New Delhi: Award winning documentary filmmaker and author Iqbal Chand Malhotra’s latest book Red Fear: The China Threat traces the political and military confrontations between India and China from the 15th to the 21st century.
The book, published by Bloomsbury, is due to be released on 7 November on SoftCover, ThePrint’s e-venue to launch select non-fiction books.
Malhotra argues that contrary to popular accounts of shared interests in the past, China and India’s relationship has been confrontational for over six centuries.
The book gains prominence in the post Galwan stand-off, especially as tensions continue to simmer along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh. The author says that the challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reminiscent of the one faced by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960. How Modi will respond to this challenge now will define India’s relationship with China as well as its position in the world, the book argues.
Prior to writing his latest book, Malhotra had travelled to China and Tibet.
Red Fear: The China Threat dwells on the reasons behind China’s anger against India since the 15th century. It explores questions such as what led to the first armed encounter between Indian and Chinese troops in China’s Dinghai town in July 1840 and whether Stalin had directed Mao to order the invasion of Aksai Chin in 1949.
It also explores how the courage to hold Nathu La had inspired India’s response in Sumdorong Chu in 1986 and 1987.
The book talks about the web of “deceit and lies” behind China’s land grab and water theft in the Himalayas and Karakoram mountain ranges since 1950. It also uses Vedic philosophy to argue that the year 2020 marks the 60th year of a cycle that began in 1960.
This is Malhotra’s second book after his bestseller Kashmir’s Untold Story: Declassified which he had co-authored with Maroof Raza in 2019.
Malhotra has also directed three award-winning feature documentaries. He is a member of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and had served on the panel of jurors for the Emmys. He is currently the chairman and producer at AIM Television Pvt. Ltd.
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This book contains interesting historical facts, but alas unfortunately mis-interpreted by an author who is a historiography amateur. The saving grace of this failed book is that the historical facts presented by its amateur author effectively slaps Arun Shourie in his face for Shourie’s psychopathic attempt to read Nehru’s mind in “Self-Deception”.