New Delhi: Like most relationships in international diplomacy, the India-China relationship is a strange one with no clear label to define it yet. It is a poised and quiet one, and not entirely unpleasant despite efforts of global powers to pit the Indian elephant against the Chinese dragon.
Since decades, due to the mutual efforts of the two Asian giants, not a single bullet has been fired on the about 4,000 km long Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de-facto border between India and China.
But on Saturday, fisticuffs took place between patrolling soldiers of the Indian Army and the PLA near the 5,000 metre altitude Naku La pass in north Sikkim, injuring soldiers from both sides. According to one source, tensions between the two armies had been brewing for the last couple of days and the latest incident is not the only one. However, it could not be independently confirmed.
“Such incidents are not extraordinary. They keep on happening from time to time. It takes just a single hot-blooded soldier on either side to spark it off. Not much should be read into such brawls,” a serving Indian army officer, who was earlier deployed in north Sikkim, told ETV Bharat on condition of anonymity.
“The entire area is a high-altitude plateau where there are no permanent stations. Our soldiers patrol it like the PLA. Many a time, the patrols come across each other and the two teams depart often after exchanging pleasantries and even cigarettes and chocolates.”
Most of the routine Border Personnel Meets (BPM)—a mechanism to defuse unwanted situations over frequent transgressions and border incidents—are also marked with marked warmth. The local commanders of the two armies meet at five designated points along the border at Daulat Beg Oldie (Ladakh), Spanngur Gap (Ladakh), Bum-La (Arunachal Pradesh), Nathu-La (Sikkim) and Kibithu (Arunachal Pradesh).
Confirming Saturday’s incident, a spokesperson of the Indian Army’s Eastern Command said: “Temporary and short duration face-offs between border guarding troops do occur as boundaries are not resolved… Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops.”
And sometimes a Doklam does happen. Also located across Sikkim, the Doklam plateau saw the two sides facing each other in a 73-day-long stubborn standoff in 2017 before mutual de-escalation.
The major reason for such border incidents—numbering hundreds every year—is because of the enigma that is the LAC. Both the Indian Army and the PLA have their own perception of where the LAC lies.
While India abides by the McMahon Line, drawn in 1914, China has refused to formally acknowledge the McMahon Line and accordingly lays claim to 65,000 sq km of territory in Arunachal Pradesh which it calls “Southern Tibet”.
The imaginary line was drawn on the basis of alignment with the mountain crest in the region in accordance with the watershed principle and in many places the McMahon Line and the mountain crest line does not align.
Of late border flare-ups have increased in frequency because Indian Army patrol teams now can cover considerable distances by vehicles, which was not the case earlier. Like China’s roads, the Indian government is pursuing a plan to build roads right up to the LAC.
Significantly, four months back in the second week of January, top military officials from the Indian Army’s Northern and Eastern Commands—the designated commands facing the Chinese frontier—visited China and met their PLA counterparts in an effort to further strengthen the existing border dispute resolution mechanism.
The Indo-China straddles five states—Arunachal Pradesh (1,126 km), Uttarakhand (345 km), Jammu and Kashmir (1,597 km), Himachal Pradesh (260 km) and Sikkim (198 km).
