External affairs minister S Jaishankar’s statement in Parliament on the recent agreement between India and China should have been a moment of celebration. After all, the two countries agreed to disengage their troops in Depsang and Demchok, the last areas of eastern Ladakh where Indian and Chinese troops were face-to-face after a nearly five-year-long confrontation.
So why has it left so many people, especially those within India’s strategic and foreign policy community, uneasy? Many believe that India has agreed to a disadvantageous military disengagement that not only falls far short of India’s stated goal of restoring the April 2020 status quo but also represents our biggest territorial setback since 1962.
But first, the good news.
India-China disengagement process
Chinese troops had been blocking Indian patrols since May 2020 at the Bottleneck junction in the strategic Depsang plains, 19 km deep past what we define as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The Chinese were preventing our troops from accessing five longstanding patrolling locations. In Demchok, a further three patrolling points were out of bounds for India, and nomadic Indian herders were also prevented from accessing traditional grazing grounds by the Chinese.
The EAM stated that at least in Depsang and Demchok, India and China have agreed to “ensure patrolling as in the past to the relevant patrolling points” and “resumption of grazing by our civilians”. This means that Indian troops should be able to resume patrolling to those points, although these patrols will now be synchronised with Chinese ones. Each side will reportedly send one patrol per week to Depsang and Demchok, alternating to prevent a clash.
The problem lies with the “buffer zones” that India has ceded in Galwan, Gogra, Hot Springs, and Pangong Tso, which is far from restoring the status quo. Retired Major Generals Jagatbir Singh and VK Singh have written that India has agreed to create buffer zones that have “the Chinese stepping back a few kilometres while remaining within India-claimed lines” while Indian patrols are denied access to their patrolling points in the buffer zones. In other words, the buffer zones lie entirely within India’s perception of the LAC.
There are also credible reports that India will permit Chinese patrols in Yangtse, Arunachal Pradesh, near the strategic town of Tawang. On 9 December 2022, Indian soldiers foiled a large-scale attempt by hundreds of Chinese soldiers to cross the LAC in the eastern sector. If the Chinese are being allowed to patrol this sensitive area, it would represent a further concession by India.
There is an unexplained gap in the positions of the Indian Army and the Ministry of External Affairs. On 22 October, Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi clearly stated: “As far as we are concerned, we want to go back to the status quo of April 2020… thereafter we will be looking at disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of the LAC.” On the other hand, the EAM’s statement says: “In a few other places where friction occurred in 2020, steps of a temporary and limited nature were worked out, based on local conditions, to obviate the possibility of further friction.”
These positions are not compatible.
Indeed, Jaishankar has attempted to disguise this major reversal by using classic bureaucratese, saying, “Earlier governments have agreed to a range of steps to defuse situations… including offers on our side to create demilitarised zones, limited non-patrolling areas…”
In reality, whether it was the 1986 Sumdorong Chu confrontation or the 2013 Depsang intrusion, talks led to the complete restoration of the status quo. Former Indian Ambassador to China Ashok Kantha has written that there were no such compromises in the resolution of Sumdorong Chu and others have privately confirmed that the 2013 Depsang agreement was similar.
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Modi govt is unreliable
There are many reasons to be suspicious of the Modi government. Following the two-month-long 2017 Doklam standoff, in which Indian soldiers blocked the Chinese from building a road on Bhutanese territory, the Modi government presented the disengagement as a major military triumph.
Since then, the Chinese have cemented their hold on the Doklam plateau, building villages and roads in Bhutanese territory and carrying out a major military buildup. An all-weather road cutting through Bhutan’s Amu Chu river basin has brought the Chinese close to the Jampheri ridge that overlooks the vulnerable Siliguri Corridor connecting eastern and northeastern India.
According to former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, the lesson that the Chinese took away from Doklam was that “as long as the Indian government could walk away with a propaganda victory, they could actually make gains and change the outcomes on the ground.”
The buck for this strategic setback stops with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The PM spent two decades cosying up to China. As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi was lavishly hosted three times by the country. As PM, he made five official trips to China and held 18 meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping before 2020. This included a friendly jhoola session on the banks of the Sabarmati on the PM’s 64th birthday—just as Chinese troops were making ingress into Chumar.
In 2015, Modi extolled the feelings of “affinity”, “intimacy”, and “brotherhood” between Xi and him. He described the relationship as “Plus One”, adding that it would take time for the uncomprehending to understand this “Plus One”.
Unfortunately, the whole world has understood that “Plus One” stands for gullibility and naïveté, which soon led to yet another strategic surprise for India. The sad reality is that the Modi government no longer mentions the April 2020 status quo as its objective.
Obviously, the PM cannot be relied upon to prioritise the nation’s interests above his own. The government must take Parliament into confidence, as previous prime ministers have done, by allowing a discussion on this crucial phase of our national security.
Kantha himself has highlighted instances where the Opposition was engaged on sensitive matters. Specifically, in November 1996 and April 2006, he was instructed to brief the Opposition—primarily the BJP—on critical negotiations with China. It is time for India to act as confident great powers do, not as an insecure sultanate.
Amitabh Dubey is a Congress member. He tweets @dubeyamitabh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)