Bharat Bhushan: China sizes up PM Modi and India // Mohan Guruswamy: Why the Chinese are laughing at us

The PMO has clarified, “As regards transgression of LAC, it was clearly stated that the violence in Galwan on 15 June arose because (the) Chinese side was seeking to erect structures just across the LAC and refused to desist from such actions.” The unthinkable implication is that Indian soldiers had themselves transgressed the LAC and thus opened themselves to the attack with nail-spiked batons by the PLA... The “Akhand Bharat” bombast of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has also been exposed

Even before the Ladakh crisis, China must have already had a measure of the man; after all Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met President Xi Jinping eighteen times and visited that country five times - more than any other Indian prime minister. Now after the PM has said there were no Chinese incursions into Indian territory in Ladakh, they may have sized up India too - as a country hesitant to take on its might.

Modi blows hot air at China in a rally in Arunachal Pradesh // Vajpayee in 2003

Mohan Guruswamy: Why the Chinese are laughing at us

The Ladakh stand-off has led to protests to demand a ban on all products from China. Here’s why a boycott, even a social one, is both farcical and impractical..

The Chinese may well have convinced Prime Minister Modi that he was personally destined to take Sino-Indian relations to greater heights. A revealing incident on May 16, 2015 had PM Modi addressing the Indian expatriate community in Shanghai. He recalled President Xi telling him on his Indian visit that when Hiuen Tsang, the seventh century Buddhist monk had visited India: “Hiuen Tsang had stayed in my village and when he returned he stayed in his (President Xi’s) village in Xian. There is a big Buddhist temple there. Yesterday he took me there and showed me the book written by Hiuen Tsang. He showed me the page which has a description of my village in Chinese script.”

Bubbling with enthusiasm (the video is on YouTube), he claimed, “When there is such affinity (aatmiyata), such proximity (nikatata), such brotherhood (bhaichaara) then this amounts to conventional diplomacy “plus one”. And it will take time for many to understand [the significance of] this “plus one”.” The Chinese must have smiled gleefully. He had taken the bait. In June 2020, five years later, they reeled him in.

In a series of successful incursions to gain strategic territory along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), China has cut India’s national security rhetoric to size. Otherwise a popular leader, in the face of China’s moves in Ladakh Prime Minister Modi seems wanting. The “Akhand Bharat” bombast of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has also been exposed. The damage to Prime Minister Modi’s image may be irreparable because he had consciously moved the centre of gravity of domestic politics to a national security discourse; a carefully crafted narrative that paid him and his party handsome electoral dividends.

After his first tenure, such a discourse almost became an electoral imperative for hiding lapses in governance. In the 2019 general election, Prime Minister Modi urged young first-time voters to cast their vote for the brave soldier guarding India’s borders. He contrasted his decision to bomb Balakot with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s inaction after the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008. He claimed that the UPA had refused to act on military options presented by the armed forces. The “blood of the armed forces was boiling,” Modi said but Delhi was lying on a “cold bed”. By supporting the air strikes against Pakistan, he claimed, he had refused to tie the “hands and legs” of the Indian armed forces.

Prime Minister Modi can legitimately be asked the same questions now after the Chinese aggression in Ladakh. The national security doctrine worked very well in domestic politics against a relatively weak adversary like Pakistan. It is not proving quite so serviceable against China. The prime minister’s glib statement that “neither has anyone intruded into our border, nor is any intruder there and nor is any of our [border] posts occupied by someone else,” was so inconsistent with facts that it drew the ire of a bewildered strategic community and Opposition leaders.

Subsequent explanation by the PMO to counter “mischievous interpretation” of the statement has not cleared the misgivings. The PMO has clarified, “As regards transgression of LAC, it was clearly stated that the violence in Galwan on 15 June arose because (the) Chinese side was seeking to erect structures just across the LAC and refused to desist from such actions.” The unthinkable implication is that Indian soldiers had themselves transgressed the LAC and thus opened themselves to the attack with nail-spiked batons by the PLA. The Galwan fiasco shows the Modi government’s diplomatic, strategic and tactical failure. Indian diplomats were unable to leverage the fact of Modi, having engaged with China and its top leadership more intensively than any other prime minister in the past, to give a new impetus to the Sino-Indian border talks.

Given the considerable power asymmetry between India and China there was strategic folly in some of the openly aggressive postures adopted by those in the government. India’s concerns on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are well known but they were amplified by speeches in Parliament threatening to reclaim Aksai Chin and Gilgit-Baltistan through which the CPEC passes. Nullifying Article 370, issuing new maps of Jammu and Kashmir and the Union territory of Ladakh without thinking of the geo-political consequences further raised unnecessary suspicion. The upgradation of border infrastructure along the LAC may also have been read against this background by Beijing. One wonders what advice was given to the government on these issues, especially the surgery conducted on J&K, by the heavily over-staffed National Security Council.

The tactical error in trying to “evict China” from Disputed Territory and failing to do so is evident on the ground. Subsequent subterfuge about the actual ground situation, under-playing the Chinese reaction and making statements to appease a domestic constituency have made matters worse. One would expect that these misadventures in Ladakh would have prompted the PM to delink domestic politics from the BJP’s national security rhetoric. But he is already deploying the recent border incidents in the run up to the Bihar elections adding to it a distinct local flavour. While inaugurating the Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyan for migrant workers in Bihar’s Khagaria district on June 20, he said, “Today when I speak to the people of Bihar, I will say the valour was of Bihar Regiment. Every Bihari is proud of it. I pay tribute to the brave hearts.”

The question one must ask is: Will the image of the leader with a self-confessed “56-inch chest” survive or will he look increasingly like a beaten and worn out politician, as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did after 1962?

https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/china-sizes-up-pm-modi-and-india-120062200187_1.html

see also

Lt Gen H. S. Panag: India’s Fingers have come under Chinese boots. Denial won’t help / Colonel S Dinny: How China changed status quo

Uyghur leader’s statement on India’s withdrawal of his visa / India denies visa to Tiananmen activist Lu Jinghua
Modi blows hot air at China in a rally in Arunachal Pradesh // Vajpayee in 2003