Chinese assault on India remains relentless

NOW that the 75th anniversary of Independence is over, it’s time for a reality check of India’s lost territories as the Chinese threat spreads thick and fast – from Taiwan to Hambantota, from Tawang to the tertiary terrain of India. To every nook and corner of South Asia, thanks to the unbridled aggression of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

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The Han psyche suggests that their time to rule the waves is here, like the British did from the 18th-to-mid-20th century and the USA thereafter: from Yalta to Vietnam and across oceans. However, the Hans forget that Taiwan has been sovereign since the 1940s. Tibet lost sovereignty in the 1950s and the establishment of the Indian republic precedes that of China by over two years.

Yet, India has been mauled since the 1960s; the Chinese aggression continues from Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh) to Tangtse (Ladakh). It multiplied under the Xi-led CPC-PLA’s ballistic missile use in Taiwan and the Japanese zone; giving warning of ‘dire consequences’ to all neighbours, especially India.

So, India must wake up from selective amnesia to face the worst of times as the world too rises from its torpor. A selective chronological fact-sheet of chronic Han hostility to Hindustan (1954-1962), therefore, is essential amidst the CPC-PLA’s fresh fury as India and Taiwan’s territorial bully.

In April 1954, India and China signed the Tibet Agreement. On July 17, 1954, China protested against Indians in Barahoti. On June 28, 1955, Chinese troops entered Barahoti. On July 26, 1956, China claimed Barahoti. In October 1957, the CPC-PLA announced the completion of Tibet-Xinjiang highway G-219 which cut deep inside India, violating her sovereignty and territory. In June 1958, China occupied the Khurnak Fort, inside Ladakh. In July 1958, the Chinese map claimed large areas of NEFA (Arunachal) and Ladakh. In September 1958, Chinese troops re-entered Barahoti. A month later, the Chinese built outposts at Lapthal and Sangchanalla. In March 1959, the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet. In July 1959, armed Chinese entered western Pangong Lake to set up the Spangur camp. On August 7, 1959, the Chinese intruded into Khinzeman, Arunachal Pradesh. On August 25, 1959, the Chinese overpowered troops at the Indian outpost of Longju, Arunachal Pradesh. On August 27, 1959, the Chinese hoisted their flag near Rezangla (Ladakh), 35 km south of Spangur.

Understandably, on August 28, 1959, the Indian PM handed over Arunachal’s defence to the Army. And within 11 days, on September 8, 1959, the Chinese PM wrote a letter to the Indian PM, claiming 64,000 square km of Indian land.

Expectedly, the unilateral and baseless claim made by China increased the heat, creating irreversible animosity. Tensions rose as the PLA penetrated 80 km inside Indian territory, near Kongka-la, and fired at an Indian patrol party, killing nine soldiers on October 20-21, 1959.

Unsurprisingly, the next move of the CPC and PM Chou-en-Lai followed with the letter of November 7, 1959, cunningly proposing the withdrawal of the armed forces of both Dragon and Delhi 20 km from the McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh, and from Ladakh’s Line of Actual Control. Understandably, India saw through the unscrupulous Chinese proposal for a mutual withdrawal of 20 km. On November 16, 1959, it agreed to withdraw in Ladakh as far west as the line claimed by the CPC-PLA as the boundary, provided China too withdrew behind the traditional boundary alignment as claimed by India. The Han-PLA supremo was unprepared for this superb counter-trump logic and diplomacy of Nehru. Expectedly, the cunning proposal failed as India handed over Ladakh to the Army.

Nevertheless, the CPC-PLA’s insatiable aggression led to the establishment of more posts near Nyagzu, Ladakh, followed by the biggest diplomatic blow to Delhi in May 1962 when the two dictators — Mao and Pakistan’s Ayub Khan — agreed on negotiations ‘to locate and align’ the portion of the India-China boundary in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. The worst of anti-India alliance between the CPC-PLA and the fundamentalist army-ruled Pakistan was sealed, thereby exposing their collective mala fide mens rea and perennial perfidy to India.

Soon, Mao’s October 1962 invasion changed India’s history for good. Henceforth, every right-minded Indian identifies the CPC-PLA as enemy number one, notwithstanding the 21st-century one-way trade-profit for the CPC-PLA combo and the bulging purse of a few thousand Indians to whom profit comes first and precedes soldiers’ deaths inside Indian territory in ‘peace times’. To them, the steady shrinking and erosion of high Himalayan land (to the CPC-PLA) has little meaning because “none lives and nothing grows there.”

This small number of Indians doesn’t understand as to what it takes to maintain sovereignty and what constitutes inviolability thereof in the remote-land border of the abode of 1.35 billion Indian heads. To them, profit preludes sovereignty; import of cheap goods and raw materials is the best and sole way of creating self-wealth; and state self-reliance is a sign of backwardness and weakness as it results in monetary loss to a few individuals. Such microscopic minority monetary beneficiaries of a crumbling globalisation can be found today by the worldwide uprising against them. To these handful profit-hungry souls, it’s of no concern even if vast populations of Hindustan are eternally bypassed by the prosperity generated by lopsided ‘globalised world order’.

Thus, even as India completes 75 years, the CPC-PLA’s same old trick of land-grabbing goes on. First intrude and penetrate, say 40 km, and then propose retreat by both the intruder and the intruded by 20 km. End result? A 40-km loss of the intruded India’s own land and a net 20-km gain for the intruding CPC-PLA of foreign (Indian) land. The Han deceit and lies continue unabated with unabashed malice.

Further, the CPC-PLA today resorts to futile military-to-military border talks. Sixteen rounds of inconclusive talks reveal its false diplomacy through meaningless, coercive discussion, making a mockery of the actual bilateral diplomacy between the two. Hans simply intend to buy time to strengthen the logistics for a protracted psychological war, to be followed by bombs and missiles in formidable heights to unsettle the adversary into submission. The tactics also include organising people under civilian cover to settle them in the occupied territory of the border, for use as primary screening and surveillance for advance information; and if killed in conflict, to blame India for “unarmed, non-combatant civilian” casualties.

Thus, the near monopoly of Beijing on the India-China bilateral, and now the unprecedented hostility to the world, has created a danger to Delhi’s defence, finance and diplomacy. China has been assaulting India through the western neighbour for long; the invasion in 1962; instigating the North-East and eastern India unrest since the 1960s; and in the 21st century, penetrating industry, banking, finance, trade, investment and creating criminals to wreak havoc in the heartland through cyber and other means and inflicting a blow to power, telecommunication and military.

India@75 should stop putting all eggs in the Chinese basket. The Chinese aggression is a lesson. China is bound to weaponise its goods like gas, fuel and energy, as seen recently. It certainly could be ‘Chinese sanctions’ for India, sooner than expected, crippling India economically. Bharat, beware!