Story of a border standoff, an Army Commander and a Prime Minister

The young Army Captain was as irreverent of his bosses as most young captains are. However, he was equally clear about why he had been sent with his company of 5 Gurkha battalion, to occupy the Longro La Ridge on the China border overlooking the Sumdorong Chu pasture in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

- SATISH KUMAR SHARMA

So, when the Chinese army came claiming the ridge, he asked them to buzz off. When they still advanced, he had a burst of Light Machine Gun fired as a warning. The Chinese dared not move forward. That burst was a message that it was no longer the India of 1962 – a weak body recovering from two centuries of colonial bleeding; the India of 1986 could defend itself and if the push came to shove… well, it had the nuclear option.

Thus began the Wandung stand-off bringing two Asian Giants closest to a war since 1962. But New Delhi did not want escalation. Nor did Deng Xiaoping, who was busy liberalizing the Chinese economy pursuing his ideological pragmatism pithily expressed as, 'It does not matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mice.'