[The comments, at sl. nos. I & II. below, both while recognising that the present conflict - like so many border conflicts, are rooted in history - colonial in case of India and imperial in case of China, delve rather closely into the specifics of the immediate triggers. Despite arguing from very divergent positions, both recognise the salience of these.
The third one is a general, well-meaning, cautionary note for the Indian regime and also public.] I/III. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/china-india-border-modi-galwan-conflict-asia? The Escalating Crisis on the India-China Border BY ACHIN VANAIK 23 06 2020 In the last week, simmering tensions on the Indian-Chinese border in the Himalayas have escalated to open conflict, with fatalities on both sides. India's foreign policy, and not just China, deserves much blame for the escalation. As many as 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a "violent face-off" with Chinese troops on Tuesday in the Galwan Valley along the Himalayas. Photo by Yawar Nazir / Getty Our spring issue, “Pandemic Politics,” is out now. It features over 120 pages of beautiful illustrations and quality writing and analysis. Get a discounted subscription today! Tensions have been simmering on the border between India and China since early May, with each side accusing the other of incursions into their territory. On June 15, however, in subzero temperatures, face-to-face fighting between both sides’ patrol units broke out in the Galwan Valley, where the Galwan River (a tributary of the Indus River) flows. A 1996 agreement had prohibited the use of firearms or explosives along this stretch of the border, but iron rods and batons were reportedly used by both sides, and the dangerous conditions of steep terrain and icy cold waters caused several deaths. India has reported twenty deaths — either immediately or from injuries later on — with around twice that number hospitalized; China has not yet disclosed its casualty figures. Not since 1975 have such fatal clashes taken place on this border, making this month’s fighting the most serious face-off between the two countries in decades. To understand why these hostilities have broken out now, one must look beyond the immediate conditions on the border to the shifting bilateral relations between the two countries. This, in turn, cannot be separated from a survey of the historically evolving geopolitical ambitions of the two countries, and their respective ties and arrangements with other powerful states. Indeed, it is precisely different understandings of this deeper and wider historical context that has lead to differing perspectives on how to proceed from here. Almost all voices among India’s strategic and foreign policy establishment (and among our establishment journalists) see China, to some extent, as the villain — not just in causing the current clash but also in the longer post-WWII history of Indian-Chinese relations. That being said, there is no clear consensus among policy figures on how to move forward, even though all operate within a broadly realist framework. One group (the largest) argues that India must further consolidate and deepen its relations with the United States and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — QSD or the “Quad,” consisting of the United States, Japan, Australia, and India. A second group somewhat problematically proposes that India pursue closer relationships with the United States and the Quad, yet also seek to maximize its strategic autonomy and thereby achieve better relations with China, as if both courses of action are compatible through some form of brilliant diplomacy. A third group (easily the smallest) call on India to reconsider and reframe its current relationship with the United States and the Quad to become much more independent and nonaligned. Action-Reaction at Two Levels The border between India and China, has no agreed demarcation. Each side has its own interpretation of the territorial boundary or Line of Actual Control (LAC), which runs from east to west for some 4057 kilometres, and separates Chinese-controlled territory from several North Indian border states. It is the western part of this long border separating Tibet from the Indian region of Ladakh that is most tense, and is the site of the current conflict. Due to the ambiguity on the exact coordinates of the LAC, there are overlapping claims to territorial enclosures both big and small. As a result, Indian and Chinese border patrols periodically confront each other directly, and higher-level military meetings are required to ease tensions. For some time now, both sides have been developing their infrastructural facilities along the LAC but what appears to be new is the Chinese stationing of troops and construction activity in the Galwan River valley, which it had hitherto left to Indian patrolling, as well as an alleged Chinese intrusion in the Pangong Tso area. The Indian government insists that not an inch of Indian ground has been ceded, thereby implicitly affirming the Chinese claim that the Galwan area, in particular, belongs to them. At the same time New Delhi’s assertion that China is trying to change the status quo does give the game away. Insofar as this suggests that it was China’s