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"WHY CAN'T CHINA JUST STAY ON AS A GOOD NEIGHBOUR WITH US?" Samudra Gupta Kashyap Posted online: Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 1409 hrs It has been snowing since Wednesday at Bomdila, this picturesque town perched at an altitude of a little over 8000... Related Stories ON THE TRAIL OF WINGED DEATH <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/263293.html> THE MAN AND HIS DREAM MACHINE <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/260749.html> CREATIVE CLASSROOMS <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/258038.html> ALONE BY THE RIVER <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/255588.html> MODI'S ELEVEN <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/254481.html> It has been snowing since Wednesday at Bomdila, this picturesque town perched at an altitude of a little over 8000 ft on the Eastern Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh. Warming himself at a portable chizi (local brazier), 60-year-old Rinchin Dorjee, a retired government officer, recalls the winter of 1962, when the Chinese troops had occupied Tawang and closed in on Bomdila. ¡°I was just a student of Class V at the government high school, when the war broke out. I was in the hostel along with 50 other boys from different parts of the Kameng region. While people in the town fled to the Assam plains, we were all huddled into a one-tonner army vehicle and driven down to Tezpur, from where we were sent off to Guwahati in a train,¡± Dorjee recalls, as his 21-year old son Pasang, a graduate who helps his father run the family handicrafts shop, listens with rapt attention. After about a month when Dorjee returned, thanks to the unilateral withdrawal of the Chinese, Bomdila looked like a ghost town. ¡°There were very few people left. The stench of rotten remains of human bodies was still in the air. The dogs probably had tasted human flesh and had become ferocious,¡± he says, recounting how he wondered what had happened to his parents at Lish¡ªa small hamlet about six hours walk from the present-day township of Dirang. Luckily, the Chinese did not do much harm to the local people. ¡°But it took a long time for government officials, especially those from outside NEFA (North East Frontier Agency, as Arunachal Pradesh was known till 1972) to come back.¡± Photographer Subhamoy Bhattacharjee and I took off from Guwahati on Wednesday for Tawang, the district that is the focus of the border talks between India and China, the latest turn of which took place during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh¡¯s visit to Beijing last week. During his trip to Arunachal next week, the PM will not go to Tawang. We put up for the night at the Four Corps HQ of the army at Tezpur, and started driving even before the sun was up on Thursday. But when we stopped at Tenga for breakfast, the manager of Hotel Aphet told us the road to Tawang was blocked due to heavy snowfall. ¡°Not a single vehicle has come down from Tawang since the morning. The telephones are also down. So is the mobile network,¡± he said. Bomdila, about 160 km from Tezpur and high at 8,000 ft, was all white when we reach there. The road had become dangerously slippery. ¡°Kabhi brake mat lagao,¡± said a labourer of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) who was clearing the snow on the road. It is just about 25 km from Tenga to Bomdila, but it is a 4,000 ft ascent. Children, and even adults, were happy playing in groups, throwing balls of snow at one another, and occasionally hurling one at vehicles managing to climb up the slippery road. This is the road that the Chinese had used in 1962, Tezpur in the Assam plains their next target after the Indian troops had withdrawn from Tawang, Sela and Bomdila. This is the Kameng frontier, through which His Holiness Dalai Lama too had made his great escape from Tibet back in 1959. We call up His Eminence, the 13th Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, a spiritual leader of the Tsonawa lineage of the Mahayana Buddhism prevalent in Tibet as well as the Tawang-Kameng region. He is also the MLA from Lumla, a constituency bound by China on the north and Bhutan on the west, and we were supposed to follow his vehicle to Tawang later in the day. ¡°I don¡¯t think you will be able to go up to Tawang. There is 6 ft of snow at Sela Pass. Anyway, come up to my monastery. Let us see what can be done,¡± he said. In the next 20 minutes, our Bolero crawled up to the Upper Gompa Monastery, though not after we had to get down twice and push the vehicle along with some passers-by. ¡°You can¡¯t go up. The road is just closed. The army has barred vehicles from even approaching Sela,¡± said Padma Jaiswal, deputy commissioner, West Kameng district. Sela, at an elevation of 13,700 ft, is the world¡¯s second highest pass. ¡°Stay back and be witness to the national flag being hoisted here on Republic Day,¡± she added. 9 A.M. Friday, January 25. R.K. Lal, principal of the Bomdila Government Higher Secondary School, is holding the school assembly. ¡°So, my dear students, the flag must be up in both the hostels exactly at 7 a.m. tomorrow. At 7:30, we must be here to hoist the flag in the school. And then, by 8:30, you must all be in the stadium for the official function,¡± he tells his students. The Bomdila Government Higher Secondary School was established in 1952. (It was a high school in the beginning, the same school that Rinchin Dorjee went to in 1962, during the Chinese aggression.). ¡°We have around 1,000 students today. And I am proud to tell you, we have produced a number of IAS, IPS and other officers from here,¡± says the principal. Kartar Bassar, a Class IX student, is angry with the weather god. ¡°Why did it have to snow during Republic Day?¡± she asks, asserting that she had never missed even one Republic Day or Independence Day function since she joined the high school seven years ago. ¡°I am proud to be an Indian. I keep hearing on television that China is claiming Arunachal Pradesh. What is their problem? Don¡¯t the Chinese know that India is an independent country?¡± she asks. ¡°Yes, she is right. It is not that we hate China. But why can¡¯t China just stay on as a good neighbour with us?¡± asks Leiki Wangda (24), secretary of the All West Kameng Students¡¯ Union. Wangda, however, is angry with the government, both at Itanagar and in New Delhi. ¡°The government does not bother to look into our problems. Just take my village Lubrang. This is the 21st century, and we still have to walk three hours or more to reach it from the nearest road head,¡± he says. The nearest primary health centre is 10 km away from this road head, he adds. 1 | 2 <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/265715-2.html> | 3 <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/265715-3.html> Next <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/265715-2.html> Single Page View <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/265715._.html>
