The MEA asserted that Arunachal Pradesh was territorially intergal and inalienable to India.
China on Monday opened the second land crossing in Tibet via Nathu La to allow the first batch of Indian pilgrims undertaking the arduous Kailash-Manasarovar Yatra, in the latest confidence-building measure between the two neighbours.
Asked whether the IAF can play a role in smashing terrorist training camps across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, he did not rule out such a possibility.
'India and China are already in a warlike situation.'
The first priority for the new Tibetan administration in Dharamsala should be to look at Tibetan recruitment in the PLA, suggests Claude Arpi.
Beijing is clearly rattled by the Dalai Lama's visit. Unlike the 2009 visit, which was a four-day religious tour, the current visit is a high-decibel, 10-day affair, without the fig leaf of a "religious event", reports Ajai Shukla.
The annual Kailash Mansarovar Yatra began on Friday as the first batch of 58 pilgrims was flagged off by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat from Almora.
'While wishing the Tibetan leader a long and healthy life, one can hope for a 'selection' of the Tibetan leader in the Indian Himalayas.' 'It is vital for Tibetan Buddhism, but it is also in India's political interests,' says Claude Arpi.
'Chinese troops are not geared to fight Indian troops who are battle hardened and acclimatised and are far more hardy.'
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday flagged off the first batch of pilgrims undertaking the annual yatra to Kailash Mansarovar in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China.
The elephant in the room will permeate the conversations, predicts Rup Narayan Das.
Overall, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has focused on building ground-based air defense networks and network-centric operations rather than trying to match the Indian Air Force (IAF) in terms of straight fighter numbers along the border. All air assets fall under the Western Theater Command of the PLA, the largest geographic region of China's five military theater commands.
A political counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in India said in a video.
It is on the exact spot where the Guru is said to have created 108 waterfalls, that the Yangtse clash took place between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA on the night of December 9, 2022. As it had done in Ladakh in May 2020, the PLA tried to change the unmarked LAC in the Yangtse sector in Arunachal Pradesh. It was the most serious border incident since the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020, notes Claude Arpi.
Massive rescue and relief efforts were mounted by India and other neighbours in Nepal, as two powerful aftershocks today rattled the country, adding to the misery of Saturday's devastation in which the casualties soared to 2,400 people dead and over 6000 others injured.
Gilgit Baltistan's large frontage with Kashmir and Ladakh across Kargil and the Siachen Glacier gives Pakistan and China the perceived scope for conduct of collusive operations against India and wrest control of the major course of the Indus and Shyok, observes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'The Bharat Ratna should have been given a long time ago. Not just to irk the Chinese, but to recognise His Holiness for what he is and how we have benefited immensely from his presence in India.' 'I don't think there's been a better ambassador for India's philosophical and cultural past than the Dalai Lama.'
'Lhasa is more than the Unesco World Heritage Sites it boasts of. It is more than a gateway to the mighty Himalayas.' 'It is about the warmth of its people: Unsaid, unspoken, but felt everywhere,' discovers Shruti Bajpai.
For India to endorse Nepal's Buddhist conference will be like sipping from a poisoned chalice, warns former RA&W official Jayadeva Ranade.
'They know that India is no pushover.' 'We have to be extremely vigilant, remain ready and keep strengthening our positions.' 'We have to be militarily strong, whatever be the cost.'
'The impression I get is bread and butter matters more than freedom and choice. And China is providing bread and butter in plenty.' Saisuresh Sivaswamy/Rediff.com takes the road less travelled -- to Tibet.
'Unquestionably, the spirit behind the Panchsheel agreement and the 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai' slogan were thrown overboard by the Chinese, and a trust deficit was injected between the two nations.' A revealing excerpt from General J J Singh's The McMahon Line: A Century Of Discord.
'Their air force is no match to ours!'
Major General Sujan Singh Uban, a legendary veteran of the Second World War, was a natural choice to raise, train and command the Special Frontier Force and mould them into a well oiled fighting machine, recalls his son Inspector General Gurdip Singh Uban (retd), who led SFF troops during the Kargil War.
With the continuing stand-off in Ladakh casting a shadow over the Sino-India talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday raised 'serious concerns' over the repeated incidents along the border and sought an early settlement of the boundary question.
'340 PLA soldiers were dead and over 450 injured -- bodies were strewn outside the bunkers, tossed behind the lines, buried in trenches.' A fascinating excerpt from Probal DasGupta's Watershed 1967: India's Forgotten Victory Over China.
'If you behave like a nail, the adversary will behave like a hammer.'
The chaos on its stock markets, a fierce battle between the old and new guard in the Communist Party and the restive border provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang forebode tough times ahead for China, says Claude Arpi.
China's ruling Communist Party has cracked down on Tibetans who planned to attend the Kalachakra Puja in Bodh Gaya. But the Tibetan people have dared the Communists by listening to the Dalai Lama's sermons on the Internet and sharing videos on social media.
Thirty years after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, coerced collective amnesia envelops the Chinese nation about that horrific event. Claude Arpi glances back at how the student uprising could have changed the Middle Kingdom forever had the Chinese Communist party not traveled on the route of martial law.
'Our air force can strike them with impunity.'
India has planned 14 strategic railway lines in areas bordering China, Pakistan and Nepal, but most of these projects are stuck for want of funds. Anusha Soni reports
'India cannot allow Beijing's policy of stabilising and destabilising the border at will to perpetuate its own ends.' A riveting excerpt from Manish Tiwari's 10 Flashpoints; 20 Years National Security Situations That Impacted India.
China has chosen to keep New Delhi guessing, while retaining for itself the option of constantly changing facts on the ground and shifting the LAC westwards -- the strategy called 'salami slicing', notes Ajai Shukla.
The Paytm employee, who tested positive for the contagious disease with flu like symptoms on Wednesday, came in touch with 91 people in Gurgaon, an official said, citing his counterpart in the suburban town.
'The intrusion in Chumar, during and beyond the Chinese president's visit, is unprecedented and has qualitatively changed the tone of the India-China relationship,' says Jayadeva Ranade, a member of the National Security Advisory Board.
When Meenakshi Arvind and Mookambika Rathinam took an epic car journey from Coimbatore to London, they encountered a world that was more good than bad. In the cry for freedom in a dark corner of the globe, they discovered that The Mahatma remained India's greatest icon.
'Clarifying that modernisation of national defence and armed forces should be completed by 2035, Xi Jinping asserted the goal is to make the People's Liberation Army a "world class force" that "can fight and win" by 2050,' points out former RAW officer Jayadeva Ranade.
The onus today is on China, but it also requires a little diplomatic finesse from India, backed by a modernised armed force, argues BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in this excerpt from his new book, Himalayan Challenge: India, China And The Quest For Peace.
"Discussions are on; what is going on is something confidential between us and the Chinese," he said when the moderator at the Bloomberg India Economic Forum pressed the minister to give a clear status of the border situation.
