Living in denial is not how India should deal with China's incursion

Any prospect of an early resolution of the stand-off in the high Himalayas between India and China may have been dashed by symptoms that suggest that the Chinese troops appear to be digging deeper into their trenches in the areas in Ladakh’s Depsang Valley, deep inside what India considers its territory. The latest such provocation, in the form of a new tent that the Chinese troops have put up in Depsang Valley, puts paid to publicly articulated statements from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the tension was a “local issue” and would be resolved soon.  External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid too claimed that the  tension will likely have been resolved even before he leaves for Beijing to prepare for Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s upcoming visit to India. Hope, as has been famously said, isn’t a strategy, and the Indian leaders’ pronouncements only accentuate the sense that they are in public denial. According to media reports, however, the Chinese troops have put up five tents so far, which suggests that they - and the military leadership under whose orders the troops on the ground are acting  - are not making any effort to dial back the tension, and on the contrary are actively escalating it. [caption id=“attachment_516985” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Himalayas are no longer a high hurdle. Reuters[/caption] More provocatively, according to these reports, the Chinese troops are also waving banners establishing Chinese territorial rights to the area. “You are in (the) Chinese side,” proclaim these banners, which are evidently directed at the Indian troops that have set up camp nearby to keep watch on the Chinese soldiers. The Indian government’s response to the crisis so far has been one of restraint in the face of public dares from the opposition to stand up for India’s territorial integrity. On Monday, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, who served as Defence Minister, called the UPA government an assortment of colourful names to draw attention to its placidity in the face of the grave Chinese provocation. His characterisation of China - not Pakistan - as India’s real enemy may have been overly simplistic, and made with political calculations in mind. Opposition leaders, of course, have the luxury of shooting off their mouths with blustery talk, without bearing any of the responsibility that comes with actual decision-making. And yet the perception that the UPA government has been less than robust in protecting national interests, and not just vis-a-vis China, is of course more widely shared. Evidently, the Indian Army has provided the political leadership with a range of options that are  open to it if the Chinese don’t fold up their tents and leave anytime soon. Presumably these options would involve cutting off the supply lines to these troops, which would put a cap on the  number of days they can hold out here. More extreme options - of forcibly evicting the 30-or-so Chinese troops -  would also have been considered, perhaps as part of a scenario-building exercise to draw up contingency plans. But that would truly be the option of the last resort, given the very real risk of a heightened conflict that it comes with. There’s very little percentage for the Indian side in being drawn by the nose into a border conflict with a much stronger China. After all, it was an adventurist ‘forward policy’  that Jawharlal Nehru embraced  that led to the 1962 war. At that time too, Nehru was at the receiving end of much pillorying in Parliament by the opposition for his government’s naive “bhai-bhai” approach to China despite ample evidence that that brotherly sentiment was not reciprocated. And although both countries have come a long way away from 1962, the irony of today’s situation is that it is the Chinese troops that are testing Indian resolve with their own unstated “forward policy’. But having considered all of the options that the Army put on the table, the political leadership appears to have opted to go out of its way to signal to the Chinese that they are keen to avoid an escalation in the level of tension. Key interlocutors, including national security advisor Shivshankar Menon, who knows a thing or two about dealing with the Chinese and has invested much effort in building up goodwill in Beijing, are also counselling restraint. There isn’t much to be said in favour of public posturing and drawing a line in the Himalayan heights from which one might soon have to scurry back. But there’s more than ample space for conveying to the Chinese side in private that the case for an early resolution of the border dispute - which Chinese President Xi Jinping said China is keen to see - isn’t exactly advanced by China inflaming public sentiment in India by changing the de facto arrangement that has been faithfully adhered to for decades now. Perhaps this incursion was intended by the new Chinese leadership to signal Chinese frustration at the lack of progress in the talks on the border dispute despite years of negotiations.  If that is so, it reflects raw power, not sagacity, and is insensitive to the consideration that this brinkmanship game actually makes it harder for the Indian side to make any concession, even if it is on a reciprocal basis.