Last week, we wrote in the notes section of our article How China Treats India – Two Simple, Vivid Analogies,
- Daulat Beg Oldi
(DBO) is a very strategic corner on the old road from Ladakh to Yarkant
in Xinjiang and adjacent to the Chinese road leading to the Karakorum
pass to NonPakisani-occupied Kashmir. The Indian air force landing base
at DBO enables India to replenish troops at this site. Until now China
felt it could seize it at any time. But with India fortifying its border
and establishing tanks in high altitude mountain passes, Chinese
supremacy was being threatened. Is that why China acted before the visit
of the Chinese Premier to India? Did they want possession on the ground
before any talks begin so that they can magnanimously offer to step
back after getting India to stop its fortifications?
1. China’s Demands
Our fears were realized this week. China’s main demand is that India stop its military activity in the Depsang plateau of Ladakh. According to a Times of India article:
- A third flag meeting between Indian and Chinese troops failed to break the deadlock between the two sides, with the Chinese insisting that India take down security structures in Fukche and Chumar in Ladakh without offering reciprocal commitments.
- The Chinese demanded dismantling of the border structures that have recently come up, particularly in Fukche and Chumar. In addition, they asked the Indians to take down their tents facing the Chinese troops. Only after the Indians complied would the Chinese contemplate their next step, refusing to give any commitment on a withdrawal.
- According to ITBP sources, the border structures China wants India to pull down are not even permanent posts but only metal sheet shelters set up for troops who conduct frequent patrols in the desolate region prone to icy winds. Seeking their removal is a broad hint that India roll back its increased patrolling and presence in the area.
This makes it clear that China wants India to essentially leave its border in Ladakh defenseless. This is classic Chinese behavior. So far, the response has been met with purely Indian behavior. According to the Hindustan Times article Army takes a step back in Ladakh,
- The army has stopped patrolling the eastern Ladakh areas beyond the site where Chinese troops have taken up positions — 19km into Indian territory — to avoid escalating the stand-off.
- It is understood that the government may have advised the army not to comb the sector so that diplomatic efforts are not hampered. “As of now, there are no plans to launch patrols behind the Chinese positions. Patrolling right up to our perception of the line of actual control may be seen as provocative,” a source said.
So, in response to Chinese army’s intrusion into Indian territory, the Indian army, rather than surround them, has withdrawn their presence from India’s own territory? Why? To avoid giving provocation or to avoid escalation? Isn’t this exactly the reaction of an Indian wife to being slapped by a Pathan husband? She is trained to remain quiet, walk around softly lest she anger the husband further. Now you understand why we used this Pathan husband – Indian wife analogy as the first of our two analogies last week.
2. Chinese Doctrine
Getting back to strategy, this is exactly how the Chinese behave strategically and militarily. We remind readers of our review of The Perils of Proximity, the authoritative book on China-Japan relationship. The last section of that review article included the following comment about Chinese doctrine:
- “Thomas
Christensen finds that China has used force most frequently when it
perceived an opening window of vulnerability or a closing of
opportunity. When Beijing assesses a tactical military situation, it may
choose to fight even if the adversary has the advantage if it is clear
the advantage is only going to grow.” (emphasis ours).
Frankly, both fit here:
- With India increasing its defense fortifications in the area, the Chinese were clearly concerned that their present advantage would close.
- Secondly, the Chinese are master tacticians. They probably saw an opening of vulnerability in today’s Indian Government beset with protests, weakened by corruption scandals and preoccupied with 2014 elections. In addition, having met Chief Minister Narendra Modi in Beijing last year, the Chinese leadership might have perceived a window of opportunity with today’s weakened Government.
So the Chinese acted with deliberation, resolve, and in accordance with their doctrine, a doctrine that has been very successful against India since 1950. The Chinese also know that Indian Government is usually desperate to show peaceful relations with China and they have created similar storms in the past before high level visits to gain maximum advantage.
Given all the above, it boggles the mind that Indian Government & the Indian Army were so unprepared for some adventure from China. Had they been even slightly prepared, they would have had counter-measures ready to be implemented immediately. But neither planning nor resolve have been India’s strength.
Go back and look at the last 1,000 years. Indians are never prepared and are always stunned when an attack or intrusion takes place., regardless of whether it is Kargil in 1999 or Ghori in 1198 or any of the Pathan/Mughal/Iranian/British invaders in between.
