Two years after the Galwan clashes on June 15-16, 2020 , in which 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers and possibly more, were killed, the government says it has still not ascertained why China amassed its troops in such large numbers at the border, despite 15 rounds of military talks at the Line of Actual Control and 10 rounds of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on India-China Border Affairs official-level talks. In a conversation with The Hindu ’s Suhasini Haidar , former Chairman of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) and author of the new book How China Sees India and the World Shyam Saran lists a number of reasons, adding that New Delhi must continue to push for a return to status quo ante , or the situation prior to April 2020, when Chinese transgressions were first detected.
It’s two years since the clashes in Galwan, with the worst casualties in decades. Why do you think the Galwan clash and all that followed has happened?
The India-China border [prior to 2020] was seen as kind of a model of how two countries had enough maturity to deal with a disputed border, maintained peace and tranquillity at the border, and allowed the relationship in other areas to flourish. What Galwan [clash] represented was a departure from that particular trend that we had in the past decades. Why did this happen? One is that China’s view of power is very hierarchical, it is very sensitive to the balance of power amongst major powers. I think in the context of the growing asymmetry of power between India and China, China’s sensitivity to Indian concerns has diminished. China thought it could do this and get away with it. Secondly, over the last decade or so, while there has been very major improvement of infrastructure on the Chinese side of the border, India, which was lagging behind, actually began to catch up. Unlike the past, where Indian patrols and Chinese patrols had infrequent encounters, there is now a big increase in the number of times they encounter each other along the LAC in Ladakh. These encounters have become a little more tense in nature with more assertiveness on either side, which we have not seen before.
