India’s Opposition accuses the Narendra Modi government of many flaws. Some of these accusations are justified; some are not. What cannot be denied though is the charge that the regime has a perverse gift for deflecting issues of public importance. Indeed, whataboutery has been this government’s chosen shield. So it is not surprising that the Centre justified its decision to deny discussions on Chinese aggression in Parliament by citing a precedent: it said that the United Progressive Alliance had similarly refused to hold deliberations on border transgressions by not just China but also Pakistan by underscoring the sensitivity of the issue. This position reveals the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance’s hypocrisy. The UPA is castigated by Mr Modi and his lieutenants regularly. All of India’s ills, apparently, stem from the UPA’s faulty policies. Yet, Mr Modi has seldom hesitated to ape the UPA when necessary: his government’s continuation of, indeed reliance on, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is a case in point. Now, finding itself cornered for the prime minister’s astounding denial of Chinese intrusion, the government is keen on borrowing a leaf out of the UPA’s strategy book. Mr Modi has not felt emboldened to utter the proverbial ‘C’ word even as military commanders remain engaged in seemingly fruitless discussions with their Chinese counterparts. In Parliament, notices to suspend the business of the day to discuss China have been repeatedly ignored by the government. At the diplomatic level, the rhetoric does not reflect the ground realities either: the Chinese foreign minister recently underlined Beijing’s commitment to ‘border stability’. This smugness can only be the consequence of Mr Modi’s failure to concede, let alone resolve, the loss of territory to a neighbour.

There is an additional concern that must not go unaddressed. This pertains to the shroud of secrecy that is thrown over national security issues by elected governments irrespective of political colour. There can be no doubting the fact that the dissemination of information on national security needs to be a careful balancing act between strategic and democratic imperatives. But in a democracy, the people also have a stake in the architecture of national sovereignty and security. Their right to know cannot be undermined. The BJP, however, will find it doubly difficult to be transparent. Mr Modi’s public image is based on hot air. An admission of Chinese ingression would show up the prime minister to be the opposite of the strongman he claims to be.