initial and calculated action that led to an Indian reaction that precipitated the unfortunate clash, this is correct. Furthermore, if, as is likely, the Chinese did in the past consider the Galwan River valley as lying on the India side (despite the ambiguity surrounding the LAC), then their action is highly condemnable, even as one must try to understand why they took this step. Here, it is a combination of more material factors pertaining to matters of direct military control plus wider ideological-political considerations that are at play. Compared to their predecessors, the governments of Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping have behaved much more aggressively — both domestically and internationally — in keeping with their distinctive nationalist ideologies. In China’s case, given its authoritarian character and the tensions in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the ever present irritation of Taiwan, nationalism is the main weapon it has for rallying its Han population behind it. In regard to its neighbors and its maritime behaviour in the South China seas, its interests are motivated by a desire to counter the pressures imposed on it by the United States, from which much of its foreign policy behavior flows. India is not China’s primary strategic concern, though it certainly resents India’s strategic alliance in the Quad, and sees Pakistan as an important partner in extending its Belt and Road Initiative in the region — specifically with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) — and as a pragmatic diplomatic counterweight to India. The current border dispute has no wider strategic ramifications beyond China’s need to protect its military control and access Tibet, Xinjiang, and the CPEC. In India’s case, Hindutva’s essentialist Islamophobia has meant the severe erosion of democracy in India, and a generally more hubristic and aggressive foreign policy. It is not Pakistan, but China that is seen as the main strategic problem for India. It is China that restricts Indian dominance over Bhutan and Nepal, as well as an Indian expansion of influence over Bangladesh and Myanmar. India’s strategically crucial foreign policy decisions — like nuclearization and its alliance with the United States and the Quad — flow from this perception of China. The border issue is not seen as simply a local issue but as an enduring violation of India’s “territorial unity and integrity,” which for the the right-wing nationalist party, Sangh, constitutes the Congress party’s betrayal, and must never again be repeated. It is bad enough that Jammu and Kashmir were partitioned by an inconclusive war with Pakistan. It is in this broader background of historically felt humiliation and a greater Hindutva assertiveness that one must trace the measures that pushed China to up the ante on the border. In 2014, Modi fast-tracked the building of the all-weather Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO or DBO) road that runs parallel to the LAC for 255 kilometers, ending very near to an Indian military base — also the site of the world’s highest-altitude airstrip. Though completed in 2019, adverse weather and ground conditions caused damage requiring repair as well as the building of bridges, while new branch roads — passing through spurs that jut out behind Chinese defence lines — are now being constructed, and are due to be completed by the end of 2020. Thus India is carrying out military-related infrastructural developments that give it direct access to a section of the Tibet-Xinjiang highway, as well as enabling it to oversee the Gilgit-Baltistan region through which the CPEC passes. Since such preparations have been going on for some time, on its own it would not have been enough to ignite the border clash. Clearly other developments in and around the Modi government have set newer and more strident alarm bells ringing, prompting the Chinese to behave as they have. These can simply be listed. 1. A much deeper military alliance between India and the United States has been formalized in agreements such as 1) LEMOA (Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement), which concluded in August 2016 and became operational a few months ago, 2) COMCASA (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement), signed in September 2018 to allow much closer sharing of information and the transfer of advanced communications technology, and the forthcoming 3) BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation). 2. The Quad’s implicit strategy to contain China. India under Modi has deepened the strategic ties with Japan, and is working on an Acquisitions and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) to allow logistics support at shared military bases. A similar agreement was signed between Indian and Australia earlier this month. 3. The August 5, 2019, annulment of Jammu and Kashmir autonomy and the bifurcation of this former province into two Union Territories (UTs) rules out any future compromise with Pakistan, thereby making it a permanent This means a hardening of foreign policy more broadly, which sends a message to China as well. This was heightened in August last year, when the government’s de facto Number Two, the Home Minister Amit Shah, spoke in Parliament about “taking back” Aksai Chin and all of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including Gilgit-Baltistan and areas leased and ceded by Islamabad to China. The latest maps (since the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir) showing Aksai Chin as part of India are nothing new, but given the change in context, it has been read by Beijing as signalling a more belligerent intent. 