Kashmir Disputed Territory. Photo Credit: UT AustinDecember 01, 2009, (Sawf News) - India is rightly responding to Chinese belligerence over the two countries border dispute with calm and poise, preferring to act rather than react.
Recently the Chinese Army stopped construction of a border road linking two villages in Demchok in south-east Leh in Ladakh. The road was being built under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on the Indian controlled side of the LAC. When the Chinese objected, J&K state authorities stopped construction not wanting to risk a border incident. The PLA is not beyond opening machine gun fire and massacring Indians because it perceives them to be in disputed territory, as it did at Nathu La in 1967.
There are also reports that China is building 27 additional new airstrips along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Quizzed about the new airstrips, minister of state for defense M M Pallam Raju told reporters.
"I don't think we need to be unnecessarily alarmed. As a regional power, they (China) will strengthen their infrastructure. They will procure their arms and we are doing what we have to do for strengthening our line."
Raju was equally cool about the Chinese army stopping road construction.
"I think some of the things happen when there is a difference of perception. I guess that must be the reason," he said.
Raju seems to have taken inspiration from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who during his recent visit to the US, set the tone for the Indian response to Chinese attempts to disrupt Indian relations with the US when he told a gathering of American policy makers and intellectuals at think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR):
"World has to come to terms with the peaceful rise of China… However, there is a certain assertiveness on the part of China. I am unable to understand it. It should be taken note of." Singh said in what definitely was the most powerful understatement that I have heard.
The statement was a delectable blend of diplomatic finesse and firmness.
India is already doing what it should be doing under the circumstances, preparing for all eventualities.
Plugging gaps in our defenses will make the Chinese eventually shut up and unlike Nehru, Manmohan Singh is not giving the autocrats in Beijing even the semblance of a justification to attack India in the meantime. Not that the Chinese would accomplish much if they did.
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