Name China as aggressor, Nehru did so in 1962: Congress tells PM Modi

Congress on Saturday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to look ‘eye-to-eye’ at China and tell them to retreat from their brazen illegal occupation of Indian territory in Ladakh.

Seeking to counter BJP’s sustained attack on first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Congress also pointed out that Nehru had rejected China’s incursions in Ladakh rejecting the then Premier Zhou Enlai’s offer to withdraw troops 20 kms from the territories it had claimed in 1959.

“There is no sense or meaning in the Chinese offer to withdraw twenty kilometers from what they call ‘line of actual control’. What is this ‘line of control’? Is this the line they have created by aggression since the beginning of September,” Nehru had told his Chinese counterpart after the 1962 war.

Congress leader Kapil Sibal quoted extensively from Nehru’s correspondence with Zhou, contending that even the then Prime Minister had told China in unequivocal terms that the conditions set by the aggressor were unacceptable.

“The demand for India to accept the Chinese 1959 line is a demand to which India will never submit, whatever the consequences and however long and hard the struggle may be,” Nehru had told Zhou.

Sibal said Nehru had stood up to China at a time when India was not a nuclear power nor had a modern army and focussed on feeding its poor and re-distributing land.

“We are today a modern nation. We are a warfare machinery. We are a nuclear power,” Sibal said wondering what stopped Modi from standing up to China.

“Why is the Prime Minister reluctant to name China as the aggressor? We are with the Prime Minister, he should make clear statements that India will not accept China’s occupation of the Galwan Valley, or at Y-Junction, or at Pangong Tso or at Finger 4 to Finger 8,” Sibal said.

While Congress has kept up the attack on the Modi government after violent clashes at Galwan Valley last month left 20 Indian troops dead, BJP has been targeting Nehru for ceding Aksai Chin region to China.