by Bharat Karnad

Retreating in the face of an enemy’s onslaught may be a tactical necessity. Withdrawing in anticipation of the situation getting sticky is, inherently, bad strategy but, as the record shows, it is one the Indian government reflexively follows when dealing with China. In eastern Ladakh, the Narendra Modi regime’s play safe-attitude combined with the army brass’ over-caution are allowing India’s main adversary and rival, China, to realise its expansive claims with minimum fuss and little violence. An undefined border—whatever the ‘peace and tranquillity’ kind of agreements may say—permits military contestation and territorial gain-seeking. But it is Beijing that has shown the strategic foresight and the stomach to exploit it, leaving a disadvantaged India to always react, to scramble to recover lost ground.

The High Cost of A Loose China Policy

Maybe it is too much to expect the country’s political leaders and their handmaidens manning the apparatus of state—the generalist civil servants and diplomats with only passing knowledge of military affairs—to be mindful of, and learn from, the country’s own historical experience of dealing with China.

It is inexcusable, however, for the Indian armed services to act innocent of the methods that fetched them success against the People’s Liberation Army in the past.

The Approach In The Past

In September 1967, when India was still suffering from the trauma of defeat in the 1962 War, the 17 Mountain Division stopped the PLA cold. An Indian unit marking the disputed border at Nathu La with cantina wire was challenged by PLA troops, a scuffle ensued, the roughed up Chinese soldiers withdrew to their lines and then, without warning, opened up with heavy machine-gun fire killing and injuring many Indian soldiers. Rearing for a fight, the redoubtable Major General Sagat Singh, commander, 17 Mountain Division, responded by having his artillery destroy a series of Chinese bunkers with accurate fire that had the PLA crying for talks. The same Sagat Singh was the unheralded hero of the 1971 Bangladesh War. As Lieutenant General commanding IV Corps in an operation that he thought up on the spot, which was violative of his operational orders to stay put on the Meghna River, he heli-lifted his forces across it for the dash to Dhaka.

Exactly twenty years later, the army under General Krishnaswamy Sundarji, pretending to assess the time to mobilise forces in the northeast – Operation Chequerboard – began deployments. China took the bait, hinted at war, but the PLA found itself over-matched by the speedy and massive Indian concentration – some 10 Divisions in all in Arunachal and Assam, three of them around Wangdung where there was trouble brewing.

The Chinese once again beat a retreat and called for negotiations that eventuated in the 1993 ‘peace and tranquillity on the border’ accord. 

The Choices Made This Summer

Now fast-forward to summer 2020. The Indian government and army seem to have disregarded the intelligence generated by Indian satellites over the previous 8-10 months depicting considerable military activity and build-up by the PLA on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control. The encroachments were in the area between terrain features – Finger 4 and Finger 8, on the northern shore of the Pangong Lake, upriver in the Galwan Valley and, ignoring the ‘no man’s land’, right smack on the LAC itself in the Gogra and Hot Springs areas. The Indian and Chinese Corps commanders met on June 6 to sort out matters. But on June 15, a detachment of the 16 Bihar Regiment went, boy scout fashion, to its doom. Intending to verify if the PLA had kept its promise and decamped from the Galwan, its members were bludgeoned by PLA troops wielding medieval era weapons – rods with embedded steel spikes, etc,

The Indian soldiers, unaware of the PLA’s penchant for springing local surprises, such as initiating hostilities with machine-gun fire at Nathu La in 1967, were unprepared for one when they faced a Chinese attack with nail-studded batons.

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar’s remonstrations and demand for the restoration of the status quo ante to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on June 17 elicited a straight-faced, formal, claim over all of the Galwan Valley and a counter-ask that the intruding Indian soldiers get out of Chinese territory forthwith. To indicate it meant business, and as a coercive tactic, China also positioned two brigades of artillery and armour, in the Depsang plains, threatening to open yet another sub-sector front.

In the larger context—despite hundreds of unresisted PLA incursions, incremental annexations amounting to a loss of as much 1,300 square kilometres of Indian territory in the new millennium, and being periodically presented with newer territorial faits accomplis—the Indian army and government by doing nothing have, in effect, accepted a reshaped map of Ladakh favouring China.