Why India’s response to the China challenge in Ladakh is so lopsided
The HinduIf New Delhi seems to be floundering without a clear policy, it is because it lacks a history of hard-nosed China policy formulation. Sawhney’s argument that political expediency seems to have prevented New Delhi from giving the proverbial “fitting response” to PLA’s incursions—ironically the opposite of India’s response to its allegations against Pakistan in the case of Pulwama 2019—references the third layer of New Delhi’s inadequacy in engaging with Beijing in state-to-state political relations. A few years before that event, an Indian diplomat had publicly declared that New Delhi would not tolerate China’s interference in South Asia, which was India’s backyard. In hindsight, these anecdotes foreshadow India’s insinuation on the world’s geopolitical map, albeit not for its economy, as was the case three decades ago, or as a regional power more than half a century ago when it defied the United States’ Seventh Fleet in 1971, but because of a democratically challenged domestic political act and a prematurely derisive comment aimed at a rising China in the new bipolar world that we appear to be settling into. To resolve this conundrum, a good way to begin might be for the military and New Delhi to deepen and widen the scope of consultations with Ladakhis, the borderland dwellers themselves, on how to act on all the three layers—namely local concerns, domestic politics, and interstate relations—of negotiations that are in play along India’s northwestern borderlands.