Frankly, it is not just the government. The fault lies with Indian society, with all the Indian people, whether they are British-obedient Indians or Pathan/Mughal colonized Indians or proud Indians. Today’s Indian society is brainwashed with the belief that economy & technology are only what matter in today’s world and wars belong to the past. So there is no vigilance in India’s society, no monitoring of external danger by India’s TV & Print media and utter negligence by Indian politicians whether within Government or outside Government.
So India keeps getting slapped by Chinese leaders like the pathetic Makhichand slapped publicly by Chulbul Pande.
3. Xi JinPing
We are stunned and deeply troubled by the pathetic coverage of Xi Jinping in Indian media. As in the 1950s, Indian media has lapped up Xi’s soothing words about a new 5-point China-India friendship plan. But then intelligence or ability are not traits of India’s screamingly hysterical TV anchors or columnists.
What is tragic is Indian Government’s own supine negligence. Because it has been evident to any interested novice that Xi Jinping is deliberate in building a military powerbase for his presidency. His basic stance was evident in his comments during his tour of military forces in southern Guandong province in December:
- “We must ensure that our troops are ready when called upon, that they are fully capable of fighting, and that they must win every war,”
This was December 2012 and yet the Indian Government was found unprepared when the Chinese Army intruded into Indian territory.
4. Divine Matrix exercise of the Indian Army in 2009
Readers might recall that back on April 4, 2009 we wrote about a secret exercise of the Indian Army named “Divine Matrix”. In that exercise, the Indian Army had visualized a war scenario with China by 2017:
- “A
misadventure by China is very much within the realm of possibility with
Beijing trying to position itself as the only power in the region.
There will be no nuclear warfare but a short, swift war that could have
menacing consequences for India,”
So why was India prepared for a Chinese intrusion?
5. Sexist Analogy?
An Indian commentator termed our analogy of China-India as a Pathan husband slapping his Indian wife as sexist. That negative comment was very revealing to us. It showed that Indian commentators really don’t understand much and react in a dumb platitudinous matter.
When will India understand that Ghazni. Ghori, Khilji, Babur, Clive, Dalhousie, Elphinstone were alpha males, males who knew how to attack, pillage, humiliate and kill their opponents. If any of them had been called sexist, they would have taken it as a compliment. So would Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
Indian society is the one with a female worshiping effeminate culture. Look who is India’s unquestioned ruler today, an Italian immigrant woman named Sonia. The entire Indian government bows to her and worships her feet, both figuratively and sometimes physically.
Unfortunately, the analogy between an alpha-male husband and a passive, suffer-in-silence wife fits the relationship between Chinese leaders and Indian leaders. Already, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already reacted like an obediently passive wife and made soothing noises about the Chinese intrusion being “a localized affair“.
By the way, who knows Indians better than the 19th century British, right? After all, a private British company came to trade without an army or money. Then this British company conquered the entire Indian subcontinent with hired Indian soldiers and borrowed financing from Indian Baniyas. And how did the British scholars of that period describe Indians? And aren’t these British scholars studied with reverence in today’s Indian schools?
- (scholar James) Mill had declared that “the Hindu, like the eunuch, excels in the qualities of a slave,“37 – page xxiv
- popular historian Thomas Babington Macaulay had dwelt on the emasculation of Bengalis, who’d “found the little finger of the Company thicker than the loins” of the prince Siraj-ud-daula37.- page xxiv
- (Rudyard Kipling) – It was the Bengali male’s “extraordinary effeminacy“,
as evinced by his diminutive physique, his flowing clothes, and his
worship of goddesses, that best illustrated why he, and by extension
India, had to be guided by the firm, benevolent hand of a supremely masculine race.”37 – page xxiv - “All
those arts which are the natural defence of the weak are more familiar
to this subtle race than to…the Jew of the dark ages,” Macaulay had written of the Bengali, who compressed into his diminutive form every loathsome aspect of the Hindu.41 – page 235
British scholars as a whole, including Churchill, admiringly described Pathans as masculine and contemptuously considered Indians to be feminine.
So, dear English-educated Indian commentator, isn’t the sexist “Pathan husband – Indian wife” analogy perfect for China-India?
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