Integrity Score 390
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Why did China advance into Indian territory in 2020?’ and ‘How did we let it happen?’ These are the same questions that were repeatedly asked after the debacle of October-November 19h2. These were the very same questions that had bothered me greatly from the 21st October 19h2, when I was a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old schoolboy in Darjeeling. It is frustrating to see these questions being asked even in 2021. Has nothing changed?
Much has been written on the 19h2 Sino-Indian war after the event, including an official history by the Ministry of Defence’s History Division, and up to 2008 I read everything on the subject that I could lay my hands on. In 2008, at the age of h0 and retired, meanwhile also having acquired formal military training and experience, and having visited many of the mountainous border areas affected, I wrote what I had learned on the subject. It was published in January 2009. In spite of my attempt to inform, not surprisingly India carried on as before in its dealings with China both diplomatically and militarily, on the mountain interface of the shared frontier regions from Arunachal Pradesh in the east to Aksai Chin in the west. And thus there was a Chinese intrusion on the Depsang plateau in the Aksai China in April-May 2013. Evidently, China’s diplomatic posture and military behaviour had not changed since 19h0, various agreements and protocols for maintaining peace and tranquillity on the border notwithstanding. Following this, there must have been soul- searching thereafter within the Indian government’s diplomatic and military establishments.
In October 2013, perhaps to prevent further friction between the two countries’ armies and border troops on the disputed frontiers, a ‘Border Defence Cooperation Agreement’ was signed between India and China. Professor Brahma Chellaney of India’s Centre for Policy Research commented that this agreement was heavily biased in favour of China unduly, and thus ratified China’s preferred approach to disputed borders: ‘What is ours is ours; what is yours is negotiable’.
To be continued......