The four rounds of military level talks and the simultaneous diplomatic parleys that have been conducted till now have proved little effective in de-escalation of the raging tension between India and China kicked off by the Galwan Valley flare-up. And that the situation is going to get more murkier is evident from China’s latest claims on Pangong Lake areas. From the very beginning, there was a distinct hint that the bullying neighbour will leave no stone unturned to prolong the dispute and after this latest illogical claim, the mischief is clear as daylight- a sustained sticking to the ‘revised status quo strategy’, thereby keeping alive the tension at any cost.

Escalation of the current tension has its genesis in the remark made by Chinese ambassador to India Sun Weidong at a webinar on Thursday which is actually a ‘claim’ presented in an round-about manner that over the Pangong Lake area where Chinese troops have reportedly occupied 8 km within India-claimed lines, belongs to them. This is a most weird claim and as per diplomatic parlance, it falls under the category of the notorious ‘salami-slicing tactics’ which is a methodology adopted by the aggressor country while claiming a newer territory and in the process artificially engineering the dispute so vehemently that the territory becomes “disputed”. Various defence analysts as well as former hierarchies of the Indian Army have detected this  game plan of China and it needs taking into account the timing of the claim which has been purposefully kept just ahead of the 5^th round of military talks slated next week. The only target is to create an atmosphere ahead of the talks so that India somehow gets cornered and ends up ceding a part of the said area. Various military veterans are attributing the cause of this renewed Chinese aggression to ‘mishandling’ of the issue by the country’s political leadership. It will be a real test now for India to keep intact the territorial sovereignty of the country since the above tactic, rated among the most lethal in the grammar of bilateral dispute has been applied by the hostile neighbour. It will hardly be surprising if China goes on to add newer claims in the same fashion, since it shares a long line of boundary comprising hundreds of kilometres with India.

 

It will be foolhardy to make presumptions whether a war is going to be the culmination point of the Indo-China dispute or whether India will end up victorious if it’s so. For the time being the only hope for the country is the support from its friends across the globe. A global consensus against Chinese notoriety must be built which should be fast and voluminous. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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