Daulat Beg Oldi

Behind the Modi Government’s Doublespeak on Ladakh, a Refusal to Acknowledge Reality

The Chinese know where they are and what they did. The government of India and the Army, too, are, hopefully, wiser after the event. The only ones who do not yet clearly know what transpired are the people of India.

Reading the Ministry of Defence press release following the failed 13th round of talks between Indian and Chinese senior commanders, one may wonder what the Sino-Indian dispute in eastern Ladakh is all about.

Look at these sentences:

1. “The Indian side pointed out that the situation along the LAC had been caused by unilateral attempts of [the] Chinese side to alter the status quo and in violation of the bilateral agreements…

2. It was therefore necessary that the Chinese side take appropriate steps in the remaining areas so as to restore peace and tranquillity along the LAC in the Western Sector….

3. The Indian side emphasised such resolution of the remaining areas would facilitate progress in the bilateral relations….

4. The Indian side therefore made constructive suggestions for resolving the remaining areas but the Chinese side was not agreeable and also could not provide any forward-looking proposals….” (Emphasis added all through)

From the above, one would not learn that the PLA had, in the summer of 2020, surprised the Indian Army all along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh and occupied positions on or across the LAC which have denied the Indian forces access to large chunks of territory they had earlier patrolled.

After all, if the Chinese only made unilateral “attempts” to alter the status quo, in simple English it means that they did not actually succeed. But if those Chinese “attempts” did not succeed, what does it mean to talk of “appropriate steps” that the PLA needs to take? What is the issue of “resolution of remaining areas” or, for that matter, the “constructive suggestions” that the Indians side made which the Chinese have rejected as “unreasonable and unrealistic”?

Surely the only “constructive suggestion” that can be offered is for the Chinese to pull back. But then why not say so? Why this obfuscation ?

Some claim that this is for diplomatic reasons of not wanting to name and shame the Chinese, so that they can be persuaded to pull back. Others declare that governments have to keep issues relating to the border confidential.

But let’s get this in the right order: The Chinese know where they are, and the parts of the LAC they have crossed, and so, of course, does the Indian government. So, the only people from whom the information is being kept are the people of the country. As for being sensitive to Chinese concerns, well good luck to that policy.

From the outset, the government’s stand on recent developments in eastern Ladakh have been bizarre and downright mendacious. It originated at the very top when Prime Minister Modi declared on June 19, 2020 – four days after the deadly events in the Galwan Valley that took the lives of 20 Indian jawans and led to some Indian soldiers being taken prisoner by the Chinese – that “neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our post captured.”

In fact, some unconfirmed social media posts doing the rounds this week suggest things may have been worse for India in the Galwan incident than has been so far acknowledged

As Modi’s remarks led to a controversy, the government quickly clarified that his statement related to the immediate situation in Galwan, not to what may have transpired earlier or for that matter elsewhere in Ladakh.

The statement did note that “that this Government will not allow any unilateral change of the LAC”, yet, it completely ignored the wider issue of the PLA’s sudden ingresses and actions that denied Indian forces the right to patrol parts of the LAC that both sides had hitherto patrolled. There were five such areas, north to south: the Depsang plains, Galwan, Kugrang river valley, north bank of Pangong Tso and Charding Nala near Demchok.

China’s 1960 claim line in Ladakh is marked in yellow, the LAC at Pangong Tso in in pink. As can be seen, Thakung, the site of the latest standoff, is inside the LAC but within the 1960 Chinese claim line. Map: The Wire

Needless to say, similar prevarication featured in the first authoritative statement on the developments in eastern Ladakh which came in parliament from Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in September 2020. He, too, fudged the issues. He said that in early May “the Chinese side had taken action to hinder the normal, traditional patrolling pattern of our troops in the Galwan Valley area.” An effort was made to address the issue through local commanders, but by mid-May, the Chinese began “several attempts to transgress” the LAC in other areas like Kongka La, Gogra and the north bank of Pangong Tso.”

So, “attempts” had been made and, presumably they were not successful. He conveniently ignored the important areas in Depsang, Kugrang river Valley or the Charding Nala area, where the Chinese remain deployed and are the subject of the current senior officers’ talks.

By far the most serious Chinese ingress has been in the Depsang area (see map below). The Chinese have created a blockade at Y Junction as a result of which Indian soldiers who routinely patrolled the areas marked by Patrolling Points (PP) 10, 11, 11a, 12 and 13 have been prevented from doing their task. Reports suggest similar restrictions to the north of this area as well.

Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) is India’s northernmost post, short of the Karakoram Pass. It is also the terminus of the Darbuk Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi (DS-DBO) road. As can be seen from the map, Indian forces have been denied access to a huge area which provided defence to the road. Conversely, the Chinese presence near the road threatens Indian deployments in DBO.

Map: Manoj Joshi

Most recently this fudge is evident in External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s speech at the India Today Conclave in early October 2021.He said the Indian side still had no clear idea of the Chinese motives. “If attempts are being made to unilaterally change the LAC status quo and large forces are brought to the border in contravention of written agreements, then obviously the relationship will be impacted.” He said that while there had been progress in reversing the situation, “the larger problem remains which is a very sizeable Chinese force close to, if not at, the LAC.”

Nowhere is there an acknowledgement that what happened was not mere “attempts” to change the LAC status. Like it or not, the Chinese side had changed it by force and the action was not “close to the LAC” but in some instances across it. And that is what the talks with China, including his own repeated discussions with his counterpart Wang Yi were all about.

The saddest part of all this is that the Army brass, too, is going along with the government. No doubt, this is aimed at hiding their own culpability in lowering their guard last year. But take, for example Lt Gen Y.K. Joshi, the northern army commander’s assertion that the situation in Depsang, by far the most serious, is a “legacy issue”, meaning it had unfolded before the 2020 events. Recall here that the Chinese have established a blockade at a key point that is preventing Indian patrols from surveilling several hundred square kilometres of territory.

The response to Joshi’s claim came from Lt Gen (retd) R.K. Sharma. Writing for the pro-government Vivekanand Foundation of India, he rejected this “legacy issue” argument, noting that 8-10 patrols a year had visited the area between 2013-2019. Sources say that the last Indian set of Indian patrols actually took place in February 2020.

The Chinese are not misled by all this. They know where they are and what they did. The government of India and the Army, too, are, hopefully, wiser after the event. The only ones who do not yet clearly know what transpired are the people of India who have been treated to this double-speak where the bravery of soldiers is praised to the skies even as those who should have been more vigilant get away scot free. This is similar to the Kargil incursion where again, soldiers paid the price, a great victory was declared, while nobody was held accountable for the intelligence failure.

Fortunately, at least in the case of eastern Ladakh, a fictitious narrative of victory has not been fabricated, at least as of now, though Modi’s June 19, 2020 statement comes close to it.

The government seems to have embarked on a peculiar course of information denial and manipulation with regard to events in eastern Ladakh. This, despite the sorry history of the tragic consequences of a similar policy followed by the Nehru government in the 1950s. Open societies have long known of the value of an informed citizenry. They do not believe that “bad” news is “anti-national”. On the contrary accepting setbacks is the best and perhaps only way to set things right.

The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

A Tragedy has Been Averted but the Danger for India and China Persists

Going forward, it is essential that each side understand its opponent.

A tragedy has been averted: Chinese troops that had entered the disputed areas that lie between the Indian and Chinese definitions of the Line of Actual Control, have pulled back from three of them. Indian troops have done the same.

