Is Modi saying that the External Affairs Ministry statement about Chinese trying to build a structure on the Indian side of the LAC is false?
Days after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes with Chinese troops in Ladakh, and a day after 10 Indians were released from Chinese custody,Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that there had been no intrusion or take-over of any Indian post.
The statement from India’s prime minister raises numerous questions about the actual situation on the ground along the India-China disputed border that saw its first military fatalities in more than four decades this week.
“Neither has anyone intruded upon our borders, not is anyone currently intruding, nor is any Indian post in the hands of anyone else,” Modi said. “In Ladakh,20 of our soldiers have died but those who have raised their eyes at Bharat Mata, they have been taught a lesson.”
The official release on the statement omits a portion of Modi’s comments, saying, “at the outset,Prime Minister clarified that neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our post captured.”
A few questions follow from Modi’s comments directly addressing the clashes, after he had earlier spoken abstractly about the matter.
The Ministry of External Affairs, in a statement issued on Wednesday after a phone call between Union Minister S Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, said this:
Here is the key portion of that statement: “the Chinese side sought to erect a structure in Galwan valley on our side of the LAC”.
It is impossible to read this without concluding that the Chinese intruded upon Indian territory to erect a structure. The ministry statement is quite unequivocal on the matter, especially since it represented added information from the previous statement, which spoke of an “attempt by the Chinese side to unilaterally change the status quo”.
If there has been no intrusion upon territory that India claims – as Modi insisted – then how is China attempting to change the status quo? And what does the ministry mean when it says that the Chinese side sought to erect a structure “on our side of the LAC”? Is Modi over-ruling the ministry statement?
A cynical reading of Modi’s statement might conclude that he is being deliberately ambiguous with his use of the word “border”.
