India will not be beaten into submission by the Chinese reminder of 1962
The Chinese will be well advised to stop threatening India by invoking their win in the 1962 war, and concentrate on efforts to de-escalate the situation arising out of the stand-off at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. There is no comparison between the situation which prevailed then and now. Besides, the reasons for India's defeat in 1962 are fairly well known and those conditions do not exist. India's military might today is very different from what it was then. Additionally, the global geo-strategic map has been dramatically re-drawn in the last five decades, with India, like China, emerging as a key player. In many parts of the world, China is viewed as an aggressor — though Beijing is frantically trying to contain this perception through its economic thrusts worldwide. The Chinese military and foreign establishments must take care to not vitiate the environment further by putting out offensive statements, more so since New Delhi and Beijing have been working together on a host of issues such as climate change and the need to give the due to many countries that have not received a fair deal from the international structures, including the United Nations, created in the aftermath of the Second World War. In any case, it would be naïve of China to expect that India would be beaten into submission by such sabre-rattling. The Chinese side has been apparently taken aback by Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat's firmness in handling the recent border confrontation, and advised him to learn “historical lessons”. But their ranting has not deterred the General one bit; he visited the Army formation headquarters in north Sikkim and took stock of the situation. This is as it should be.
By now, Beijing ought to have realised that it is dealing with a new India (in which its Ministers do not cravenly downplay Chinese incursions as a mere “acne” on the face). Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stepped up trade ties with China, warmly hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping to India, and was cordially welcomed when he visited that country. Things have been going in the right direction, and border skirmishes — and that too of an unarmed kind — should not become such flashpoints that Beijing stoops to recall 1962. Besides, the Modi Government is not short of resolve to respond to serious situations even as it seeks to normalise relations. The Prime Minister went out of his way to establish cordiality with Islamabad — first inviting his Pakistani counterpart to attend his oath-taking ceremony and later making a sudden visit to Pakistan to greet Nawaz Sharif on his birthday. And yet, the Modi regime unhesitatingly gave the nod for the surgical strikes. Since China is bent on teaching India historical lessons, it ought to take these historical developments into account. An armed conflict between China and India is no solution to the border dispute. Mechanisms, already in place to tackle the issue, should work overtime.