But the military build-up in their base areas outside the intermediate “grey” zone continues.

If the talks between Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi do not yield fruit, it is certain to increase. The clouds of war have therefore only lifted: they have yet to disperse.

Galwan and Dhola – The similarity between 2020 and 1962

To appreciate how close we came to a war last month, we only need to remind ourselves of how the 1962 war began. Officially, it began when the Chinese attacked Dhola post, not far from Tawang, in the eastern Himalayas on October 20, and ended with a China-declared unilateral truce on November 21. In reality, it began 10 days earlier and, like the conflict in the Galwan valley on June 15, it too started over a cartographic dispute.

Also read: It Is Time to Accept How Badly India Misread Chinese Intentions in 1962 – and 2020

How this dispute arose is described in detail in the still proscribed Henderson-Brooks Report of 1963, but can now be downloaded from the internet. In August 1962, Eastern Command informed Delhi that one of its patrols had reported that the tri-junction of Bhutan, India and Tibet marked on the McMahon line did not fall on the Himalayan watershed, as McMahon had intended it to do, but four miles south of it .

McMahon Line, Original Map of the North-East Frontier.

The Ministry of External Affairs took this up with the Chinese government, presumably suggesting a rectification, but Beijing did not agree. So in September, Delhi decided to correct it on its own, established the Dhola post at a point between the two locations, and manned it with a platoon of soldiers. This post was immediately surrounded by 600 Chinese soldiers with the obvious intention of starving the defenders out.

A stalemate ensued during which both sides sent more troops to the area. The first skirmish took place in early October and went the way of India. On October 10, therefore, Delhi asked the army to ‘evict the Chinese from the Thagla ridge’. What followed is history and need not detain us here.

Also read: Why It Is Imperative That Indians Come to Know What Happened in 1962

The situation that developed at Patrol Point 14 in the Galwan valley on June 15 is similar to the one that had developed at the Dhola post 58 years earlier. On June 15, it was only the stringent protocols designed to prevent armed conflict, put in place after the 1993 Agreement on Peace and Tranquility in the Border region, that prevented the savage hand-to-hand fighting that took place from tuning into a bloodbath. Had those protocols not been in place, India and China may well have been in the middle of another fratricidal war today.

Who needs another war?

Neither country wants, needs, or indeed can afford, a war in the Himalayas now. So as talks at the diplomatic level begin, it has become imperative for civil society in both countries to understand what brought us to the brink of war and how we can get back to a durable and mutually beneficial peace.

More specifically, we need to understand why the Chinese chose to occupy these particular stretches of the LAC; why the PLA stayed broadly within the limits of China’s definition of the LAC and, having gone so far, why it has now agreed to move back from three of them and thin down its presence in the other two.

Depsang Plains in Ladakh. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0

The topography of the region answers the first question. The Depsang plains are the closest point on the Chinese LAC to Daulat Beg Oldi. DBO is situated on a finger of land west of the Karakoram range, at only 13 kilometres from the Karakoram Pass, and a little more than 200 kms from the Khunjerab pass through which the Karakoram highway, which links China to Pakistan now, passes.

Till only two years ago, for all but a few months in summer, Daulat Beg Oldi was linked to the rest of Ladakh only by air. But following the completion of a 450-metre bridge across the Shyok river, it is now linked by an all-weather road. DBO also has an airfield now that can take Antonov and C-130 Hercules cargo planes. Finally, it is barely 120 kilometres – six minutes in a modern fighter plane – from G219, China’s strategic link road between Xinxiang and Tibet.

Pangong lake, at the other end of the road, is 134 kms long and G219 skirts its eastern shore just as the road to DBO skirts its western edge. It therefore provides a swift route for moving large numbers of troops, artillery and armour from deep inside Tibet to places from which they can cut off the road to DBO within hours. Occupying the heights above finger 4, can give the PLA the capacity to interdict any Indian counter-attack on Chinese landing craft in the lake. A similar dominating position in the heights above the Galwan valley can give the PLA a second choke point from which to target the road from Ladakh to DBO.

Daulat Beg Oldi shown in the northernmost part of Ladakh (1988 CIA map).
Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

These are strategic deployments of the kind usually made in anticipation of war. So why, after having made them, did China take care to remain within its broad definition of the LAC and agree to talks? The only rational explanation is that its purpose was not to annex the land but to force the Modi government into a dialogue to clear the misgivings and distrust that its abrupt change of foreign policy in 2014 had sown in Beijing’s mind.

This was underlined by China’s ambassador to India, Sun Weidong, who has stated repeatedly since the confrontation began that China’s goal is to forge a strategic partnership, not rivalry with India. It was also echoed by the foreign office’s spokesperson in Beijing: “The Indian side should not have (sic) strategic miscalculation on China. We hope it will work with China to uphold the overall picture of our bilateral relations.”

But what does China mean by ‘strategic miscalculation’ and ‘strategic partnership’? In the second part of this article, we will examine this crucial dimension of the current crisis in the bilateral relationship against the backdrop of wider region and global security dynamics.

Victor Gao was the English language interpreter for Chairman Deng Xiaoping, from 1984 to 1988. (In this photo he is seen interpreting for Chairman Deng and US Vice President Walter Mondale in Beijing in 1984.) He is currently chair professor, Soochow University and vice president, Centre for China and Globalisation. The CCG is ranked 94th among the world’s top think tanks.

Prem Shankar Jha is a columnist for The Wire, former media adviser to V.P. Singh when he was prime minister and former Editor of the Hindustan Times. He is the author of Managed Chaos: The Fragility of the Chinese Miracle (2009) and Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger: Can China and India dominate the West ( 2010).

Note: In an earlier version of this article, a zero was dropped while describing the distance from the Khunjerab Pass to Daulat Beg Oldi. The sentence should have read “little more than 200 km” and not “little more than 20 km”.

Debate: Galwan Is a Chapter in China’s Tireless Pursuit of ‘Lost’ Territory

Since the beginning of this decade, there is little in China’s approach towards its territorial disputes to suggest that China has a limited, rather than a maximalist, approach to recovering what it considers to be its lost territories.

Prem Shankar Jha’s piece in The Wire and the subsequent interview with Happymon Jacob on the Galwan standoff displayed a nuanced understanding of the India-China border issue but a troubling reading of China’s approach to territorial disputes.

Jha’s views do have the increasingly elusive quality of rising above party politics to define India’s national interest.

With regard to the Ladakh crisis he unequivocally identifies not rushing into war with China as India’s primary interest. Given that jingoism has hijacked policy and popular narratives, this suggestion is not misplaced.

However, the flaw in Jha’s perception of the situation is that he believes that:

(a) China has limited interests in Ladakh,
(b) it is India’s sole responsibility to create conditions for peace with China, and
(c) China’s asymmetric power leaves India with little military or diplomatic manoeuvrability in the present crisis.

While the last conclusion might be debatable, it leads to the wishful conclusion that once India recognises Chinese dominance as a fait accompli, then there is a real chance for a peaceful border in Ladakh. He advocates that India should appreciate China’s concerns in Ladakh vis-a-vis protection of the CPEC corridor that runs very close to rapidly developing Indian military infrastructure in the region.

Also read: Stalled China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Projects will be Revived

For China, CPEC opens up a dependable alternate route to gulf oil supplies incase the US blockades the China’s eastern seaboard in the South China Sea. Jha argues that if India gets comfortable with the CPEC running through the disputed territory and doesn’t harden its position on the ground especially in Daulat Beg Oldi, and then the border dispute in the eastern Ladakh will actually lose its significance for China.

