NEW DELHI: Monday added fresh tension to the ongoing standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh. The PLA accused Indian troops of transgressing the Line of Actual Control and firing at a Chinese border patrol. India issued a strong denial, saying it never crossed the LAC. Rather it were Chinese troops that tried to close in on an Indian forward position and, when confronted, PLA soldiers fired in the air. And amid all this, Brigadiers of both sides have been talking to each other. The Chinese moves since May, when this spell of LAC tension began, mirrors what the PLA did in the lead up to the 1962 war—make a unilateral claim to territory, accuse India of transgressing into so-called Chinese land and threatening their troops, and then play victim. In the three years that preceded the Chinese aggression of October 1962, China kept pushing the LAC westwards while claiming all along that India had encroached into their territory, as StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale and Editor Surya Gangadharan discuss in this video.
