Costly inaction

Sir — India is having a tough time along its borders in containing two neighbours, whose sporadic incursions and intrusions into our territory have threatened to derail attempts at negotiations on peace between the countries.

If China insists on calling certain areas within India as part of its own, and staging military manoeuvres there with an impudence that is offensive, Pakistan’s Army  deployed at the frontier has developed a trigger-itch habit. The indiscriminate firing carried out along the line of Control has become worrisome. 

The latest in a series of unprovoked firing, where the Pakistani Rangers rained mortars and heavy machine gunfire on a few Indian posts and villages in Jammu and Samba regions, is the biggest ceasefire violation along the border in a decade. New Delhi cannot turn a blind eye to such hostile incidents on the country’s frontline, which is not only taking a toll on defence personnel but also resulting in civilian casualties.

Maintaining a calculated silence on the aggressive activities of China and Pakistan on our borders would be a benign way to react, which the enemy camps would interpret as a weakness on our part. That will encourage them to be more mischievous.