Jha’s assumptions of Chinese strategy are informed by an outdated understanding of Chinese foreign policy behaviour between 1980-2000 that prioritised stability as a primary objective in its relations with its neighbours and major powers.

Since the beginning of this decade, there is, however, little in China’s approach towards its territorial disputes to suggest that China has a limited, rather than a maximalist approach to recovering what it considers to be its lost territories. Chinese approach in the South China Sea (SCS) is instructive in this regard.

In the SCS, China has moved in a span of 30 years from a declared policy of ‘shelving territorial disputes for joint development of marine resources’ to now claiming the entire SCS as its own sovereign territory, including the corresponding airspace. The trajectory of this approach is similar to India-China relations since the 1990s.

Also read: Reports on Chinese Behaviour Across LAC Are Exaggerated, Untrue: Lt Gen Narasimhan

Through the 1990s, China focused on economic growth, consistently followed a policy of ‘good neighbourliness’ putting territorial disputes on the back-burner. In the SCS, this translated to a low-intensity low-cost creeping occupation of marine features while increasing economic cooperation ASEAN nations.

In 2002, China and ASEAN signed the first SCS Code of Conduct (CoC) as non-binding agreement to manage maritime and territorial conflicts in the region. However, till today the CoC has not been scaled up to a binding agreement or produced a multi-lateral agreement on the geographical extent of territorial claims. Meanwhile, Chinese militarisation of the SCS has progressed apace and its territorial claims have expanded to include the entire sea.

Similarly, in the 1990s India and China concluded landmark agreements of 1993 and 1996 facilitated by the Chinese policy of avoiding conflict with neighbours. Since 1993, the major gain of the bilateral negotiations with China has been the stability on the border and an exponentially improved but skewed economic relationship.

However, like in SCS, the long interlude of stability did not build trust to enable political negotiations on competing territorial claims. Despite several rounds of Special Representative talks and the working groups, India and China have not yet exchanged maps of the western and eastern sectors of the disputed border.

Now, it would seem that China has got a jump on India by pushing its claims in Galwan at the cost of the stability maintained on the border through carefully crafted CBMs.

Why has China risked decades of stable border management?

Since the beginning of this decade, China’s approach towards territorial disputes has undergone a shift. China now seeks to alter the status quo to force a solution in China’s favour. This irredentism arises, not from specific calculations of particular disputes, but from a shift from the Dengist principle of ‘bide your time and hide your capabilities’ to the present assertive policy of ‘achieving national greatness’.

Since the mid-2000, veteran foreign policy officials like Ambassador Wu Jianmin associated with the Dengist policy of building partnerships with neighbouring countries were seen in China as obstructing China’s rise. China now viewed itself not as rising but as returning power, i.e., returning to claim its rightful place at the top of the regional and global hierarchy.

This shift is initially perceptible in Hu Jintao’s 2004 ‘New Historic Missions of the PLA’ that envisaged consolidating China’s threatened territories from a position of strength. Under Xi Jinping, both policy and public opinion is visibly in favour of a muscular approach with use of force in territorial disputes not just a legitimate but preferred option.

Here, China has all but abandoned its pursuit of the image of a responsible power that it sought till the last decade, except in defence of the global capitalist system. In this decade China has already altered the ground situation SCS, East China Sea and most recently in Hong Kong.

Also read: The Contentious International Waltz Over the South China Sea

In the SCS, since 2012, China has adopted highly visible incremental actions, often in the teeth of regional and US displeasure, to enforce its expanded claims. In 2012, China established Sansha city on Woody Island in the Paracel archipelago, claiming to nearly two million square kilometres of the SCS. Sansha, a brand new city of less than 2,000 people, is nearly 400 kms away from Hainan, China’s southernmost province.

Aerial view of Yongxing Island (Woody Island), the seat of Sansha. Photo: Paul Spijkers – http://www.airliners.net/photo/-/-/1527330/L, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51928254

China now patrols the stretch between Hainan and Sansha as its customs territory. Sansha hosts China’s Maritime Milita entrusted with enforcing Chinese territorial claims within its nine-dashed line. Earlier this year, China upgraded Sansha to a prefecture level city further entrenching its claims.

Similarly, in Mischief Reef, off the coast of Philippines, China has created artificial islands by dredging the sea floor. These islands now have an air strip capable of landing fighter jets, advanced radars and SAMs. It took China less than five years to create this capability.

The Google Maps pin, pointing to Mischief Reef.

China is now in a formidable position to defend its sea lanes of communication through Malacca Straits and deny freedom of navigation to other littoral countries as well as the US ships in the region.

The Chinese push into Doklam and Galwan is a part of the same access-denial strategy. Galwan may have local triggers of India’s increased military infrastructure in Ladakh but it is following a pre-determined playbook of aggressively staking claims on the ground, raising the costs of conflict to unacceptable levels for its neighbours, to force a solution in China’s favour.

Jha seems quite unconcerned with the Chinese asserting hegemony over the South China Sea and makes no noticeable link between the Chinese approach in SCS and in the Himalayas, except to flag China’s anxieties.

He argues that India must not see Chinese actions in Galwan as aggression but as a strong signal of China’s displeasure with India’s recent policies, including developing a strategic partnership with the US.

I would argue Galwan is not only a signalling exercise. China has changed the ground situation. If a diplomatic solution is not forthcoming, India will be forced to recalibrate either its political position on the LAC or undertake a costly military response to restore status quo ante.

Jha disagrees with the dominant view that PM’s Modi’s June 19 statement has weakened India’s territorial claims in Ladakh. He instead calls it an accurate depiction of the ground reality as there is no mutual agreement on the border and only contending claims lines in a ‘grey zone’.

Also read: Narendra Modi Didn’t Watch His Words on Chinese Intrusion So PMO ‘Censors’ Official Video

The Galwan incident, Jha asserts, took place in the disputed territory and not in Indian territory, therefore Modi’s statement that no one entered Indian territory is factually correct. This is a nuanced bit of sophistry, advancing a bad fact.

While the LAC is not mutually agreed upon, however that does not imply that there is no mutual operational understanding of where the LAC runs. If that were the case, the border management agreements of 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2013 would have been impossible to negotiate and implement. In fact one of the key component of these agreements is to resolve the competing claims of the LAC at specific points, which China has consistently refused to do.

Satellite view of the Galwan valley and Shyok river. Image: The Wire/Google Maps

With Galwan, China has unilaterally abandoned the political commitment to maintaining a stable border. While the border was unresolved, mutual faith in a stable border did make cooperation possible between India and China despite the increasing frequency of incursions/incidents.

For example, before the pandemic hit, the environment ministers of eight Himalayan nations, including India and China were scheduled to meet in Kathmandu to discuss a concerted approach to environmental governance of the Himalayas. That is clearly not a possibility anymore, till trust is restored on the heights.

Also read: Don’t Blame Modi for ‘No Intrusion’ Claim, Blame Him for Dramatic Shift in China Policy

Unfortunately, the most detrimental impact of this crisis will be on the fragile Himalayan ecology already reeling under militarisation on both sides of the border. Lamentably, Chinese actions have ensured that an Indian response hardening its defences all along the LAC, leading to further militarisation. Again, this is the same trajectory that we observe in the SCS, with Chinese dredging causing destabilisation of the seabed ecology followed by increased deployment and military activity by littoral nations.

