India, China stand-off in Ladakh ends but at what cost to India?

At first blush, the news of an end to the 20-day-long border stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in the Ladakh region will be welcomed to the extent that it has averted the very real possibility of a skirmish in the high Himalayas. When troops of the two countries, with an enormous trust deficit to bridge, stand eyeball-to-eyeball in confrontation, as they have been since the 15 April incursion by Chinese troops into notionally Indian territory, the scope for things getting out of hand gets dramatically heightened. Neither India nor China would have been well-served by a border skirmish - or even just a protracted stand-off - which is perhaps why they cranked the levers of military diplomacy to de-escalate the tension. The precise details of the terms of agreement under which both Chinese and Indian troops pulled back from the brink aren’t known yet. Nor is it immediately clear what caused the Chinese to yield ground when for much of these past 20 days, they had remained unyielding in their claim that they had not ingressed into Indian territory, and therefore saw no compelling reason to retreat. It’s entirely possible that the signals that India sent in the past couple of days - suggesting that External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s upcoming visit to China might be deferred because the Chinese response to Indian objections on the incursion had been less than satisfactory - have yielded dividends. As analysts have consistently argued, and as Firstpost too has noted earlier, India was not without diplomatic options in facing up to the Chinese challenge. It didn’t need India to ratchet up the military rhetoric, which is the false framework set up by some analysts who favoured a softly-softly approach to China. [caption id=“attachment_753885” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  Chinese troops drive home a stern message to India. PTI[/caption] Khurshid’s visit was tied up with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to India later this month, and the fact that the Indian diplomatic establishment even gave voice to the possibility of putting things on hold may have signalled to the Chinese that they had perhaps overreached this time. Even in this day and age, social interactions in the Chinese value system revolve around the concept of “gaining” or “losing” face, and the prospect, however remote it may have been, of having Premier Li’s visit postponed would have been acutely embarrassing to both sides, but particularly for the Chinese. It was important, therefore, for the Indian side to convey to the Chinese that the incursion into what India considers its territory was a matter too grave for both sides to carry on with business as usual on other fronts. The UPA government had failed abysmally to do this in the first two weeks of the stand-off. Its response then had been to play down the tension, and even trot out alibis for China’s indefensible action. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for instance, dismissed it as a “localised” problem, despite the growing perception that the Chinese ingress appeared to have Beijing’s backing. Khurshid too made light of the incursion by likening it to the pimply eruptions on the otherwise “beautiful face” of Sino-Indian relations, which could be remedied by the application of cosmetic creams. In their main, formulations like these only signalled weakness, which as Firstpost has noted earlier, is a losing strategy to the extent that it emboldened the Chinese to dig their heels in. Having said all of that, the few details that are known of the terms of disengagement of the troops on both sides in the Daulet Beg Oldi region in Ladakh give reason to believe that the Chinese may have successfully extracted concessions from the Indian side in a manner that compromises India’s claims over the territory. In the official narrative from the Indian side, both the armies had agreed to withdraw to their previous positions. But then, as even the Defence Ministry had acknowledged, Chinese troops had ingressed 19 km inside Indian territory, so the only thing that negotiated was their unconditional pullout. Why, for instance, did the Indian troops too have to pull back - if they were only on Indian territory. Media reports suggest that some kind of a “quid pro quo”  may have greased the tracks to a de-escalation. “There was some give-and-take,” an unidentified source is quoted as saying. “There had to be some face-saver for the Chinese.” This begs the obvious question: what exactly did India “give” to secure the pullout of Chinese troops from what was notionally Indian territory? If, as the Defence Ministry claims, the Chinese troops were in Indian territory, why was there a need to “give” anything in the first place - when the only “wrong” that needed to be remedied was the Chinese provocation? Since the Chinese side had demanded the demolition of some forward shelter posts put up by the Indian side close to the border, and the de-activation of the advanced landing facility in the region, it gives reason to wonder if these were among the “conditions” that India has yielded ground on. If that is the case - and this remains to be validated - India may have yielded to Chinese rights to determine what happens even on what India considers its territory. This amounts to a significant change from the status quo as has prevailed since the 1962 war between the two sides. And particularly in recent years, China has ramped up its road-building and infrastructure development on its side of the fence, in a manner that dramatically alters its ability to mobilise its troops in the unlikely event of a conflict. For India to put its own “development’ activities of a similar nature on hold as the price for securing the pullout of Chinese troops - from notionally Indian territory - amounts to ‘rewarding’ China for its provocation. To that extent, while the de-escalation of the tension between Indian and Chinese troops in the Ladakh region gives cause for relief, the  government  ought to come clean on the price it paid - if it did at all - to secure that relief. It should simultaneously give consideration to the prospect of averting similar Chinese adventurism along the border. If the past 20 days hold any lesson at all, it is that Chinese intentions aren’t always benign, and far from yielding cravenly to every provocation, the Indian side ought to get real about protecting its territorial and other interests in what is admittedly India’s most complex and challenging relationship.