India counting on new modus vivendi with China

Maj Gen Ashok K Mehta (retd)

Military Commentator

ON May 16, local Chinese and Indian divisional commanders met at Daulat Beg Oldie for routine talks. Five days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a rare allusion to China at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, quoted a Foreign Minister S Jaishankar patent: “a unilateral attempt to change status quo”. The military and diplomatic dialogue reached an impasse a year ago, but New Delhi refused to recognise it. The two countries’ positions are poles apart.

After last September, it was well known that the disengagement sought by India will never happen, though access to grazing grounds and patrolling, both under the China-imposed lockdown, could materialise. Jaishankar has repeatedly said that relations are not normal with China, which has violated the written agreements of 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2013.

China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Defence Minister Gen Li Shangfu, during their recent SCO meetings in India, reiterated their stance: the border situation is generally stable, which should move to “normalised management” — one of their esoteric phrases. But, more significantly, they urged India to put the border issue in the proper place, delinked from bilateral relations.

India finds this proposition unacceptable even if it no longer asks for the restoration of status quo ante April 2020, a demand that the Army still maintains. Beijing’s continuing provocations are manifest in renaming, a third time, places in Arunachal Pradesh and protesting the breach of its territorial sovereignty over visits of Indian leaders to it. Jaishankar’s latest pronouncement followed the SCO foreign ministers’ meeting in Goa relating to a question on the LAC — “our focus remains on resolving outstanding issues and restoring peace and tranquillity in border areas.”

India’s pique was demonstrated by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh not shaking hands with General Shangfu, though in the bilateral meeting, he made the namaste gesture twice, which went unnoticed by the General.

The inventory of Indian losses due to Chinese intrusions consists of territory through partial disengagement and buffer zones and forfeiting access to 26 patrolling points and six grazing areas. This is capped with the decline of its image built up during the Doklam confrontation. Bhutan’s Foreign Minister Tandi Dorji, in Dhaka for the sixth Indian Ocean Conference on May 14 told a news channel that it would soon demarcate its border with China, something, simply unthinkable earlier. After its impressive, but wasted, Operation Snow Leopard which rattled China, India is on the defensive. In an interview, Jaishankar admitted: “We are smaller economy and China is bigger economy. We cannot go and pick a fight with China”, reflecting that India fears military escalation.

After the events of December 9, 2022, when the PLA attempted to occupy the Yangtse Plateau Ridge in Tawang, the fear is real. After that, India has carried out major fire-power exercises and is considering deploying 120 Pralay tactical ballistic missiles (100-to-150-km range), BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles and Pinaka multi-barrel rocket system as the integrated rocket forces deterrent.

Seven ITBP battalions are to be raised and deployed. But none of these will be as pivotal to thwarting the PLA seizure of the Yangtse Ridge as real-time intelligence and satellite imagery provided by the US.

Rajnath’s resolve to catch up with China was absent from the latest defence budget, being less than that granted the previous year. At this rate, leave alone fulfilling parliamentary resolutions of retaking PoK and Aksai Chin, the fear of military escalation will prevail.

The Chinese have finally spoken, though indirectly, rejecting outright Jaishankar and Singh’s claims that Beijing violated written norms and protocols. It was not the through usual Global Times but senior analyst Hu Shisheng, who is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party and is the director of the Institute for South Asian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. Hu’s comments followed General Shangfu’s visit for the SCO meeting last month. Hu blamed India for the Galwan incident due to its long-term violation of bilateral agreements.

This is the first time in the last three years that the accusation made by India against China has been reversed on India by a renowned Chinese India-China hand. Hu claims that India’s perception of the LAC was challenged in 1959 and restoring status quo will not be by India’s line of 2020 but the 1959 line — already promulgated by the PLA. New Delhi has chosen not to react to this unofficial missive.

It is not coincidental that the military chiefs — CDSs of the Quad countries —met in California between May 15 and 17 as a curtainraiser to the Quad meeting held in Hiroshima instead of Sydney. Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan met his counterparts from Japan, the US, Australia and even the UK. The Quad Malabar naval exercises will be held in August off the Sydney coast. As India has articulated that Quad is not a military alliance, the CDS conclave will not breach its strategic autonomy.

India is counting on a new modus vivendi with China. Prime Minister Modi tried to break the ice last September at the Bali G20 summit with an impromptu meeting with President Xi Jinping which has not worked so far. He has three more opportunities this year: at the SCO, G20 and BRICS summits, the first two being chaired by India.

New Delhi faces hard choices to unlock Ladakh: accept the fait accompli and ‘normalised management’; cross the Rubicon to join the US, as it allied with the USSR in 1971. But sitting on the fence or simply balancing, which will not curb military escalation, appears to be the preferred option.

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