Jha’s arguments are based on his long held view that the 1962 war was provoked by India’s ill-advised forward policy. He is right in suggesting that since the 1962 debacle, political and popular narratives of Chinese betrayal have clouded Indian perceptions often demonising Chinese actions across the board without much appreciation for context.

He fears that the June 15 Galwan incident should not become another chapter in this history leading to an unnecessary clash.

However, one must also not be clouded by expectation of pacifist/limited behaviour from China that is increasingly comfortable with deploying military force both internally and externally.

In the past 70 years, PRC has occupied Tibet and is now posing a major threat to choking off the water resources of South Asia through its dam projects. India is not merely defending a territory where ‘not a blade of grass grows’ but its ability to be a governing partner in the Himalayas.

Sonika Gupta is associate professor, IITM China Studies Centre.

Don’t Blame Modi for ‘No Intrusion’ Claim, Blame Him for Dramatic Shift in China Policy

The PM’s June 19 statement, while understandably unleashing nationalistic concerns, has opened another road to peace and security.

At the all-party meeting on Friday, June 19, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a closing statement that sent a jolt of electricity through listeners across the country. He said: “Na wahan koi hamare seema mein ghus aya hai; nahin koi ghusa hua hai; nahin hamari koi post kisi doosre ke qabze mein hai” .

Translated idiomatically, this means, “Neither did anyone cross our border and enter (Indian) territory; nor is anyone inside our territory; nor have any of our posts been captured by anyone else.”

The public reaction was so strong that the Prime Minister’s Office excised the first sentence from the video of Modi’s speech that it uploaded on its website. Its inexplicable failure to immediately reject China’s reiterated claim to the whole of the Galwan valley deepened the impression of haste, followed by indecision at the top.

The hyper-nationalist reaction in India to the Galwan incident is completely understandable.

Since India’s defeat in the 1962 war, successive Indian governments have stoked distrust and fear of the Chinese so assiduously and for so long that to even think of that country as anything but a relentlessly ambitious hegemonic power determined to encircle and politically strangle its only rival in Asia, has become something close to treason.

But on this occasion, Modi has refused to pander to this ingrained fear and, with extraordinary courage, spoke the literal, if unpalatable, truth.

The Indian public has been fed a diet of half truths about our relationship with China that have now become serious impediments to peace. Last week, he said exactly what was needed to set the record straight. And by doing so, he opened the way to clearing the misunderstanding that has grown between us and our giant neighbour over the past six years. The commitment announced on June 23 – to resume the phased disengagement agreed to on June 6 – is the first fruit of this break with long-nurtured past preconceptions.

The significance of the Galwan incident

Regardless of what the media has concluded on the basis of satellite images obtained from abroad, the Galwan valley “face-off” was not a Chinese conspiracy but a tragic accident that ballooned into a lethal unarmed battle. It began with a rude, possibly unintended act of extreme disrespect by a Chinese soldier who pushed or struck Colonel Babu.

This was an insult to their commanding officer that no soldier anywhere in the world would have tolerated. What followed had the inevitability of the Mahabharata.

It is also apparent that when they met, the commanding officers on both sides had absolutely no intention of engaging in a confrontation. The mere fact that Col. Babu chose to go with his contingent to the Chinese observation point, shows how keen he was to ensure that the agreed disengagement of troops went smoothly. The fact that neither side used any arms, in a brawl that lasted for several hours, demonstrates that the Chinese were also keen to limit the damage.

Though the Chinese have not admitted to having lost any soldiers and have officially denied one Indian minister’s claim of over 40 dead, their allegation that the Indian side engaged in acts of “a vile nature” suggests they too suffered casualties.

The Chinese captured 10 soldiers but returned them the next day. None of them had been tortured. Yet the fact that Chinese have refused to discuss their casualties indicates the anger in China was every bit as great as in India – the hashtag “China-India Border Clash’ on Sina-Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, received 740 million hits on June 16 – and that Beijing did not wish to further inflame domestic opinion.

Also read: Twitter Account of Chinese Journalist Who ‘Thanked’ Rahul Gandhi Is Fake

In sharp contrast to our TV anchors, the Chinese government’s semi-official mouthpiece, Global Times, has leavened its nationalist coverage of the incident with many sensible comments from readers who asked that peace and good relations be maintained. It is against this background that we need to assess Modi’s concluding remarks.

First, Modi spoke the truth when he said that the Chinese had not entered, built posts in, or occupied any Indian territory. Modi did not elaborate on how he reached this conclusion, but he was not misleading the people, for apart from setting up a lone tent that Col. Babu’s troops removed, I have been told by military sources I trust that the Chinese had not entered, much less occupied, any territory that was outside their definition of what is undisputedly Indian. The observation post at which the fatal brawl took place was not where the tent had been located, but some distance higher up, where China’s and India’s claims about the LAC presumably overlap.

Grey areas have existed ever since the 1993 Agreement on Peace and Tranquility in the Border Region was signed, because the Chinese have stubbornly refused to exchange maps of the Himalayan border belt. Without these, our differing perceptions of where it runs cannot be reconciled. As a result, over the years these areas of differing perception (ADPs) have taken on a life of their own.

An elaborate protocol has developed for ADPs in which, during normal times, patrols meet, wave placards at each other that they are trespassing and part amicably, to the occasional accompaniment of shouts, yells, or a few stones. The Chinese have also used the frequency of these patrols and the intensity of confrontation to send signals of their disquiet on specific issues. One such spurt occurred in the weeks before President Hu Jintao’s visit to India in 2006. A second bigger spurt took place during, and after the uprising in Tibet and three adjoining Chinese provinces in 2008 on the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet. The Chinese put the blame for it upon seven Tibetan groups in exile who, it claimed, had planned the uprising in Delhi.

Modi’s statement at the all-party meeting was intended to remind everyone that the sending of regular Indian patrols into this grey area is not the equivalent of an Ashwamedha Yagna, and does not make the territory they patrol indisputably ours.

China’s change of strategy

Since neither at Galwan nor at Pangong have the Chinese moved beyond the grey area of overlapping LACs, their sudden decision to dig in on the ridge above Finger 4 of the Pangong Lake in brigade strength with artillery and armour, and now their aggressive claim to virtually the whole of the eastern bank of the Shyok around the Galwan confluence, needs to be read not as an act of aggression, or prelude to expansion, but as another signal – admittedly the strongest they have ever sent – of their growing discomfort with India’s recent policies.

Also read: China’s Galwan Valley Gambit is Attempt to Extend Official Claim Line, LAC Westward

It is, in short, their way of signalling the need to reset relations. We may not like it, but we cannot afford to ignore it.

From where has this disquiet arisen? Its single cause, that I have tracked in several earlier columns since 2015, is Modi’s abrupt reversal of India’s policy of equidistance from power blocs and its use of soft power to promote peace in an increasingly chaotic, post-Westphalian, world.

This commonality of purpose was discovered in the meeting between Manmohan Singh and Premier Wen Jiabao, requested by the latter, at Hua Hin, Thailand, in 2009. This became the first of a succession of meetings, which were held under the auspices of BRICS, at which the Chinese made it clear that they sought strategic cooperation with India in the building of a multi-polar world order to counter the US’s attempts to impose a unipolar order upon the world through wars designed to destroy “rogue states”.

