Walk the tight rope, build consensus

In his statements in Parliament this week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has attempted to throw light on the challenges that India faces from China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh. He has said that China has violated the LAC and border agreements and has attempted to unilaterally alter the status quo along the line. Singh admitted that China had stopped the Indian Army from patrolling some areas near the LAC and that this was the main reason for the ongoing stand-off and tensions. His statements are significant as they bring some clarity to an issue that saw much fudging of facts at the highest levels of India’s political and security establishment. For six weeks in May-June, the military top brass insisted that the situation along the LAC was under control. Then, days after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) brutally killed 20 Indian soldiers at the Galwan Valley, laying bare China’s intrusion, even occupation of areas on the Indian side of the LAC, Prime Minister Narendra Modi used an all-party meeting to claim on television that no intrusion had taken place, nor were any intruders present on our side of the LAC. Singh’s statements in Parliament are a welcome step toward setting the record straight, difficult though it is to walk back the prime minister’s words and their diplomatic consequences.

However, there were important issues on which even Singh was silent. He drew attention to the 38,000 sq km of territory in Aksai Chin that is under Chinese occupation, the 5,180 sq km of territory that Pakistan illegally ceded to China in 1963, and 90,000 sq km of land in Arunachal Pradesh that Beijing claims. But he made no mention of the roughly 1,000 sq km of territory in Ladakh that China is said to have taken control of since May, most of it in the Depsang plains, which is of crucial strategic import for India.

Singh may have rightly been cautious in sharing information on ongoing military operations. While he must be judicious in sharing such information, opacity merely where it concerns inconvenient facts is not the best way forward. Singh should call a meeting of opposition parties where such information can be shared. It will provide the government an opportunity to build a consensus before taking its next steps. While stressing India’s commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with China, Singh stated that India would defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. He has rightly stated loud and clear that India will not allow China to occupy Indian territory. He must now walk the talk to ensure that China returns to the status quo along the LAC as it existed in mid-April.