The Himalayan Gas Tango

Through September 2009, the government of India has issued a variety of statements designed to quell India’s long-lived China bogey. It has done so to contain what it calls panic and scare-mongering about alleged incursions over the India-China border by units of the People’s Liberation Army. The ‘incidents’ (as the Indian media like to call the events) have all occurred over India’s north-western border with China, in the mountainous Jammu and Kashmir state.

Officials in both New Delhi and Beijing quickly issued statements to explain away these incidents. The Chinese Foreign Ministry outright rejected Indian media reports that its army crossed the border into India’s Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. India’s media – in this case an English press whose nationalism is not usually tempered by sound reportage – reported that Chinese troops came more than a kilometre into Indian territory.

In New Delhi, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said the incursions will be sorted out diplomatically, with a senior Indian official explaining that the border with China is one of the most peaceful boundaries that India shares with other countries. For its part the Indian Army through its chief, General Deepak Kapoor, said blandly: “There have been several border violations by Chinese troops in the past few months, including an incursion by a helicopter, but they are of not much concern as they are largely inadvertent.”

The perception of China by Indians who are over 40 years old is quite different from that of a younger cohort, for whom China means throwaway electronic goods and cheap consumer goods and piles of bootleg DVDs. India and China waged a war in 1962 over territory in what is today north-east India, in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. China is seen by this older group as having first besieged Tibet, and then colonised it. It is seen as having supported Pakistan’s military aims in South Asia and as having supported the Myanmarese generals. For this generation, the Chinese dragon is a belligerent menace across all India’s land borders.

Energy Bulletin