000 sq km of its territory. While this agreement ended the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, soon after the late General BC Joshi became the first Indian Army chief to visit China. While his visit was a success, it did not stop the Chinese from continuing to enter Indian territory, looking for herbs — a favourite excuse — or deploying surveillance stations all around India as its ‘‘string of pearls’’ strategy, or targeting it with their nuclear warheads, also substantially supplied ‘‘by private arrangement’’ to Pakistan. The way tension is increasing by repeated provocation by frontline PLA troops, there can be no guarantee of the odd moment when some soldier’s patience snaps and firing is actually resorted to.
In the past few years, China, while further arming regimes in Pakistan and Myanmar, has been flooding Indian markets with underpriced Chinese good crippling our small-scale industries in bicycles, pumps, fans and other articles of daily use, not to mention items of military uniform and deadly commando knives easily available in the bazaars of Manipur and other northeastern States.
In 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh calling it ‘‘India’s land of the rising sun’’ and announcing a long overdue development package, preceded and followed again by Defence Minister AK Antony’s — the latter one to Tawang — provoked a prolonged reaction from China.
Chinese reaction to 26/11 was almost one of glee.
In view of the above and China’s hegemonic mindset, voracious appetite for territory, sustained modernization and enhancement of offensive capability, and now stepping into J&K, where its old friend Pakistan has been busy for over six decades, India needs to take some serious and urgent steps to be able to at least give calibrated responses to both these not-so-good neighbours.
Anil Bhat
(The writer is a Delhi-based security analyst)
Both the air and land intrusions have been in Southeast J&K, in the general area of the barren land at Chumar, east of the picturesque Morari Tso (lake), Zulung La (pass) and the 22, 420-feet-high Mount Gya, meaning ‘‘fair princess of snow’’, located at the tri-junction of Ladakh, Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, and Tibet.
These intrusions happening in August, a month packed with Sino-Indian negotiations at New Delhi, followed by the Indian Army’s GoC-in-C Eastern Command, Lt Gen V K Singh, visiting Beijing and even Lhasa, capital of Tibet, is not surprising, but the fact that they are in J&K, where Pakistan has been brewing trouble for 62 years, is a new development which — to the uninitiated at least — raises some worrisome questions.
Incursions are quite typical of China punctuating its diplomatic dialogue — in an atmosphere of warmth et cetera — with India with some aggressive cross-border action. Former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee’s visit to Beijing was timed with a Chinese patrol coming at least 16 km inside India and intimidating an Indian detachment. Another act the PLA is famous for is creating tension during normal deployment on the border without any incursion, by sparking off a dispute over just a few feet of territory.
In 2000, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Mukut Mithi accused China of violating the LAC and crossing into Indian territory. Mithi had said that Chinese-built mule tracks had been discovered by Indian Army soldiers near the Kayela Pass. ‘‘They come in the guise of hunters, cross the LAC and at times even claim that parts of Arunachal belong to them,’’ he had said.
In May 2007, BJP MP Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal Pradesh made a startling claim that China had moved 20 km into the Indian territory, amounting to 9,000 sq km. ‘‘It has been continuing for a long time. I have written to the Government of India and raised the issue in Parliament. The Government of India is not accepting the incursion openly. But defence personnel do acknowledge that this is happening and that the Chinese are occupying our land,’’ said Rijiju, and he claimed that the Ministry of External Affairs had admitted to Chinese occupation of Arunachal Pradesh. About 140 incursions reportedly occurred in 2007.
The Chinese build-up and incursions with release of maps in the early 1950s, brought to the notice of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru by the Indian Army’s top brass, were trashed by him based on his belief in Panchsheel and Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai which ironically amounted to ‘‘bye-bye’’ with the 1962 Chinese aggression. According to Achamma Chandersekaran, neice of Major TP Francis, an expert in 29 languages, who was one of the official interpreters during Zhou En Lai’s visit to India in 1962, his interpretation did not go along with the interpretation that others gave. He predicted that China would attack India in six months. With nobody in the government, including Nehru, who met him, willing to go along with his interpretation, Major Francis resigned in protest. China did indeed attack India within six months. The Indian Army lost 1,860 personnel; everything from potatoes to postage became dearer; Nehru was broken; and the then Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon was at long last given marching orders.
As expressed in Parliament by Pranab Mukherjee, when he was External Affairs Minister, there is no clearly defined boundary separating China and India. To quote Mukherjee, ‘‘China illegally claims approximately 90,000 sq km of Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh and about 2,000 sq km in the middle of the India-China boundary.’’ China also controls 38,000 sq km of territory India claims in Jammu-Kashmir.
After 1962, there were a large number of incursions and violent attacks by the PLA at Nathula and Chola in Sikkim in September and October, 1967 and at Sumdorong Chu Valley in Arunachal Pradesh in 1984 and 1987 — all aggressively retaliated by the Indian Army. Thereafter, the first major step forward was Rajiv Gandhi’s path-breaking visit to China in 1988. This was followed by other high-level visits on both sides. Narasimha Rao took the process forward in September 1993 by signing a Treaty of Peace and Tranquillity between the two countries, which also signified India quietly accepting the loss of 90,000 sq km of its territory. While this agreement ended the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, soon after the late General BC Joshi became the first Indian Army chief to visit China. While his visit was a success, it did not stop the Chinese from continuing to enter Indian territory, looking for herbs — a favourite excuse — or deploying surveillance stations all around India as its ‘‘string of pearls’’ strategy, or targeting it with their nuclear warheads, also substantially supplied ‘‘by private arrangement’’ to Pakistan. The way tension is increasing by repeated provocation by frontline PLA troops, there can be no guarantee of the odd moment when some soldier’s patience snaps and firing is actually resorted to.
In the past few years, China, while further arming regimes in Pakistan and Myanmar, has been flooding Indian markets with underpriced Chinese good crippling our small-scale industries in bicycles, pumps, fans and other articles of daily use, not to mention items of military uniform and deadly commando knives easily available in the bazaars of Manipur and other northeastern States.
In 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh calling it ‘‘India’s land of the rising sun’’ and announcing a long overdue development package, preceded and followed again by Defence Minister AK Antony’s — the latter one to Tawang — provoked a prolonged reaction from China.
Chinese reaction to 26/11 was almost one of glee.
In view of the above and China’s hegemonic mindset, voracious appetite for territory, sustained modernization and enhancement of offensive capability, and now stepping into J&K, where its old friend Pakistan has been busy for over six decades, India needs to take some serious and urgent steps to be able to at least give calibrated responses to both these not-so-good neighbours.
Anil Bhat
(The writer is a Delhi-based security analyst)
THE SENTINEL
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