In tacit exchange, the Chinese offered to ‘settle’ the border issue by allowing it to ‘fade away into history’.

Since India was equally disturbed by the attacks on Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Syria and the prolonged sanctions on Iran, its long term strategic goals outside South Asia increasingly matched those of China. The resulting increase in cooperation reached its high point at the Delhi meeting of BRICS in 2012, and Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to New Delhi — the very first foreign visit by any leader of the Xi Jinping era, in the following year.

Satellite image of location where the June 15, 2020 clash between Indian and Chinese troops took place in the Galwan Valley. Image: The Wire/Google Maps

Modi, however, reversed this painstaking build-up of mutual confidence within days of coming to power in 2014 when, with his characteristic “impulsiveness” (for lack of a less charitable word) he rubbished India’s post-Cold War policy of ‘equidistance’ and exercise of ‘soft power’ and threw us, lock, stock and barrel, into the American camp.

Starting with the signing of the US-crafted ‘Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean Region’ in January 2015, every action by the Modi government showed hostile intent towards China. His single most disturbing action was to send four warships in 2016 to join a US-Japan task force in the South China Sea to disrupt China’s bid for hegemony over the sea. After that, unnoticed and unlamented by our US-centred foreign policy analysts, BRICS became a dead acronym.

There followed a succession of actions by India, designed to assert its sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh, that the Chinese made only pro forma protests against. Their restraint was another clear signal, if there was anyone in Delhi willing to receive it – that despite its pre-2008 references to Arunachal Pradesh, as South Tibet, Beijing had no intention of reneging on the 1993 Agreement.

China’s shift to coercive diplomacy

So to what can we trace Beijing’s sudden decision to convert its definition of the LAC into a heavily armed, hard border, backed with artillery, armour, missiles and a cyber capability to jam our responses? The only explanation is China’s growing belief that the Modi government does not feel itself bound by the premises upon which the 1993 agreement was signed, and cannot therefore be relied upon to honour it.

Two recent actions are responsible for this loss of faith: the first was India’s military incursion into Bhutan to stop China’s unilateral and admittedly high handed decision to build a road through it. The Doklam plateau was one of several Bhutanese territories that Beijing claimed and was negotiating over with Thimpu.

India had a right to ask why the Chinese were building a road that brought them closer to the Indian plains. But it did not have the right to take preventive action because the Doklam plateau was a part of Bhutan. India crossed an international border to interdict a Chinese project. Beijing’s analysts would have been remiss if they had not asked themselves where, under Modi, it might do this again and at whose behest? One single answer leapt out: the Karakoram pass.

Why is Daulat Beg Oldi suddenly so important?

Ignoring 75 years of history, the Modi government had already vowed to take back Gilgit, along with the rest of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. The message from Delhi, in essence, was that unless China recognised Gilgit as occupied Indian territory, India would not be joining China’s Belt-Road Initiative.

We in India know that the talk of retaking PoK was pure political theatre, designed to capture votes in our never-ending series of elections. But the Chinese have too much at stake in the CPEC corridor to leave things to chance and whimsy.

They are acutely aware that unlike the British and American hegemonies, theirs is based not on industrial and military might, but on international trade. They also know that the easiest way to disrupt international trade is through war. And they have seen how, for the last two decades, the US has been using trade sanctions, not weapons, to bring smaller countries to heel and create the unipolar world that is its goal.

Map of the road to Daulat Beg Oldi. Photo: Wikimedia

Beijing also knows that India is a regular participant in ‘Operation Malabar,’ in which the US, Japan, and Australia annually play war games. China knows one of the scenarios involves the closing of the straits of Malacca, through which 40% of its exports and 90% of its oil imports flow. Its way of reducing its vulnerability has been to build the CPEC and the six railroads of the BRI. CPEC, in particular, is not only its shortest route to South Asian and African markets, but also to Middle Eastern oil. It is therefore not only the guarantor of its economic survival but of peace, because it will make a future oil or trade embargo infructuous.

CPEC and BRI are therefore defensive, not offensive projects. They are designed not to increase China’s dominance of the world economy, but to reduce the temptation, now being voiced almost daily by President Trump, to destroy its trade predominance and plunge it into domestic turmoil through the collapse of its industry.

China needs CPEC and BRI for its very survival, so one can only imagine the alarm that the Modi government’s talk of retaking Gilgit Baltistan must have created. In the resulting threat re-assessment, their eyes have inevitably fallen on Daulat Beg Oldie, and on the modern road and bridges that India has constructed over the past six years linking it to Durbuk, Pangong and Leh.

DBO, which is at an altitude of 16,000 feet (5,000 metres) is only 13 kms over relatively flat country from the Karakoram pass. Therefore, in the thin air of this high altitude, it is within easy reach – not only of the Bofors 155 mm howitzers, but also of the much more portable 110 mm howitzers.

Also watch | Galwan a Great Blow to Our Prestige in the Neighbourhood: Nirupama Rao

In the past few years, the Indian Army has not only raised the base at DBO to brigade strength but rebuilt and modernised a runway that had earlier fallen into disuse because the middle portion had subsided. Today aircraft are bringing mountain artillery and other heavy weapons into DBO. The Durbuk to DBO road has completed its integration with Leh and Northern Command.

The Chinese know that even under Modi, India in unlikely to launch an attack on the Karakoram pass from DBO. But defence planning is always based upon the worst possible contingency. Thus, unless there is a meeting at the highest level between Indian and Chinese leaders in which the Chinese are re-assured that India will respect its vital interests in the region, the Chinese will continue to ‘straighten’ the LAC, by force if necessary, until it runs along the heights above the Shyok valley from where they can destroy the Durbuk to DBO road at will.

Road back to peace

None of this needs to happen, because Modi’s June 19 statement has opened another road to peace and security. This is to re-open discussions on the implementation of the 1993 agreement not only in Ladakh but along the entire LAC, and formalise conduct in the grey areas where the LACs overlap, and ensuring no structures for troops or armaments are allowed.

The width of this buffer can be determined through frank, periodic discussions of each other’s threat perceptions. In areas like the Galwan valley, which is regularly used by shepherds to graze their flocks in the summer, the buffer area can be expanded to allow free access from both sides. To lower China’s threat perception from Daulat Beg Oldie, India can enter into an agreement not to ferry in heavy artillery and limit the use of the air strip to re-supply, replace and evacuate military personnel. This, needless to say, was its original purpose. So, no tangible step back is required.

China, on its part will need to move all its armed forces back beyond the present Indian LAC on the eastern edge of the buffer zone. That should be India’s litmus test of its intentions.

Maintaining Peace and Tranquility Along Border in Common Interests of Both Parties: China

In separate statements, the Chinese foreign and the defence ministries, however, repeated Beijing’s stand that India was responsible for the June 15 violent face-off in eastern Ladakh.

Beijing: Asserting that China and India are “important neighbours to each other”, the Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday said maintaining peace and tranquility along the Sino-India border is in the common interests of both the parties and requires joint efforts.

In separate statements, the Chinese foreign and the defence ministries, however, repeated Beijing’s stand that India was responsible for the June 15 violent face-off in eastern Ladakh.

Defence ministry Spokesman Col Wu Qian said the two defence ministers are negotiating on the phone. “The two sides held a second military-level meeting on June 22 to exchange in-depth views on controlling tensions and maintaining peace and stability in the border areas,” he said.

Noting that China and India are important neighbours to each other, Wu said that maintaining peace and tranquility in the border area is in the common interests of both parties and requires the joint efforts of both parties.

