New Delhi: Union home minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Shah at an election rally on April 9, addressing voters in the Lakhimpur parliamentary constituency where his party’s candidate Pradan Baruah is bidding for a second straight win, claimed that “China couldn’t encroach on an inch of India’s land. This kind of rule is given by (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi ji.”
This bravado is also distinct from S. Jaishankar, India’s external affairs minister telling a podcaster in February, “Look, they (China) are the bigger economy. What am I going to do? As a smaller economy, I am going to pick up a fight with the bigger economy? It is not a question of being reactionary, it’s a question of common sense….” He got slammed by critics for being “defeatist” then.
Shah’s assertion however, does not survive a fact check.
This is an extension of a continued effort by his government to deny in public, even on the face of hard evidence, that China has encroached Indian territory.
In June 2020, no sooner did news reach Delhi about China grabbing land in Ladakh, and India losing at least 20 Army personnel in a skirmish with the Chinese soldiers and several reportedly taken captive, PM Modi asserted in an all-party meeting in New Delhi without naming China, “Neither have they intruded into our border, nor has any post been taken over by them [China]. Twenty of our jawans were martyred, but those who dared Bharat Mata, they were taught a lesson.” Famously, “Na koi ghusa thaa, na koi ghusa hai.”
In the meeting on June 10, 2020, he assured the opposition leaders, “Today, we possess the capability that no one can eye even one inch of our land. India’s armed forces have the capability to move into multiple sectors at one go.”
- In July 2020, days after Modi’s claim to the Opposition leaders that the Chinese neither entered our territory nor our land was encroached, noted strategic affairs expert Colonel Ajay Shukla, quoting sources within the army in the frontlines, had told The Wire that “China’s People’s Liberation Army has refused to withdraw” in the Hot Springs area and at “Gogra Heights … about 1,500 soldiers from either side are in confrontation.”
The Wire had quoted Shukla saying, “Because the Chinese have already intruded 2-4 kms into Indian-claimed territory…the entire buffer zone will be set up in Indian territory. Yet the Chinese are refusing to concede even this”.
“According to Shukla, this means that at Hot Springs and Gogra not only is there no disengagement but, additionally, the Chinese are also refusing to vacate Indian territory.”
The Modi government didn’t deny the claims of the former Army personnel.
- What holds up Shukla’s contention is that since then, India has held at least 21 rounds of corps commander level talks with China to return to the pre-2020 status quo at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) but without success.
A report in The Hindu after the last round of talks in February 2024, had underlined, “Indian Army Chief General Manoj Pande, during the annual press conference (in January 2023), had stated that the aim of the talks was to return to the ‘status quo ante’ that existed in the middle of 2020, hinting at pre-Galwan face-off stage.”
If no Indian land was encroached by the Chinese in Ladakh, what is Modi government discussing with the Chinese? 21 rounds have been held and no breakthrough.
- In August 2020, The Hindu had reported citing intelligence inputs provided to the Modi government, that about 1,000 square km area of Ladakh came under the Chinese control after the skirmish.
A “senior government official” had told the newspaper that in the Depsang plains, from patrolling point 10-13, “the scale of Chinese control of India’s perception of the LAC stood at about 900 sq.km.”
“China has been amassing troops and fortifying its presence along the LAC since April-May (2020),” the report stated. The official had stated, “About 20 sq km in Galwan valley and 12 sq km in Hot Springs area is said to be under Chinese occupation… in Pangong Tso, the area under Chinese control is 65 sq.km, whereas in Chushul, it is 20 sq. km.”
In other words, the official had stated correct Col. Shukla’s claims made in July.
- In September 2021, Chushul counselor Konchok Stazin had pointed out that villagers had lost access to their massive grazing land near Gogra in eastern Ladakh due to growing Chinese presence in the area.
The Modi government, has, not questioned the veracity of it either.
- Additionally, in January 2023, a research paper submitted by the Leh SP at the annual Director General of Police (DGP) Conference organised by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), had also highlighted that restrictive or no patrolling by Indian Security Forces (ISFs) had resulted in India losing access to 26 out of 65 Patrolling Points (PP) in eastern Ladakh.
The Hindu said that the research paper had pointed out, “Presently, there are 65 PPs starting from Karakoram pass to Chumur which are to be patrolled regularly by the ISFs (Indian Security Forces). Out of 65 PPs, our presence is lost in 26 PPs (i.e. PP no. 5-17, 24-32, 37, 51,52,62) due to restrictive or no patrolling by the ISFs. Later on, China, forces us to accept the fact that, as, such areas have not seen the presence of ISFs or civilians since long, the Chinese were present in these areas.”
Such an approach, the paper stated, “has led to China progressively taking over Indian territory.” The news report had quoted from the paper: “This leads to a shift in the border under control of ISFs towards Indian side and a buffer zone is created in all such pockets which ultimately leads to loss of control over these areas by India. This tactic of PLA to grab land inch-by-inch is known as Salami Slicing.”
Amit Shah attended the police conference, by the way. This paper was taken down from the site.
- In January, the Indian Express had reported that Chinese soldiers stopped Indian shepherds from grazing their cattle near the LAC.
Chushul councillor Stanzin had confirmed it to the newspaper. The Hindu had also reported that Indian grazers clashed with the Chinese soldiers for not allowing them to use their grazing land, and threw rock at them.
The Modi government didn’t question those news reports.
The 2020 border exchange can be called the most serious between Indian and Chinese forces at the border in the last many decades.
In a June 17 report, Times of India had rightly called it “a worse China clash (with India) in 53 years.” In other words, the news report was referring to the Chinese aggression during the fag end of the Nehru era in 1962.
However, the Modi government remained on denial mode. In the same vein, in a written response to Parliament in February 2022, minister (of state) for external affairs, V. Muraleedharan, skirted a direct question asked by a fellow MP about the size of land that China grabbed in 2020 from India, and instead replied that China continues to occupy 38,000 square kilometre of Indian territory since 1962.
This April 9, while addressing voters in Guwahati, Shah did evoke 1960s’ Nehruvian India – a favourite dead-horse of the Modi-led BJP that it flogs from time to time as per its convenience. Shah claimed, “During the 1962 Chinese aggression, Nehru bid goodbye to Assam. However, under the Modi government, China couldn’t encroach an inch of India.”
In this election season, Shah’s aim was to evoke an old sentiment in Assamese voters – that Nehru nearly abandoned them during the 1962 aggression.
The root of that sentiment can be traced to the Jan Sangh and Socialists who were opposed to Nehru’s China policy. These anti-Nehru forces had cleverly plucked out a line from a long speech Nehru had given through the All India Radio (AIR) hours before the Chinese entered what is Arunachal Pradesh today. That line – ‘My heart goes out to the people of Assam…’ – has since been circulated by the BJP’s ideological fount, the RSS, and other anti-Congress forces in the region to drive home the point that the then prime minister had said ‘bye-bye’ to Assam and left the state to the Chinese.
There is, therefore, nothing new in Shah invoking that line from 1962 in Assam.
