The Indian Army stocks up on body protectors and spiked clubs to deal with a medieval adversary on the Line of Actual Control

by Sandeep Unnithan

A day after the deadly June 15 clash in the Galwan Valley with the PLA in which 20 soldiers were killed, many of them with improvised spike-studded clubs, the Northern Command has begun equipping its soldiers with lightweight riot gear. The body protectors comprise padded polycarbonate inserts and protects wearers from, significantly, sharp objects and stones.

The first consignment of 500 sets of full-body protectors was airlifted from the Mumbai-based supplier to Leh where it is to be distributed among troops deployed along the LAC. One senior military analyst who did not want to be named worried over the optics of kitting the army in riot control gear. “It means changing an army man’s mindset into a policeman’s,” he says. The army also plans to equip its troops along the LAC with spiked clubs. “We won’t be surprised the next time,” an army officer said.
Two views of the anti-riot full body protector being acquired by the Indian Army

Among the deadly weapons used by the PLA troopers in the June 15 ambush were clubs studded with spikes. Indian troops had been surprised last month too when the PLA used clubs wrapped with barbed wire to target Indian troops in skirmishes along the Pangong Lake. Several Indian soldiers had been injured, some of them seriously.

The use of medieval weapons in modern warfare is not entirely unknown—the last century’s first mechanised war, World War-I, saw Allied powers and the Central powers attacking each other’s trenches to kill, maim and capture rivals. Among the improvised weapons used then were trench knives—a long knife with a studded metal handguard--and clubs studded with spikes and barbed wire designed to inflict grievous bodily harm.

The PLA’s spiked clubs killed and maimed Indian soldiers without firing a shot in a way that circumvents a key provision of multiple agreements between India and China. One of the key tenets has been the need to preserve ‘peace and tranquillity’ on the border, interpreted by both sides to mean not using firearms. The last shot was fired on the India-China border 45 years ago when a PLA patrol ambushed a party of Assam Rifles killing four soldiers.

Since the 1993 India-China boundary agreement, firearms are never brandished—the drill is for rifles to be slung on the back with the barrel pointing towards the ground. Previous standoffs between the two sides have seen wrestling bouts and fisticuffs but no weapons fired. A red line was crossed on June 15. On June 16, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested retribution. “The sacrifices of our Jawans will not go in vain,” he told state chief ministers at a video-conference. The standoff promises to be a long-drawn and messy affair.