FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE

Why New Delhi is underlining the role of border villages as custodians of India's frontiers

- AJAI SHUKLA

Echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stated commitment to holistic development of villages located close to the Sino-Indian border, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has described these villages as not just remote habitations but also the country's first line of defence.

Addressing a Border Area Development Conclave in New Delhi on September 11, Singh said the best way of dealing with the multiple challenges posed by India's geo-strategic location was to ensure border area development.

In underlining the role of border villages as custodians of India's frontiers, New Delhi is following the example of China in Tibet, where President Xi Jinping has personally directed a new border village policy since 2017.

China in Tibet

China's new border village policy, which is aimed at setting up Tibetan villages in disputed border areas, was announced with great fanfare at the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2017. In May 2021, noted Tibetologist Robert Barnett described the working of Xi Jinping's resettlement policy in an article in Foreign Policy magazine.

Barnett's article details the experience of four Tibetan nomads from the remote Beyul Khenpajong region, which remains disputed between Bhutan and China.

Until 1995, like other yak graziers living along the border, the four spent their summer grazing their herds in the Beyul, before returning to their village in Tibet ahead of the winter snows.

In 1995, however, the local CCP officials told them Beyul was Chinese territory and it was their duty to guard it for China by physically remaining there through winter. For the decades that followed, the four graziers spent the bitter winters alone in the Beyul, in harsh and primitive conditions, with no contact with the outside world.