4. In September last year, a well-known public commentator and observer of political-military affairs, Lt General (Ret.) Harcharanjit Singh Panag, declared that India has carried out a “strategic policy shift” which will “force Beijing to open a second front anywhere along LAC.” Others such as Phunchok Stobdan, ex-diplomat and currently senior fellow at the government-supported Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), has talked of India’s “new forward policy.” 5. More significantly, Seshadri Chari, former editor of the RSS magazine, Organiser, and former head of the Foreign Affairs Cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is currently serving on the National Executive Committee of that party. Since before the latest skirmish, he has been calling for a revision of India’s acceptance of the One China policy. Accordingly, he calls for a more critical attitude toward China, including in regard to CPEC, Tibet (including giving the Dalai Lama India’s highest civilian award), the Bharat Ratna, and Taiwan. In a clear departure from the diplomatic past, two BJP MPs “virtually attended” the swearing-in ceremony of Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen on May 20, 2020, and sent their congratulations. This was strongly objected to by Beijing. Current Responses and the Future There is a widely held view in India that strengthening the country’s position in regard to China will require some show of military force. There are points along the LAC where India can give a “bloody nose” to the Chinese, though China could similarly retaliate at other points where it is better positioned. Such tit for tat, say others, carries the threat of escalation that is best avoided, and India’s desire to show its “resoluteness” must be expressed in some other way. What has confused matters greatly is the latest broadcast by Modi on June 19 in which, even as he has hailed the Indian soldiers, he insisted that there had been no transgression into Indian territory, let alone any takeover. Modi’s need to maintain his image as the strong leader means he also needs to control the narrative as much as possible, so opacity comes naturally to him. The silver lining is that this denial of any intrusion — or successful intrusion — could mean that the government will not want to escalate matters militarily, and that for some time at least, a degree of tranquillity on the border will be restored. But there is no certainty in this. In such situations, even if the high commands don’t want it, unanticipated flare-ups can happen because of uncontrollable local circumstances. Can there be an enduring settlement of the border question? For that there would have to be some give-and-take, which is why the rhetoric that even the mainstream left parties indulge in these days about defending territorial “unity and integrity” only guarantees that there will be no justice for Kashmiris, who want the right of self-determination and no resolution of the border issue with China. A few sane voices have argued for this territorial compromise, pointing to the 1960 Chou Enlai offer of trading Aksai Chin in the West for Chinese acceptance of the McMahon Line in the East. This offer was again made in the late ’80s when the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress was in power. Had that have happened, things would have turned out very differently, for unlike the Sino-Vietnamese relationship, here there is no such thousand-year history of enmity. It further bears mentioning that China, which shares a border with fourteen countries, has resolved its land-border disputes with all but India. Of India’s six land neighbors, disputes remain with five of them — excluding only Bhutan. The very nature of India’s national movement for independence, which did not seek the forcible overthrow of colonial rulers but a transfer of power, meant that the country would adopt the “forward defence” policies of Britain, which had imposed borders during Empire. In turn, this has led to Indian intransigence on several fronts, including the Sino-Indian border, the Jammu and Kashmir imbroglio, and the country’s ugly paternalism (at best) in its attitude and policies towards the Himalayan crest kingdoms of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan. Nonalignment, formally adopted in 1961, was a pragmatic foreign-policy perspective that cannot and should not be allowed to hide Indian hypocrisies and crimes. China’s “national communism” (more the first term than the second) has its own share of crimes, however, not least its takeover of Tibet, its alignments with the United States and Pol Pot against Vietnam, its opposition to Cuba and to progressive national-liberation movements in Portuguese Africa, and to socialist struggles in Latin America more generally. More recent examples include its policy in regard to Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Xinjiang. Nevertheless, India’s foreign policy deserves much blame for the decaying relations between the two countries. The 1962 war was meant to be a very limited one to secure what China felt was its due. This is why it unilaterally retreated from its most advanced positions achieved and on its own released all Indian prisoners. In 1965 it gave verbal support but nothing else to Pakistan. In 1971, when Pakistan was being dismembered, again no second front (despite Henry Kissinger’s pleading during his secret trip to Beijing) was opened up and only verbal support provided. After the end of the Cold War, significant advances were made between the two Asian powers — hence the peace and tranquillity pacts. President Jiang Zemin first visited India then Pakistan in 1996, where to the shock of his hosts he declared Kashmir to be a bilateral issue. India’s nuclearization in 1998 was dubiously justified as a counterweight to China’s nuclear experiments, but the latter had nothing to do with Sino-Indian relations and everything to do with it the Sino-Soviet and Sino-US enmities of the time. It was before this, in the early nineties, that the Indian turn toward the United States established the decisive contours of world politics as it stands today. The Chinese no longer want to hold out the old Zhou Enlai offer. Instead, they see value in retaining political leverage from an unsettled border situation. On its part, an increasingly chauvinistic India has negligible interest in accepting such an offer were it now to be made. The India-Pakistan military face-off has rightly been seen as the most dangerous one in South Asia; and by comparison, the skirmish on the Indian-Chinese border is less threatening. But there is no hiding the fact that relations have taken a further turn for the worse, and even a temporary assuagement of border tensions will not alter this fact. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Achin Vanaik is a writer and social activist, a former professor at the University of Delhi and Delhi-based Fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam. He is the author of The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India and The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism. II/III. https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/opinion-how-do-we-read-galwan-valley-killings-by-the-chinese/354907 Opinion How Do We Read Galwan Valley Killings By The Chinese? China is using the same language it used against India while justifying its 1962 incursions into India. The 1962 attack was to insult Nehru while the 2020 attack is to discredit Narendra Modi, writes Vappala Balachandran. Vappala Balachandran17 June 2020 Also read 'Shantung' Was The Reason For China Turning Against The West One cannot but be surprised at our political, historical and strategic naivety in underestimating Chinese reaction in what they feel are siege situations against them. Any number of signals had come to reveal their anger against us well before the present border standoff which exploded on June 15. Yet, we ignored all of it, assessing that these were due to China’s internal power struggle or that it wanted to coerce us during the proposed WHO enquiry on the Coronavirus origins. Instead we were fed with visuals of certain incidents which we thought were due to our over-arching global influence, but which in Chinese mind, were provocations. The first incident was on May 24 when two prominent BJP parliamentarians attended the virtual swearing in ceremony of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on May 24, along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. China lodged a formal protest describing their attendance as efforts to undermine their national integrity. Also Read: Ladakh Flare-up Symptomatic Of Chinese Ambitions On India The second was on June 2 when US President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Narendra Modi to invite him for the G-7 Summit later this year. During their telephonic conversation, China border standoff was also discussed. Soon thereafter Russia suggested that without China’s presence, G-7 would be meaningless. China also ridiculed Trump’s attempts “to draw a small circle” against Beijing. The third incident was PM Modi’s virtual summit with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on June 4 to conclude a “comprehensive strategic partnership”. Scott Morrison is a red rag for China due to his alignment with Trump on Coronavirus origins. Morrison does not know how to overcome his own problem—Australian actor Karm Gilespie is facing death sentence in China on drug charges. There were many such incidents which India should have taken note of to prepare adequate border vigilance. We failed to do that. In one of my recent columns on the border stand-off, I had referred to a 1970 top secret CIA case study on the Chinese reaction to the then mighty Soviet Union on similar border problems. The study had revealed the Chinese habit of exacerbating border tensions when bilateral relations worsen, “Mao’s land claim was indeed part of the bitter political feud, and Mao’s main goal was to extract a political surrender, rather than small territorial concessions, as the price for a