Sardar Patel wanted independent Tibet as buffer state: CDS Bipin Rawat

New Delhi, October 31

Territorial ambitions of China and Pakistan require the Indian armed forces to remain alert and deployed along disputed borders and coastal areas round the year, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Bipin Rawat said on Sunday.

The CDS stated this while delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture at All India Radio. “The quintessential visionary that Sardar Patel was, he had assertively voiced the need of an independent Tibet as a buffer state between India and China, as can be found in his correspondence with then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru,” he said.

Rawat said history is witness to the fact that whenever a country neglects its armed forces, the external powers are quick to exploit it.

In the 1950s, India overlooked this important lesson of history and allowed the security apparatus to drift and the Chinese shook the country up in 1962, Rawat said. “We had to relearn this lesson through an ignominious experience. Post-1962, we have had several skirmishes against the Chinese — at Nathu La in Sikkim in 1967, at Wangdung in 1986, at Doklam in 2017 and the recent skirmishes in the eastern Ladakh,” he noted. — PTI

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