What India’s ‘new normal’ with China really means

THE optics of Chinese Ambassador Xu Feihong and Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri cutting a cake on April 1, marking the 75th anniversary of India-China relations, reflects the contrived new normal. Since China is accustomed to eating the cake and having it too, it was not expected to fully disengage from legacy holdings of Depsang and Demchok. But it did. In addition to the limited disengagement from four other friction points earlier.

So what happened between July and October 2024 to catalyse the complete disengagement at Depsang and Demchok? Trump, probably. While the US wants to make good with Russia to focus on China, Beijing wishes to mend relations with India to concentrate on America. Trump’s offer to mediate between India and China during PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in February and the BRICS summit were the other catalysers.

In his marathon podcast on March 3 with Lex Fridman, Modi said: “We have seen return to normalcy at the border after my meeting with President Xi at Kazan (on the sidelines of BRICS summit). We are now working to restore conditions on how they were on border before 2020. This will take time."

The new magic mantra in strategic guidance of leaders at Kazan that triggered the disengagement is unknown. In Parliament, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar had reported that normal engagement in other parts of the relationship were contingent upon border tensions being resolved. Disengagement has been fully achieved in Demchok and Depsang while in other areas north and south of Pangong Tso, disengagement is of a temporary and limited nature (buffer zones). The next steps would be towards de-escalation and deinduction, he said.

By hastily normalising relations, India has willy-nilly accepted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s advice to place border issues at the appropriate position in bilateral relations, as agreed in 2005 (factually incorrect, says India). Jaishankar’s statement that the state of the border will reflect the state of bilateral relations appears to validate this. Shorn of diplomatese, Army Chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi’s statement on October 23, two days after the October 21 agreement, was unequivocal: A degree of standoff remains; the desired end state is restoration of status quo prior to April 2020. But the MEA confirmed that there was no contradiction between what the Army Chief had said and its statements. Even so, contradictions are multiple: between the WMCC claim after 32 rounds of deliberations — that all issues that emerged in 2020 had been resolved —and Jaishankar’s statement in Parliament — that full disengagement at two places and qualified disengagement in the rest had been achieved.

Further, there are differences between China’s six-point consensus after the 23rd round of Special Representative’s resumed talks and the Indian MEA’s stated position. Wang had contented after the October 21 agreement that it was the end of the standoff at the border and that border issues be delinked from bilateral relations. Former Indian Ambassador to China and negotiator of 1996 protocol with China Ashok Kantha has noted that the concept of buffer zones is new as in earlier protracted disputes — Barahoti 1956 and Sumdorong Chu 1997 — no buffer zones were considered necessary.

India seems to have come around to using the Chinese border lexicon: border instead of the LAC, discontinued RSQA (Return of Status Quo Ante) to de-escalation and deinduction, terms that the Chinese have never used because they will not implement them.

Since the standoff, the government has earned several embarrassments with the initial faux pas of giving a clean chit to China after Galwan, when Modi said: “No one entered our territory, nor is anyone inside our territory."

Despite the government claims of no loss of territory, roughly 2,000 sq km of land is under Chinese occupation. Beijing carried out multiple incursions along the entire length of the 1956 claim line from Demchok to Depsang, establishing buffer zones at some friction points, mainly on the Indian side of LAC, suspended grazing rights and allowed coordinated patrolling in Depsang and Demchok.

Questions remain on how many of the 65 patrolling points are accessible now; how soon the next steps on the restoration of conditions prior to 2020 will take; accountability for gross intelligence failures, etc.

The government has not allowed any debate in Parliament, saying it will affect the morale of soldiers and national security — euphemisms for obfuscation. Jaishankar has hailed our effective counter-deployment instead of admitting to a breakdown in deterrence. The government should explain the current lapses instead of parroting “more land was lost during Nehru’s time."

Former Army Chief of the time Mukund Naravane’s book ‘Four Stars of Destiny‘ was due to be released on December 2023, but was banned. It exposes the absence of political strategic guidance to the higher military leadership over the execution of Operation Snow Leopard. Naravane was awaiting orders whether or not to open tank fire on Chinese tanks approaching Indian positions, when he was asked by the highest authority not to be the first to open fire. The last-minute order from Modi conveyed by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was: “Do what you think is correct, this is operational matter."

The rest is history. India forfeited its strategic dominance on Kailash heights due to lack of operational directive, otherwise the fate of disengagement process could have been entirely different; in India’s favour. On March 9, Narvane released his novel Cantonment Conspiracy and jubilantly announced: Finally, I am a published author.

Carnegie Endowment’s Ashley Tellis recently held a discussion on the India-China standoff, summing up that India had still not received any explanation from China on what it did in Ladakh; that normalisation had begun before de-escalation despite no change of heart on both sides; and that it was a tactical thaw, not a strategic shift on the border.

The way forward, after unlikely restoration of border to before 2020, is a new modus vivendi, leading to full and final settlement of the border dispute. Is it asking for the moon?

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