“We hope that India and China will meet each other, effectively implement the important consensus between the leaders of the two countries, strictly abide by the agreement reached by the two parties, and continue to properly resolve relevant issues through dialogue and negotiation at all levels. We will make joint efforts to ease the situation in the border areas and maintain peace and stability in the border areas,” he added.

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the foreign ministers of the two sides during their telephone talk on June 17 agreed to deal with this serious matter in a just way.

“The two sides will stick to the Commander level meeting consensus and cool down the situations soon as possible. The two sides will also maintain peace and tranquility of the border areas, in accordance with the agreement reached so far,” he said.

Zhao also said that a second round of Commander level meeting was held on June 22 and 23 during which the two sides agreed to take measures to de-escalate the situation and jointly promote peace and tranquility.

The talks were held in the midst of escalating tension between the two countries following the violent clashes in Galwan Valley on June 15 that left 20 Indian Army personnel dead, significantly escalating the already volatile situation in the region.

Zhao again accused India of “provoking” a border clash, saying the onus is not on China’s part.

“This risky behaviour by the Indian side greatly violated the agreement between the two countries and the basic norms guiding international relations. It’s very serious, with very severe consequences,” he said.

Asked why after a positive meeting between the Commanders of the two armed forces, he is repeating the allegations, Zhao said, “What I have just said is meant to clarify the whole situation, tell the truth to everyone. We made this statement because the MEA in India and also Indian media have made some false reports.”

The Indian and Chinese armies are engaged in the standoff in Pangong Tso, Galwan Valley, Demchok and Daulat Beg Oldi in eastern Ladakh. A sizable number of Chinese Army personnel even transgressed into the Indian side of the de-facto border in several areas including Pangong Tso.

The Indian Army has been fiercely objecting to the transgressions, and demanded their immediate withdrawal for the restoration of peace and tranquillity in the area. Both sides held a series of talks in the last few days to resolve the border row.

India and China Need to Dial Back the Tension

If political pusillanimity dressed up as jingoism wins out again at the All-Party meeting on Friday evening, it could turn into tragedy.

It is 1962 all over again. India and China are heading for war, and this time it is not an insecure defence minister (Krishna Menon) and a gung-ho army chief who had never seen a shot fired in action (B.M. Kaul) who are driving India towards it. This time, it is a bunch of retired army officers, many of whom have not even served in the Ladakh region, egged on by television channels that see in the tragedy in Galwan valley an opportunity to increase their TRP ratings and increase their revenues in the future.

The dominant narrative has it that the hand-to-hand fight in the Galwan valley on June 15 took place because the Chinese never intended to honour the disengagement agreement reached on June 6 and were pursuing their seven-decades old policy of slicing off whatever territory they wanted in the Himalayan region. So when a small Indian contingent set off up the Galwan river to confront them and demand that they withdraw, the Chinese responded by ambushing it and killing 20 of our jawans, including their colonel.

However, the army’s official statement on the incident was terse and matter of fact:

“During the de-escalation process underway in the Galwan Valley, a violent face-off took place yesterday night with casualties on both sides. The loss of lives on the Indian side includes an officer and two soldiers. Senior military officials of the two sides are currently meeting at the venue to defuse the situation.”

The MEA’s first statement on June 16 blamed the incident on Chinese attempts to alter the status quo: “On the late-evening and night of 15th June, 2020 a violent face-off happened as a result of an attempt by the Chinese side to unilaterally change the status quo there.”

On June 17, the MEA’s readout of external affairs minister S. Jaishankar’s conversation with his Chinese counterpart went one step further,

“The Chinese side sought to erect a structure in Galwan valley on our side of the LAC,”, the MEA spokesperson said. “While this became a source of dispute, the Chinese side took pre-meditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties. It reflected an intent to change the facts on ground in violation of all our agreements to not change the status quo.”

While the increase in the temperature of India’s official statements is noticeable, so is the careful calibration. Regrettably, the electronic media is showing no such restraint. Virtually every channel except NDTV has been ending its programmes by forcing political dignitaries from both the Congress and BJP to choose between advising caution and thereby condoning the death of the Indian soldiers, and demanding a reckoning from China.

Needless to say, nearly all party representatives on TV agree that China has to be taught a lesson, and that the best way to do this is to break every international trade agreement and convention India has signed, drive every Chinese product and every Chinese company out of the Indian market and be prepared for war.

The storm of jingoism that the media has created has already forced Prime Minister Modi to abandon some of his initial caution and say that India will give “a befitting reply to provocation”. It has also given him an opportunity to merge his atma-nirbharta (self-reliance) campaign, conceived to divert public attention away from the failure of his COVID lockdown, with the clarion call to nationalism which has served him so well before. Should he now decide to ‘stand up to the Chinese dragon’ it is difficult to see any political party that will have the courage and strength to oppose him and advise caution.

War is therefore only one fatal misstep away. Should that step be taken, India will once again be embroiled in a conflict that, given the nature of the terrain, it cannot possibly win.

What happened at Galwan

The only way the government can avert this is by telling the public everything that had been decided on June 6 and June 13, set the record straight about what happened at Galwan on June 14-15, and hope that better sense will prevail. This, to the best of my knowledge, is what happened:

At the corps commander-level meeting on Saturday, June 13, the two sides had agreed to withdraw their forces to a distance of two kilometres from where they were then. Where the Chinese were then, both in the Galwan river area and above Pangong lake was not indisputably on the Indian side of the LAC but on the Chinese side as defined by them, and thus in the grey zone. At Pangong it was the ridge above Finger 4 of the lake. In the Galwan valley it was at a point the Indian army called PP (Patrol Point) 14. The Indian definition of the LAC was some distance east of the Chinese at Pangong, and pretty much contiguous with it at Galwan except at a few places.

It is important to make this clear because at no point, except for the location of one little tent, did the Chinese try to “slice off” any fresh territory, as TV anchors are claiming. Everything they did was within their understanding of the de facto LAC established after the 1962 war and accepted in principle by both countries in the Agreement On Peace And Tranquility In The Border Regions, of 1993.

This is also true of the Chinese military build-up at various points in Aksai Chin since May. In fact, the support base of the troops in the Galwan valley is 40 kms to the east, beyond even the Indian definition of the LAC in the area. This is equally true of the support bases for the build up at Pangong lake and the three other points in Ladakh.

When the 14th corps headquarters realised on June 15 that the Chinese had not only not begun their withdrawal as stipulated in the agreement, but had set up a tent on the Indian side of PP14 and a fresh observation post on the Chinese side, it sent a detachment to remove the tent, and request the Chinese to withdraw from the observation post in line with the agreement of June 13.

Indian soldiers removed the tent on the 15th. The same day, Col Babu and his men proceeded to the observation post at the China-defined LAC, reaching there at 4 pm. When he asked the Chinese why they had set up the observation post after the June 13 agreement, he was given the possibly disingenuous answer that it was to make sure that the Indian troops were withdrawing to the stipulated distance first, before doing so themselves. As of now, one can only speculate on how this discussion turned into an altercation and then into the lethal battle that followed. Suffice it to say that the Chinese were prepared to fight with improvised weapons, and a tragedy ensued that can end by changing the course of Indian, and possibly world history in the months and years to come.

