Furious that China has included Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin in its new official map, the Congress on Tuesday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi expose the hostile neighbour at the upcoming G20 summit, and asked if India should be hosting Xi Jinping when his regime has illegally occupied Indian territory.
Describing China as “a habitual offender”, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said: “We hope that the G20 summit in India will be another opportunity for us to expose China’s transgressions into Indian territory on the global stage. The Modi government must ensure that the illegal Chinese occupation of 2,000 square kilometres of Indian territory along the LAC (Line of Actual Control) must end.”
India, which is celebrating its rotational presidency of G20 like no other country has done, will host the summit on September 9-10.
While the Congress president was restrained, spokesperson and member of the party’s foreign affairs department Manish Tewari said: “The government should seriously introspect, though G20 is a multilateral forum, whether it would be in accordance with India’s self-respect to be feting a person in Delhi, Xi Jinping, who is in illegal occupation of 2,000sqkm of India’s territory.”
China’s intention behind bringing out such a map just before their President’s Delhi visit throws up uncomfortable questions.
Tewari, a former Union minister, said: “China has no claim on Arunachal. The absurdity of their claim is evidenced by the history of the Sino-India border dispute.”
Tewari added: “The only pending border issue with China is the illegal occupation of 2,000sqkm at various points in Ladakh. The Modi government should get it vacated. The starting point for them is to publish a white paper on what happened between April 2020 and August 2023. There should be a candid admission; they should accept the unvarnished truth. The nation deserves to know the truth; every citizen is equally invested in the nation’s sovereignty.”
While the Prime Minister’s body language in front of Xi at the BRICS meet in South Africa has already set tongues wagging on social media, the demand to corner the Chinese President at a multilateral global forum might put the government at greater unease. The tough stance of the Congress will test the BJP’s defence of accusing the Opposition party of being soft on China.
Kharge said in a statement: “The Indian territories, including Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin, are an indistinguishable and inalienable part of India. No arbitrarily invented Chinese map can change that. China is a habitual offender when it comes to renaming and redrawing maps of territories belonging to other countries. The Congress takes strong objection to any such illegal representation or renaming of India’s territories.”
Arguing that the Congress wanted peaceful coexistence with neighbours, Kharge said: “It is, however, painful to note that China’s deception and belligerence continues, post-Galwan, in the wake of Prime Minister Modi giving them a free pass by saying ‘no one entered our territory’, after 20 of our brave soldiers were martyred. The status quo ante before May 2020 should be of utmost importance, and the Modi government must not budge from anything less than the restoration of the same.”
The party’s media department chairman, Pawan Khera, said: “What has emboldened China to change the map? Modi’s ‘na-koi-ghusa hai’ statement and external affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s declaration that India cannot confront the much bigger economy that China is. We all saw Modi’s body language at the BRICS summit. How can the Prime Minister of 140 crore people be so weak? We earlier saw him helping Xi on a jhoola and now he was standing helplessly.”
Arguing that Indira Gandhi didn’t worry about what the Americans wanted while dividing Pakistan, Khera said: “Mr Modi, change your body language at the upcoming G20 summit and send out a firm message to China and the world. After all, Jawaharlal Nehru didn’t accept the Chinese claim in 1962, and faced the war.”
The party’s social media head, Supriya Shrinate, pointed out that the government had claimed after the Modi-Xi meeting in South Africa that he spoke to the Chinese President very firmly about the border issues and intrusion.
“What is the result of the firm words? A map claiming Arunachal and Aksai Chin as theirs comes up within four days. Modi... gave them (China) a clean chit by declaring nobody has entered. He took the trade deficit beyond $100 billion,” she said.
