Chinese are Targeting Our Will, Morale, Autonomy

They are not after our territory. They are attacking India and the Modi Government at its weakest point

Shekhar Gupta

What are the Chinese up to? Why is it that they are provoking Indian troops and thereby public opinion by activating almost the entire 3,488-km Line of Actual Control, and yet managing the escalation ladder below the firing threshold? What is their message and objective? Finally, how are we responding to it? Not militarily.

That isn’t the question right now. India’s armed forces are dealing with this effectively on the ground. This can’t, however, be seen as a series of whimsical, sporadic fistfights or melees on a most lonely frontier. We need to understand what the Chinese are after. If it were territory, they wouldn’t eschew the use of firearms.

They might then try using some of their remote weaponry to try and achieve their territorial objectives with minimal, if any, human casualties. Would they do this only to “rationalise” the territory along the LAC and create buffer zones, as has been done in Ladakh? They would have to be nuts to employ nearly three divisions and heavy equipment at 5,000 metres and above in the most hostile environment for just this.

This won’t enhance their security, improve their access to resources, or weaken India’s will to defend its territory, by fire if it comes to that. Yet, almost all the debate in India thus far on China’s actions has been about territory. Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who is careful never to name China — spoke on the issue only once, in 2020. This was his much-quoted, “Koi nahin aaya…” (nobody’s squatting on our territory) statement.

The criticism from the opposition, and critics within the strategic commentariat, has all been about territory. Even as this column is being written this Friday, I see news headlines running Rahul Gandhi’s statement attacking Modi for keeping mum despite what he calls the “loss of territory” to China. All the other opposition parties are talking of territory.

The fact is, none of the actions of the Chinese, their method or subsequent deescalatory response, suggests that territory on the ground is what they are after. The territory they most likely want now is in our minds. They want to throw India off-balance in terms of its military deployments as well as the strategic rebalancing it’s been working on for the three post-Cold War decades — a process that picked up generally after the India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement, and got a new push after Modi’s arrival.

The Chinese are delivering multiple, complex strategic and political messages to India. We do not serve ourselves well by focussing on territory and militarytactical issues. It also speaks very poorly of our political and strategic culture. We need to explore this further. The side that loses a war keeps refighting the same war over and over again through the generations.

In our popular imagination, we keep fighting the 1962 war over and over again. As if to reassure ourselves we would do so much better. The tough truth is, that war was 60 years ago. There have been multiple revolutions in the world since then. Geopolitics has changed, the Cold War is over, China has changed and, for heavens’ sake, India has changed.

There have also been serial revolutions in military affairs. From massed mechanised power to cyber warfare to drones, robots, and minimisation of human contact. If our popular imagination is still trapped in defending the border outposts (chowkis) as in 1962, I dare say the same mindset prevails in our strategic and political universe, too.

That’s why the opposition has launched a single-focus attack over the “loss of territory” or patrolling rights. And somewhat indirectly, this same dated thinking is also why the Modi government is shy of allowing a discussion of the crisis in Parliament. What the discussion should be about — the larger political, strategic, and geopolitical dimension — is something the political environment isn’t prepared for. The BJP is shy for two reasons.

One, politically, it’s loath to see the prime minister’s record on national security being questioned or debated in public. He’s their only vote-getter. A more muscular approach to national security than ever before in our independent history is projected as his most important USP. Xi Jinping has decided to dent it periodically. The second reason is also political, though not partisan. The nuances that today’s global power rebalancing calls for, the game India is playing, the sensitivities involved, would call for a quality of debate that simply isn’t expected. It isn’t as if our political class lacks the maturity.