India's Curious Diffidence On The China Question

Statements on the Chinese army's 2020 transgression into India have often been contradictory. We must realise that the Chinese appreciate strength more than modesty

- MANISH TEWARI

IT has been 50 months since the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China transgressed across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in April-May 2020 and occupied a broad swathe of Indian territory. Since then, the government of India has been exceptionally diffident about squarely confronting the China question.

It is not as if the government was oblivious to Chinese activities along the LAC. A news report on May 22, 2020 stated, "The first four months of this year, according to official data, witnessed 170 Chinese transgressions across the LAC, including 130 in Ladakh. There were only 110 such transgressions in Ladakh during the same period in 2019."

On the night of June 15, 2020, one of the worst confrontations between the PLA and the Indian Army took place in Galwan valley, leaving 20 Indian soldiers dead including the Commanding Officer of 16th Bihar, Colonel Bikkumalla Santosh Babu. Many more were wounded. Though officially the Chinese acknowledged only four casualties, according to an investigative report by Australian newspaper The Klaxon, the figure was much higher.

Even before the April-May 2020 incursions, the government had been trying to build a case of perceptional differences qua Chinese belligerence on the LAC, given that Chumar 2014 and Doklam 2017 had already happened on their watch. Speaking in the Lok Sabha on July 5, 2019, the defence minister asserted, "There is a perceptional difference between the two countries over the LAC. The main reason is that there is no mutually marked LAC. Both countries have their own perception. Due to this, often, incidences of transgression occur."