final settlement”. Also Read: It's No Ordinary India-China Standoff This Time. Tensions At LAC Won't Dissipate That Easily The paper also highlighted China’s double standards. The concept of “Line of Actual Control” which they had insisted on India was not demanded from the Soviets. “In dealing with the Soviets the Chinese have maintained a convenient silence on the ploy they used against the Indians”. It also assessed that these border claims were moves to provide Mao a political victory. Their tactics of “pushing and shoving” on the Ussuri and Amur River basin were intended to humiliate Soviet Union. Finally, this resulted in the 1969 skirmish and the brutal deaths of 59 Soviet soldiers which unnerved Soviet Union. The paper also said that Mao was prepared to “accept more punishment for his forces than they thought he would” and he was “prepared to live with a tense border situation indefinitely”. Yet China would wait patiently for solving border problems when bilateral relations improve. In 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev made a conciliatory speech at Vladivostok which was received well by Deng Xiaoping who set aside “intractable issues” to be solved by “future generations”. The final settlement signed on June 2, 2005 was beneficial to China as Russia parted with the upstream end of Bear Island to China, thereby restoring Fuyuan Channel to it as its inland waterway. Also Read: A Catch-22 Situation For China: Dragon Didn't Expect A Stare Back And Now It's Clueless Chinese assertiveness and arrogance increased with simultaneous border agreements with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which had inherited some of the border issues after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991. All of them were enticed with liberal financial aid although in the long run they are the losers by accepting the leasing of large tracts of land to Chinese farmers who are building enclaves within these countries. Already local agitations have erupted. In 1971 and 1972, China considered India as Soviet Union’s surrogate as the transcripts of Zhou-Enlai-Kissinger and Zhou-Enlai-Nixon talks would indicate. He blamed Nehru for claiming “their” Aksai-Chin plateau from 1956 onwards under Nikita Khrushchev’s instigation. In 1972, Zhou included Indira Gandhi among China’s adversaries for threatening Pakistan. China’s opinion about India improved after Rajiv Gandhi’s epoch making visit in 1988 although it came after the 1987 Sumdorong Chu Valley standoff. For about 10 years, things were normal till May 13, 1998 when The New York Times published the leaked letter of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to President Bill Clinton blaming China for our nuclear tests during the same year. That re-kindled China’s suspicion that India was gravitating towards the US to encircle it. The same fears were confirmed since 2014 with our strategic relations with America were raised to a higher level by Prime Minister Modi. A number of incidents had confirmed their fears. On June 3, 2019, Open Democracy, a UK-based political website published a piece titled “India and America collude to disrupt China-Pakistan Economic Corridor”. It contained sensational allegations that the US was out to unsettle Pakistan’s Balochistan, the heart of CPEC, with India’s help. It alleged that RAW via its proxies had ‘propagated’ numerous murders of Chinese engineers in Balochistan. Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), supported by India, had attacked Chinese consulate in Karachi in November 2018. Also Read | How Posturing, Transgressions Along LAC Impact India-China Relations On February 6, 2020 the Lok Sabha was informed that the Government had conveyed its concerns to the Chinese on the “so-called illegal China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)” which passed through parts of the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh which are under illegal occupation of Pakistan. It had also asked them to cease such activities. On November 2, 2019, New Delhi released new maps of India showing the Union territories of Jammu & Kashmir consequent to the abrogation of Article 370 on August5, 2019. The new map did not take into consideration the disputed Aksai Chin and showed it as part of Ladakh, leading to a protest by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman who said “The Indian Government officially announced the establishment of so called Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh Union territories which included some of China’s territory into its administrative jurisdiction”. They claimed that this violated border accords signed by India. That this new map was strongly objected to at higher levels in the Chinese leadership was not known publicly in India. This was known only on June 12 this year when a national daily released a report by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) linking the present LoC tension to the new map. According to the article, China, for the first time, criticised the new map which “posed a challenge to the sovereignty of Pakistan and China”. The report was distributed by the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad. It said that the new map “forced China into the Kashmir dispute, stimulated