New Delhi: Amid the India-China border crisis, the general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Ram Madhav Wednesday said India must show the same “prowess and strength” while dealing with China as it showed with Pakistan to protect “its sovereignty of its last inch of the territory”.
“While we agree to maintain peace on the LAC, our claim extends beyond that, we must remember. We have to be firm on the LAC and, of course, on the LoC. On LoC, we showed our prowess and strength, and it’s time we show similar effectiveness on LAC, not for any conflict or war, but a country has to have the self-respect of protecting its sovereignty of its last inch of the territory,” he said.
LAC or Line of Actual Control is the boundary between India and China, while the LoC or the Line of Control is the border between India and Pakistan.
“India’s claim line is not only LAC. For instance, when the two union territories were carved in Jammu and Kashmir, we included PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) and when it comes to the UT of Ladakh, it includes Gilgit-Baltistan and Aksai Chin too,” said Madhav, while addressing a virtual interactive seminar on the India-China border issue organised by the RSS mouthpiece ‘Organiser’.
Madhav said as far as the government is concerned, there are two main priorities while dealing with the China crisis.
“To actively and proactively engage with China diplomatically and militarily so that the unfortunate incidents that happened do not happen again. But equally important priority would be to protect the last inch of our territory,” he said.
On the current stand-off, Madhav maintained India does not want to fight with China. He also stressed on the fact India is catching up with China and will soon become the third-largest economy of the world. Madhav said India is handling the current crisis keeping its stature and strength in mind.
“We don’t want to have any fight with China. We are not war-mongers but at the same time, we don’t want peace of the graveyard. We have to behave in accordance with our stature and strength. And that is exactly what our government is trying to do,” he said.
The BJP leader said many are pointing out China is being “more aggressive” than what it was in 2013, and said that it is chiefly because of an “assertive India”.
“… we have an assertive India today. We are not letting them get away with their temporary constructions or the roads that they constructed were demolished by India,” he added.
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The Narad narrative
Madhav further explained his narrative, by explaining how “bhagwan” (God) created the world. The BJP leader said when “bhagwan” created America it gave them all the wealth, while intelligence was given to Europe, natural resources to Africa, hard-working people to Asia and when India was created, God decided to give it everything.
“Then Narad ji came over and said how can you do this? Is it fair to give one thing to each and everything to one? History will judge you,” Madhav said.
He said God then asked Narad to come up with a solution to which he said, ‘create one Pakistan and China and give them to India as neighbours’.
“So we (India) have everything but we also have two neighbours,” he said, adding, for the past seven decades India has been struggling with these two nations.
Madhav further said that God asked Narad what if Narendra Modi becomes the prime minister, who will handle both the neighbours well and also take the country forward.
“To this, Narad suggested, ‘This is a very important probability, do one more thing then create an opposition party like Congress that will take care of the rest of the problem,” Madhav added.
The BJP leader also said in the 21st century, China should understand and “give up tactics of bullying”.
Madhav further said India is determined to improve its border infrastructure, and construction activities, that have been initiated in Ladakh, will continue.
Also read: India says will hold more diplomatic-level talks with China to resolve border standoff
China betrayed previous Indian govts
The BJP leader said China never wanted to settle the border dispute and it is because of this it refused to insert the word “existing” to a mutual agreement when Narasimha Rao was the prime minister.
Madhav also blamed the increasing Chinese aggression on the past political responses and the way it was handled by the previous governments.
“We wanted peace every time,” said the BJP leader. He listed that be it, Rajiv Gandhi in 1988, Narasimha Rao in 1993 or Deve Gowda — all tried to make peace with China only to be betrayed by it.
Meanwhile, the RSS’s senior functionary Ram Lal made an introductory speech, and attacked some elements for “playing at the hands of China”.
“We have to accept that China is a communist state, so clearly this is not a fight between two countries, but two ideologies. They are the communist regime and are driven by vistaar badi soch (expansionist thinking). The entire world has seen and understands how coronavirus started from there and because of their character to hide things, it spread across,” he said.
He said India, however, works on the premise that the world is one family, which is why it is even distributing medicines to the world.
Hinting at the ongoing campaign of boycotting Chinese goods, Lal said: “Chinese must definitely be concerned over what the economic impact of all this would be. There might be WTO (World Trade Organisation) rules, which countries have to abide by, but they are not applicable to individuals. What I want to buy or don’t want to buy is something everyone can decide individually.”
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It seems obvious that Hindustan is not satisfied with the Chitrol it has received at the hands of the Chinese army and wants more and it shall get more.
hahaha. admit that you are frightened to the bones to take on china because it is not pakistan or nepal. spin after spin. nobody wants an armed conflict that too at a time like this. but rhetoric and chest thumping apart , when will these ultra nationalists admit total diplomatic as well as strategic failure at the political level leading to unwanted loss of lives of our brave soldiers.