China tamps down rhetoric, somewhat

The Chinese government has made it clear that it does not want the incident to derail China-India relations any more than they have already been derailed in the past six years. To do this, it has, in addition to its official statement on Wednesday, resorted to its unofficial mouthpiece on foreign policy, Global Times, to cool tempers in China and send a message to India that it does not want a war.

In an article titled “Chinese netizens call for restraint and reason in wake of China-India border clash”, the author, Chen Xi warned his readers against the wave of xenophobia that was sweeping China and highlighted message after message that did the opposite: “Some Chinese netizens took to social media Twitter to state that the incident should not undermine the common development of the two countries” .

He particularly singled out one from a Chinese netizen who calls himself Hubei_Peasant: “I really hope friends and comrades don’t provoke Indian people on Twitter or engage with any bad-faith provocations. It tarnishes what soft power we have left, and any inflammation of Indian public opinion is contrary to our interests. Silence is golden”.

China has sent a second signal by agreeing on June 17th to release 10 soldiers whom they had captured at the observation post.

While the soldiers were indeed freed within 24 hours of the agreement, some hardening of the Chinese stand was evident too by June 18 with the Global Times editor putting out a video and tweet warning India not to underestimate China’s resolve.

China’s aims

In all this, there is a question that needs answering: If Beijing is not following a policy of cloaking incremental expansionism in subterfuge, and genuinely does not want the conflict to escalate, why did its soldiers do what they did in Galwan, bringing the two countries to the brink of war?

There is one other possible explanation: It has been apparent for some time that China’s sudden hardening of stance over the boundary issue is designed to warn Delhi against reneging on the implicit and explicit understandings that have sustained peace in the border region since 1993. Foremost among these is the maintenance of equidistance from all power blocs in the post Cold War world.

India has gone back on this in the past six years. It has signed an agreement with the US to force freedom of navigation in the south China sea, sent warships to join a US-Japanese task force to do so; joined Operation Malabar with the US and Australia – one of whose “ war games” is the closing of the straits of Malacca through which 90 percent of China’s imported oil passes; and signed three military logistics agreements with the US that have made India a de facto military ally of the US in a future war.

Had Modi stopped there, China might not have reacted. But he has also reneged on past understandings with China over Indian non-intervention in its construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through Gilgit, and on the understanding reached with Pakistan by two Indian prime ministers, Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, that the LOC in Kashmir will be turned into a ‘soft border’ between the two countries, thereby leaving the CPEC alone.

Under Modi, India reneged on this understanding not only in words but deeds, for in 2018 he made China’s acceptance of India’s claim to Gilgit a precondition for signing the Belt Road Initiative (BRI). By doing this, he literally cut off India’s nose to spite China’s face, because the Chinese were depending upon India’s insatiable need to modernise its infrastructure to fill the order books of the huge ‘mother machine’ heavy industries that were lying idle after its 2009-14 domestic fiscal stimulus ended.

The end of Article 370

Mod did not stop there. Not only did he and defence minister Rajnath Singh state more than once that India will take back every inch of its territory including PoK and Aksai Chin.

Following on from the abolition of Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status and its division into two union territories, India released a new political map in November 2019.

Like all official Indian maps, it shows neither the line of control with Pakistan nor the LAC with China and did not alter the external boundaries of India in Ladakh in any way. Its purpose may have only been to remind the faithful of the BJP’s great achievement in eliminating Article 370 and breaking up Jammu and Kashmir into two but its release may have also been misunderstood by the Chinese. This was not the first time New Delhi was reasserting its stand that Aksai Chin is a part of India. But when the airstrip at Daulat Beg Oldi – barely 20 kms as the crow flies from the Karakoram Pass – has just been been repaired and a fairly good modern road linking it to Pangong, Durbuk and Leh has been completed, Beijing may well have convinced itself that Modi could no longer be relied upon not to try to put a spoke in the CPEC project.

China’s sudden decision to unilaterally define the LAC, by militarising its side of it, is therefore a political message. A return to the status quo ante required political discussions, and these had begun at both the diplomatic and military headquarters level. But military commands do not explain the political rationale of the orders they give to soldiers on the ground. The Chinese troops at Galwan were no doubt told to hold their territory without using firearms until they received further orders. That they made elaborate preparations to do so, including damming rivulets to provide water for the use of water cannons, is now apparent.

Col. Babu and his men were similarly not kept in any political loop. They too had been given simple orders: clear the tent, find out what the Chinese are up to and persuade them to withdraw as per the June 13 agreement. The rest is now history. If political pusillanimity dressed up as jingoism wins out again at the All-Party meeting on Friday evening, it could turn into tragedy.

Watch | The Truth About China’s Advances into Indian Soil

Is the situation improving for India at all?

Three days after Indian and Chinese military commanders met on Saturday at Chushul, in Ladakh, to discuss the crisis caused by the occupation by thousands of Chinese soldiers of territory traditionally patrolled by both armies, top Army sources in India sought to portray a rapidly improving situation. But is that the truth? Arfa Khanum Sherwani discusses the issue with Ajai Shukla.

Exclusive: In Talks, China Takes Hard Line, Claims All of Galwan Valley, Chunk of Pangong Tso

During the military-to-military dialogue on Saturday, China refused to even discuss its intrusions into the Galwan River valley, instead claiming ownership over the entire area.

New Delhi: Three days after Indian and Chinese military commanders met on Saturday at Chushul, in Ladakh, to discuss the crisis caused by the occupation by thousands of Chinese soldiers of territory traditionally patrolled by both armies, top army sources in India sought to portray a rapidly improving situation.

Claiming that both sides – the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Indian Army – have “retreated a bit” after the Saturday meeting, the army sources revealed that another Sino-Indian meeting would be held on Wednesday at a more junior level.

However, sources on the ground paint a far bleaker picture of Chinese intransigence along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). They say that during the talks, the PLA interlocutors flatly rejected the Indian demand for Chinese troops to withdraw from areas they occupied in May and restore the status quo that prevailed in April.

In fact, during the military-to-military dialogue on Saturday, China refused to even discuss its intrusions into the Galwan River valley, instead claiming ownership over the entire area.

Underlining these sharp divergences between the Indian and Chinese positions, no joint statement was released after Lieutenant General Harinder Singh, the Leh corps commander, met PLA Major General Liu Lin, who heads the South Xinjiang Military Region in a bid to defuse the confrontation.

Nor did New Delhi release any details about the military discussions. Only on Tuesday, after being sharply criticised by opposition members, including Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party, did “top army sources” present the media with the military’s version of events.

According to their version, the Indian and Chinese corps commanders met one-on-one for almost three hours before engaging further during delegate-level talks. The two sides “mutually agreed and identified five locations of conflicts” between PLA and Indian troops. These include Patrolling Point 14 (PP14), PP15, PP17, the north bank of Pangong Tso Lake and Chushul.

The fact that these conflict locations make no mention of the Galwan River valley lends credence to the argument that the sector did not feature on the discussion agenda.

Galwan River valley

During the talks, the PLA indicated they were taking control of the Galwan River valley, which has traditionally been a peaceful sector where China adhered to a claim line. Now PLA negotiators have asserted ownership of the entire Galwan Valley, claiming that China had controlled the hilltops astride the Galwan River for “as long as they could remember.”

The PLA alleged that the one-kilometre-long track that India had built from the Shyok-Galwan river junction, heading eastwards along the Galwan River, was an encroachment on Chinese territory. They alleged that India was developing this track into a metal (black-topped) road.

