The death of 20 Indian soldiers on Monday night at the disputed border with China in eastern Ladakh has certainly made a peaceful settlement of the boundary question further difficult. By unilaterally changing the Line of Actual Control, China has violated the letter and spirit of several agreements committing the two nations to maintain status quo along the 3,440 square kilometre border till mutual agreement is reached.
Despite prolonged negotiations at different levels of the two governments, China sees profit in an unsettled border. And slowly nibbles away at the Indian territory. It is now for the Modi Government to restore the status quo ante as in end-April. It would certainly entail the use of force, something China seems well prepared for. Both sides are fortifying their defences following the Monday night clashes. Do remember China has not occupied the Indian territory with the intention of vacating. The aggression fortifies its strategic control in eastern Ladakh but also helps secure its all-weather highway linking Tibet to Xinjiang and opens the possibility of a further linkage to the Gilgit-Baltistan region which Pakistan had gifted it in the 60s. It is irrefutable that the army was caught napping, when the PLA crept into a large swath of territory, about eight kilometres between Fingers (spurs) 4 and 8 on the Pangong Tso (Lake). An outraged nation felt somewhat reassured on Wednesday when the Prime Minister told a conference of the chief ministers that ‘the sacrifice of soldiers would not go in vain…there will be a befitting reply…’ Hard words were also exchanged on Wednesday by the two Foreign Ministers, with S. Jaishankar telling his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, that the Chinese ‘premeditated and planned action was directly responsible for the violence and casualties.’ Significantly, Wang claimed that the Indians had encroached on the Chinese territory since the entire Galwan Valley belonged to China. This further indicated that China was determined not to vacate the illegally occupied territory. How, then, will India redeem its pledge to undo the Chinese mischief remains unclear.
The aam aadmi needs to acknowledge the sobering fact that China is far better equipped militarily and economically than India. It has built a network of border roads, communications, garrisons, landing strips, et al all along the disputed territory. India is at least a decade behind in updating its border infrastructure. Besides, China is obliged to keep a firm grip on its own restive minorities, especially in Xingiang and Tibet, where it has brutally puts down the local people who do not belong to the dominant Han ethnicity. Such homogenous population coupled with the iron-fisted control of the Chinese Communist Party on every facet of human life provides China a clear advantage. Aside from being a very noisy and always divisive democracy, India boasts of several minorities, the largest among them being Muslims who constitute about 15 percent of the total population of over 1.3 billion. It is of course a cliché that India remains united in times of war. And we will let it pass lest the usual elements get needlessly het up at the cold truth. The way the Opposition parties, especially the Gandhi trio, exploit the border trouble as an excuse to pin down the government proves the point. We need a widest possible national consensus, nay, unity to retrieve our honour. An aggressive and militaristic China is a menace to global peace. Weaponising trade is obviously one way of citizen protest. In fact, all countries on the receiving end of Chinese brazenness need to use trade to make it behave. The way China intimidates Europeans and Australians, bullies Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, etc., it may be time to form a new world forum aimed at repulsing the Chinese economic and military aggression. Hitting China’s economic interests would be far more effective than launching an armed attack. It is a low-cost, high-gain strategy. Already, the Chinese mouthpiece, Global Times, has warned against the economic boycott.
Meanwhile, the PM’s meeting scheduled for Friday ought to be constructive, instead of it being used by the likes of the man-child politician Rahul Gandhi to trade in cheap shots. At all times while speaking of China, the Congress dynast should remember that the border problem is a legacy of the wrongheadedness of the first Congress government which ignored sane advice, forfeiting tens of thousands kilometres of Indian territory to the aggressor. The government should take the Opposition into confidence about the situation on the border without compromising national security. Until the denouement of the current crisis leaders like Gandhi should cease sounding like a broken record.
