Arunachal-China dispute: Real issues lost in rhetoric

A common refrain of militant groups in the Northeast, to somehow justify their armed rebellion, is that the region gets national attention only when it creates ruckus or threatens to secede.

Studies of representation of Northeast in mainland media, done over the years, will tell that the assessment is not entirely baseless.

Militancy is a dominant theme in the national narrative about the multi-ethnic region. Exception to this narrative is Arunachal Pradesh, the only seven-sister state which has not spawned home-grown insurgency. In case of Arunachal, China is the nation’s strongest emotional-connect with the state.

It immediately gets ample space in national discourse when there is a mention about a threat to it from China.  Only last month BJP MP from Arunachal East Tapir Gao catapulted the northeastern state into the nation’s collective consciousness when he urged the Lok Sabha, “Please don’t allow the next Doklam in Arunachal Pradesh as China has encroached more than 50 km of land of the state.”

Gao had flagged similar concern in September too. He had then claimed that Chinese troops entered over 75 km inside Indian territory in Arunachal’s Anjaw district and constructed a makeshift wooden bridge over a stream.

On both the occasions, Indian army denied any intrusion.

Even in the past, parliamentarians from Arunachal Pradesh, including Gao, had cried wolf over Chinese threats, which were later found to be false alarms.

Interestingly, back home in Arunachal Pradesh, China has never been an emotive political issue.

“China factor never dominates state politics. Even local media do not play up the threat as much as it is done by the national media,” said Dipankar Roy, executive editor of the Shillong Times, who has been covering the Northeast for over three decades.

But such claims, irrespective of their veracity, always get traction in national politics and help the squealing MPs get good press, and more importantly, boost their stature as a vocal leader, a trait the MPs of the region are often unduly accused of lacking.

The BJP in its previous role as opposition had always seized such claims of the Arunachal parliamentarians to troll the government of the day. Gao and his party colleague and fellow MP from Arunachal Pradesh Kiren Rijiju used to frequently raise the issue of alleged incursion by China into the country’s easternmost state to humiliate the erstwhile Congress government.

Rijiju claimed in Parliament in 2014 that Chinese army transgressed the India-China border a total of 1,278 times between 2010 and 2013, when the Congress was in power.

In a paradoxical turn of the political wheel, the BJP is now busy downplaying the claims of its own member and the Congress is accusing the BJP of going soft on China.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh earlier this month told the Lok Sabha that the soldiers of both China and India sometimes crossed over to territories claimed by each other because the two sides had different perceptions about Line of Actual Control, which served as the de facto boundary between the two neighbours.

Singh was responding to Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who had, taking a cue from Gao, raised the issue of incursions by China’s People’s Liberation Army into Indian territories.

It’s intriguing that Gao, who is also the president of the Arunachal unit of the BJP, has flagged the issue at this juncture, much to the chagrin of his own party.

One simplistic assessment could be that he is not happy with the party for giving ministerial berth to Rijiju, who switched party loyalties several times and is much junior to him in the BJP.

Ground reality

Beyond politics and rhetoric, there is a strange case of undefined and ambiguous 1,030 km border that Arunachal shares with China, which leads to claims and counter-claims of transgression.

None other than the outgoing Indian army chief Bipin Rawat in 2017 claimed that perceptions in India and China about the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are different which leads to allegations of territorial or air space transgression.

“There are a few areas along the border where there are differing perceptions of the Line of Actual Control. Both sides patrol up to their respective perceptions of the LAC,” the defence ministry said in its 2018-19 annual report.

Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen M M Naravane, who has been named Rawat’s successor, while participating in an interaction on “Defending our Borders” in Kolkata in August this year said: “If we say that he (China) is coming into the grey zone 100 times, then we have gone in the grey zone 200 times. So, let us not think it is one-way. I am sure in their war room, they are also complaining that we have done this so many times.”

What constitutes Arunachal Pradesh’s border with China is an undemarcated line that locals or troops on either side have little understanding of. Apart from militaries of both the countries, even ordinary villagers frequently criss-cross the unfenced boundary called Line of Actual Control.

The Dispute

India defines its border with China though McMahon Line drawn by Arthur Henry McMahon, foreign secretary of British India from 1911-14. The line was agreed upon by British Indian and Tibetan authorities following the Shimla convention of 1914.

Even after the Shimla agreement, the government of Tibet had a de facto control over Tawang till 1951, when an Indian army patrol team led by Major R Khating took full control over the area.  The Tawang region was then incorporated into the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), today’s Arunachal Pradesh.

China, however, rejects the Shimla agreement and the McMahon Line.

Though China from the beginning claims a large part of Arunahcal Pradesh as an extension of South Tibet, it has been using this claim more as a bargaining chip. Even in the 1962 war, when China had occupied almost entire Arunachal Pradesh and a part of Assam, it voluntarily withdrew its troops 20 kilometres from the LAC that existed between the two countries as on November 7, 1959.

Initially, China’s claim was extended only to Tawang. But since 2000s, it has upped its ante claiming entire Arunachal Pradesh as its territory.

“In our position, the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. And Tawang is only one of the places in it. We are claiming all of that. That is our position,” then-Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Yuxi said in 2006.

Apart from making territorial claims, China also continues to annoy India by renaming places in Arunachal Pradesh in Chinese, refusing to give regular visa to Arunachalese so on and so forth.

Beyond that, India-China border in the Arunachal sector has remained largely peaceful since 1962.  The armies of the two countries recently even agreed for “coordinated patrolling” in what is termed as Fish Tail I and II in military parlance. These are the remotest areas along the LAC and on Indian side, there is no proper road connectivity, making patrolling extremely difficult.

Infrastructure woes

Despite the brouhaha by politicians cutting across party lines over Chinese threat, no concrete step has been taken to develop physical infrastructure to mark India’s presence along the border.

“The Chinese troops patrol the border with bikes and vehicles because their side of the border is connected with concrete roads. On our side, patrolling is done on foot with the help of village porters and that too only for five to six months. (The jungle track cannot be accessed during winter due to heavy snow fall),” said Ritemso Manyu, a social activist from Anjaw.

Lack of infrastructure is also leading to depletion of population in bordering villages as villagers are shifting to district headquarters or other urban areas for better life. In some areas, entire villages are abandoned.

A senior government official of the state, while admitting that lack of infrastructure is a major problem in guarding the border, claimed that a frontier highway will be constructed to connect border areas, starting from Mago in Tawang district to Vijoynagar in Changlang district.

The same announcement was made by Rijiju in 2015, but like many other promises, this too is yet to see the light of the day.

“So far, we have not seen any visible work on the ground. Many a time, we have raised the issue with the government, but in vain,” says Manyu, who has also migrated to the district headquarter from a bordering village.