New Delhi downplays Chinese provocations
The initial solidarity that one feels for our jawans, when watching a recently put out video of Indian soldiers purportedly physically removing Chinese troops squatting deep within Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh, is quickly replaced by an overwhelming sense of helplessness, and then anger. For, as these brave men fight to uphold India's territorial integrity, an inept Government at the Centre does not even care to take a stand on the matter, forget about standing its ground. And so it is that the Ministry of External Affairs has dubbed the latest instance of Chinese incursion into Indian territory a “non-event”. Galling as it is, such a response from the feckless Congress-led UPA regime is only to be expected. Even during the incursion into Depsang valley in April, which led to a protracted 20-day-long stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops, New Delhi was reluctant to put its foot down even as Beijing walked all over us. A ‘diplomatic solution' was supposedly scripted, but the fact is that the Chinese backed out only after the Indian Army took down its observation tower in Chumar, as the former had demanded.
In the months since then, there have been several such intrusions, or ‘incidents', as the Government prefers to call them, across the line of Actual Control. At least half-a-dozen of them have been reported in the Chumar sector alone; most recently, the Chumar post was also vandalised by Chinese troops. In Northern ladakh, PlA troops have repeatedly prevented Indian soldiers from patrolling what is considered to be the Indian side of the border. In the last week of July, Patrol Tiranga moved from the Trade Junction area towards two posts in the higher reaches of the line of Actual Control, but was stopped by the PlA. In fact, out of 21 such patrols that have been launched by Indian troops in recent months, only two could be completed. The ‘incident' in Arunachal Pradesh, wherein PlA troops occupied the remote Plamplam post near the administrative centre at Chaglagam for at least three days, from August 11 to August 13, must be viewed against this backdrop of constant provocation. It is nobody's case that it be treated at par with the incursion in April. As both the Government and the Army have pointed out, in areas as remote and almost uninhabited as Plamplam, it is common for patrol parties travelling for several days at a stretch to pitch overnight tents.
Having said that, there can be no justification for the manner in which the Government has bent over backwards to cover for the Chinese. It has even justified their actions by parroting Beijing's line on how the lAC is patrolled according to individual ‘perceptions' — which it now seems may be as wide as 20km to 30km even. The basic problem here is that the Centre has no strategy for responding to such provocations. China knows this and is, therefore, constantly pushing the limits to see how far it can go. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should revisit the border incursion of 1987 in Arunachal Pradesh's Sumdorong Chu valley and learn how the Government of the day gave the military a free hand, so that our jawans successfully stared down the enemy. He must also listen to experts who see a clear and dangerous pattern in Beijing’s recent provocations.