By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, May 11: Border tensions flared up as two incidents of face-off between Indian and Chinese troops escalated in Eastern Ladakh on May 5, and another at Naku la, Sikkim, on Saturday. Both the incidents of hand-to-hand combat and stone-pelting have left several soldiers on both sides injured. Sources said that the face-off in Eastern Ladakh happened during the intervening night between May 5 & 6 near Pangong Tso. The recent Naku la incident took place at a remote crossing close to Tibet whereby eleven soldiers, four Indians and seven Chinese, were reported to have been injured.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. It was stone-throwing and arguments that ended in a fistfight,” Indian army spokesman Mandeep Hooda said of the Naku la incident on Sunday. Troops disengaged from the site after the dispute was resolved through dialogue and interaction at a local level. A total of 150 soldiers were reported to have been involved in the face-off on Saturday.
The Ladakh stand-off was also resolved locally on the morning of May 6. Around 200 personnel from both sides clashed as several soldiers suffered minor injuries. The Pangong Lake has seen many such incidents in 2017 and 2019.
The 3,448 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) has seen many face-offs as the de-facto line between the two nuclear power nations has differing claims of ownership. The two sides engaged in a 73-day stand-off on the disputed Doklam plateau, near the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction in 2017. Chinese military project of constructing a metalled road in the disputed Doklam region gave rise to months-long stand-off as it would give them a tactical upper-hand in the so-called “Chicken’s neck” region that connects Indian north-eastern states to the rest of India. The relation between the two Asian giants improved after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the Wuhan summit following talks with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2018.
In early January, Indian Army Chief Gen. Manoj Naravane said that the army was preparing advanced weaponry to the northern borders. India shares the border with China, Nepal and Bhutan on the northern front where border tension has been high in the last decades “We have been giving attention to our western front in the past. The northern front now also requires an equal amount of attention,” the Army chief remarked.
According to the information given in the Indian Parliament in Nov 2019, there were 1,025 transgressions by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army along the LAC between 2016 and 2018. There were 273 transgressions in 2016, 426 in 2017 and 326 in 2018, the government had informed.
One Response
The border disputes of India with her neighbouring countries are legacy of British Raj. With the introduction of the concept of nation state in the late 19th and early 20th century, India has got embroiled in border dispute with every neighbour it shares border with. Kashmir with Pakistan, Lipulekh with Nepal, Gelegphu with Bhutan, Ladakh, Sikkim , Arunachal with TAR, Bangladesh also. She has to solve these dispute through diplomacy and wisdom in order to have sustained goodwill among these nations specially the the small ones.