Map of the road to Daulat Beg Oldi. Photo: Wikimedia

The Indian army representatives countered that the Chinese had constructed a metal road right to where the LAC had existed up till May – that is five kilometres from where the Galwan flows into the Shyok river – and that the road would soon cross the LAC. The Chinese responded that the Galwan Valley was their area and it was legitimate for them to build a road in it.

Indian negotiators also objected strongly to PLA troops deploying in the close vicinity of India’s Gogra post. Sources say the PLA did not offer a cogent response.

Nor was there a cogent PLA response to Indian allegations that the Chinese were constructing a road on India’s side of the LAC between Hot Springs and Gogra.

Pangong Tso area

Responding to Indian charges of Chinese intrusions onto the Pangong Tso north bank, the PLA negotiators claimed they had “acted rightfully” in constructing a metalled road up to Finger 4, and preparing defensive positions in that disputed area.

Prior to May, the Indian army regularly patrolled till their perceived LAC at Finger 8, eight kilometres east of Finger 4. However, since May 5, when thousands of PLA troops blocked and savagely beat up outnumbered Indian troops in that area, Indian patrols are unable to go beyond Finger 4, which the Chinese now claim is the LAC.

The Chinese military officials accepted that the aggression with which PLA soldiers attacked Indian troops at the Pangong Tso in mid-May “was not in the right spirit,” but said it was a reaction to Indian patrols crossing the PLA’s version of the LAC.

The Indian army also brought up the need to reduce forward deployments of PLA soldiers, armoured vehicles and artillery guns. The Chinese responded they would have to refer the matter to their superiors.

Gains and losses

Army sources apprehend the PLA has gained strategically in the Galwan Valley, where they now occupy positions overlooking the strategic Darbuk-Shyok-Daulet Beg Oldi (DSDBO) road to Depsang, at the base of the Karakoram Pass.

The Chinese have also gained strategically by isolating the Depsang area, as a consequence of dominating the DSDBO road. There is currently a large Chinese armour build up opposite Depsang, which is raising apprehensions of surprise ingress in that sector by the PLA.

Chinese gains in the Pangong Tso area, however, are being seen as tactical, even though the levels of violence the PLA displayed there is worrisome.

The other PLA activities at Naku La (Sikkim) and at Harsil and Lipu Lekh (Uttarakhand) are being viewed as “red herrings”, aimed at tying down Indian troops rather than serving any larger strategic objectives.

The army is also closely watching the long border between Arunachal Pradesh and Tibet, which is called the McMahon Line. This has been entirely quiet so far, with no Chinese activity in this area.

On Tuesday, Indian army sources provided a military-political perspective to the on-going PLA intrusions. “The core issue is the undecided LAC. Until that is solved, these episodes and issues will continue to happen,” they stated.

Also to blame, according to the army sources, was the PLA’s militarisation of the border areas. “China has deployed fighter bombers, rocket forces, air defence radars, jammers, etcetera. India has also deployed all its major assets along the LAC… just a few kilometres away from the frontline. India will continue to have a major build up until China withdraws the build up [it has] done there,” they said.

India Sees China ‘Thinning’ Troops at Stand-Off Points But No Respite in Chinese Claims

A senior military source told The Wire it is too early to make an assessment that the Chinese were packing up, especially since the number of ground forces have not been static during the past one month.

New Delhi: Indian military officials says they have observed a “thinning” in the density of Chinese soldiers at some of the stand-off points along the Line of Actual Control since Monday but add that there is no clear sign of Beijing signalling any retraction from its positions in eastern Ladakh.

On Saturday, Indian and Chinese military held talks at the highest level since the armies of the two countries began their month-long stand-off at three points. After the talks, India had said that engagement at various levels will be continued “to resolve” the matter – which indicated that there was no substantial breakthrough.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Monday echoed the same readout, stating that the “two sides are ready to engage in consultation to properly solve the relevant issues”.

Indian military sources said on Tuesday that there had since been some change in the ground situation, but were not ready to describe these developments as permanent or even the start of a disengagement process. “We have seen some thinning of Chinese troops at some points in Galwan and Hot Springs since yesterday,” military sources told The Wire.

While the density of troops may have come down, the Chinese continue to be present in those areas where they had poured in soldiers sometime in late April-early May.

‘China changing LAC on the ground’

Expressing skepticism about the supposed “thinning” of Chinese deployments, military analysts say the stand-off can only be resolved if the Chinese remove both troops and infrastructure from the territory that they have intruded into beyond the LAC.

“What is important is not any thinning of troops. It is that the PLA has changed facts on the ground by building concrete defences,” said editor of Force magazine, Pravin Sawhney. “Will they dismantle them? The answer is No. So the LAC has changed – unless India has the gumption to dismantle [these Chinese] defences.”

Also Read: In Talks, China Takes Hard Line, Claims All of Galwan Valley, Chunk of Pangong Tso

Sawhney, who is co-author of the book, Dragon On Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power, said the Chinese side may “simply be giving leeway to Modi” to provide the perception that he had successfully resolved the standoff. “What price India will pay for this, we don’t know yet,” he added.

If there is indeed a “thinning” of the troop presence, this may be of little consequence if the original deployment was large. Last week, in fact, India’s defence minister used the Hindi phrase “bhaari sankhya” – heavy numbers – in reference to the Chinese soldiers, who some military sources had claimed were in the low thousands.

A senior military source told The Wire on Tuesday that it would be too early to make an assessment that the Chinese were packing up, especially since the number of ground forces have not been static during the past one month. “There have been previous instances, for example in Galwan where the Chinese had retracted for a bit, and then come back again,” the official said.

According to Indian military sources, a key issue for India in the current stand-off has been the “vacation” of Chinese troops from the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in Pangong Tso.

They said that while there has been no change at Pangong Tso lake, which is India’s main concern, a confrontation had taken place along its northern bank.

India’s claim line passes at Finger 8, one of the spurs jutting out onto the north bank of the lake, while China perceives the LAC to be based at Finger 2.

Also Read: Why It Is Imperative That Indians Come to Know What Happened in 1962

Indian patrols had gone up to Finger 6, but had a physical presence in recent times only till Finger 4. This time, the Chinese came up to Finger 4, where their encounter with an Indian patrol team deteriorated into violence on May 9.

The military’s off-the-record characterisation of the Chinese ingress is at odds with what the government is prepared to say. When Rajnath Singh’s statement in a TV interview about a large number of Chinese having “come in” was reported by the media as an admission of Chinese troops having crossed the LAC, the government decried this as “fake news”: “The minister was referring to differing perceptions of LAC & presence of Chinese troops It is being misinterpreted as if Chinese troops entered Indian side of LAC,” the Press and Information Bureau tweeted on June 2.

The talks held on Saturday had been at the highest-level border meeting ever, with the Indian side led by Lt General Harinder Singh, general officer commanding of Leh-based 14 Corps, and Major General Liu Lin of South Xinjiang military district.

India’s position at the talks had been to seek a roll back to the status quo before the talks began.

Military officials here speculate that the ‘thinning’ of Chinese troops which the Indian side claims to have observed, could be more of a negotiation tactic to show the Indian side that they are willing to be flexible. However, since the Chinese side had also been made demands – specifically about Indian border infrastructure, it is not clear whether New Delhi has taken any other steps, besides removing some of its own troops in a mirror move.

During previous rounds of talks, China has repeatedly raised objections on the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie road (DSDBO), whose construction began in 2001 and was finally completed last year.