China and Pakistan to take counter actions on the Kashmir issue, and dramatically increased the difficulty in resolving the border issue between China and India”. Also Read: India Must Make No Compromise With China On LAC The report also revealed that the Chinese Foreign Minister had voiced “his strong opposition” to External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar during his visit last year following the abrogation of Article 370. The week before the August visit, Home Minister Amit Shah had spoken in Parliament about taking back Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Aksai Chin. The most important remark to be noted in the CICIR report is that India’s ‘double confidence’ behind the change of maps is due to its 2019 election victory and that the US and some other Western countries ‘puffed India up from an ideological point of view’ to hedge ‘against China’”. Foreign Minister Jaishankar, with his vast experience of Chinese leadership, should have anticipated neighbouring country’s reaction on the ground at a time of their choosing. Did he catalyze our better border vigilance? After the violent face-off between Indian and Chinese troops in Galwan Valley, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi seized the early propaganda advantage by accusing India of “violating the consensus of the two sides by illegally crossing the border twice and carrying out provocative attacks on Chinese soldiers, resulting in serious physical clashes”. Compared to it, India’s reaction, especially by the External Affairs Ministry, was feeble, confused, and delayed. We were not even able to issue a statement to the distraught public giving details. Even the casualty figures could not be confirmed till June 16, 10 pm. Even now the number is tentative. There was not even unanimity on whether the incident was within the buffer zone or in India’s territory. Why then did our spokespersons repeat claims that the Chinese did not occupy our territory? Also Read: 3348 km Of Boundary To Share, Why India And China Can Never Be At Peace This shows China is using the same language it used against India while justifying its 1962 incursions into India. In 1972 Zhou en Lai had accused Nehru of being a surrogate of Nikita Khrushchev during his talks with President Richard Nixon at Beijing. The same charge is now leveled against Modi. The 1962 attack was to insult Nehru while the 2020 attack is to discredit Narendra Modi. (The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat. Views expressed are personal) III. https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/galwan-stand-off-nationalism-can-lead-to-dangerous-consequences-1.72188019?fbclid=IwAR0oI_z9MoNx19EbHdNrqz8UIVwOWzksUIUCl3PbPQoQby3mziX96qcaWR0 Galwan stand-off: Nationalism can lead to dangerous consequences Modi’s hopes in China have slowly vaporised, just as it did in the case of Pandit Nehru Published: June 22, 2020 23:38 C.P. Surendran, Special to Gulf News Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an all party meeting to discuss the situation along the India-China border via video conferencing, in New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an all party meeting to discuss the situation along the India-China border via video conferencing, in New Delhi Image Credit: PTI Photos: Gulf News readers share pictures of stunning sunrise and sunset in the UAE After winning independence from the British in 1947, Indian nationalism has always found an unfailing vehicle in cricket, especially when India plays cricket with Pakistan. If Imran Khan hit a six or took a wicket, it would be always a lesser six and a lesser wicket than, say, Sachin Tendulkar’s (Sachin played against Imran when he was still in his teens). The difference between the two sixes is nationalism. It adds more runs to the same stroke. But outside sports, nationalism could prove to be injurious to health. Last week, following a confrontation between, China and India, at and around the rather fluid Line of Actual Control (LAC) that crosses the Galwan Valley — the Galwan River flows from the higher reaches of Aksai Chin in the Himalayas down to Ladakh — 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a confrontation with China. In the weeks and even months building up to this confrontation, Indian media was flexing muscles and taunting China. If the 9 O’ clock news was any indication, Modi’s India was not only prepared for war up in the freezing northern border heights, but actually did not mind having one, never mind the coronavirus. - The clubbing, a rather primitive way of settling scores in modern military times, is because reportedly in some patrolling areas, soldiers from either country are not supposed to carry guns; but presumably, sticks or maces or stones are allowed. So, then, what would be the point? Never mind. Indian reports at first said that in a historic effort to take back its territory from China, three of its soldiers were ‘martyred,’ and five Chinese soldiers were ‘slaughtered.’ MORE ON THE CRISIS India-China dispute: What is the significance of Galwan Valley? India and China must defuse border tension De-escalate and disengage, now the buzzwords in India-China standoff, experts say India, China troops clash at disputed border with ‘casualties on both sides’ Perspective of nationalism We will merely note in passing that the terms used solely depend on which nation is seen as aggressor from a perspective of nationalism. And we must note, too, how the subjective reality of the issue changes with each nation’s perception. In the weeks and even months building up to this confrontation, Indian media was flexing muscles and taunting China. If the 9 O’ clock news was any indication, Modi’s India was not only prepared for war up in the freezing northern border heights, but actually did not mind having one, never mind the coronavirus. Perhaps the patriotic media were under the customary delusion induced by extreme nationalist fervour (as in the case of Germany in the 1930s) that a war economy — all sectors of the industry would be working at full capacity — was the way out of India’s woes, not to mention great TRP ratings. Flattering self-perception BJP leaders have been in the throes of a grand notion for some time now. That India is a nuclear power is central to this flattering self-perception. But so is China. Indeed, so is Pakistan. That makes this part of the universe one of the most sensitive in terms of humanity’s destructive potential, and, indeed, argues against an excessive display of nationalism. In addition to India’s size and population, a factor contributing to its collective delusional state seems to be its military personnel strength, which is roughly around 347,000 compared to China’s 270,000. But in every other department, jets, helicopters, ships, tanks, armoured vehicles, China is far, far ahead. Indeed, China’s defence budget at $225 billion is nearly five times that of India’s at $55 billion. None of this seems to have an effect on India’s perception of reality. Jingoism flourishes. And often the psychosis of self-deception percolates from the top, unfortunately. India’s ever combative home minister, Amit Shah, for instance, said in Parliament in August 2019, as he abrogated article 370 giving special autonomy to Kashmir (and bifurcating Jammu and Kashmir into separate entities of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh) that Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Aksai Chin (under the control of China), as integral parts respectively of Kashmir and the Union Territory of Ladakh, and that he (Shah) would give his life to defend or take back what he considered was Indian land. Kashmir Ladakh Ladakh: The latest deadly clashes are among the most violent in the border area in at least half a century Image Credit: AFP Political pay off These border-lines and claims have a complicated and conflicting history since British times. Territorial claims, in any case, are not easy to resolve because they invariably come with a political pay off, and whole governments could be thrown off power. When Shah made that rousing speech, it was good to hear. But then it is always good to hear there are causes larger than one’s petty self. It gives one hope that one is not alone after all, affirming one’s faith in a collective cause. Except one is wrong. One still has to go out into the field and earn one’s bread. The wise thing under the circumstances would be to avoid further friction in the vexed border issues and focus on other, more pressing matters, of which there is no dearth, starting with the economy. Only, if you are riding the nationalist tiger, it is not easy to get off. In the wake of the Galwan Valley confrontation, therefore, the BJP will find the beast bounding under them even faster and hungrier. Soon after the Galwan incident, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that no Chinese transgression has happened. But if that was the case, how would one explain the death of 20 soldiers, and the release of 10 from Chinese custody? If he meant China has withdrawn post the battle, the credit would go to the enemy. India's overweening strength That India has not mentioned the number of Chinese casualties — if any — might be put down to a touch of diplomacy, but given its current state of relations with Pakistan, Nepal, and China, diplomacy appears not to be India’s overweening strength. Perhaps it is not entirely India’s fault. When Modi came to power for the first time in 2014, Xi Jinping was the first state guest. The photo ops then included a shared swing moment at Sabarmati in Gujarat, a state Modi had ruled as chief minister for over a decade. In October 2019, the two leaders had another summit in Mahabalipuram, in Tamil Nadu. In between, in 2018, Modi visited China twice, proof that he was courting closer ties and investments. But Modi’s hopes in China have slowly vaporised, just as it did in the case of Pandit Nehru (who was shattered by the Chinese invasion in 1962, when the People’s Liberation Army came up to the Brahmaputra River, and returned, choosing not to enter Calcutta), a man seen generally by the BJP as the cause of many of India’s developmental ills. How odd that in China, Modi shares his sense of betrayal with one of his arch enemies. That is a very good reason why India should be nobody’s enemy. — C. P. Surendran is a senior journalist based in India. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/greenyouth/CACEsOZhhOHTMYithZ52MpfBP9xE1fuV-CQssBXqbCcYjeOraYg%40mail.gmail.com.
