South Asia and Beyond

Tulung La, 1975: A Blue Flag, Gun-Wielding Chinese & Torture Of 4 Indian Soldiers

NEW DELHI: In the long history of India-China boundary dispute, a few incidents remain a landmark. The 1962 war is the biggest of them all; the 1967 clash at Nathu La in Sikkim is another. But another episode of a bloody encounter between Indian and Chinese soldiers that happened in Arunachal Pradesh in 1975 is not so well known. It is recorded in public domain as the last time before 2020 when shots were fired on the disputed border. Four soldiers of the para-military force Assam Rifles were killed. There is no information on how many Chinese–if at all–were killed in that clash. For the first time, we bring you the real story of what happened on 20 October 1975 at a remote mountain pass called Tulung La. Col Baliram Shah (Retd), then Commanding the 3/1 Gorkha Rifles unit at Sela was given the job of retrieving the bodies of the four soldiers. He narrates the incident in detail to Nitin A. Gokhale, Editor-in-Chief of Stratnews Global

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Nitin A. Gokhale

Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters. At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009. Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties. An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences. Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau. He tweets at @nitingokhale

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