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Journalism of Courage
Trust is a word you hear often in the viciously inhospitable 26 km path up from Arunachal’s Chhang-stilled Tawang valley to Bum La on the the Sino-Indian border. The army, at any rate, does not throw it around without the brooding recognition that it was on this road four decades ago that Chinese troops put up one of their most ferocious assaults of the 1962 war, mounting tactical offensives through Indian defences until they could smell the plains of Assam.
Even the government’s inexplicably classified official history of the 1962 war, written long after the event and its bruising memories had receded, concludes: “Henceforth, the Chinaman’s image in Indian mind was to remain that of an ungrateful and treacherous people.”
At Tawang, 44 years ago, the army’s 4th Artillery Brigade and battalions from the Sikh and Garhwal regiments, tasked with the disagreeable task of defending parts of the then North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), handed it on a platter to PLA forces as they marauded their way down with mortars and machine guns from Bum La.
But flash forward four decades and it’s difficult not to be deceived: Tawang, now protected by the 190 Mountain Brigade, and Bum La, manned by the Ichhamati battalion of the Rajputana Rifles, comprises a chunk of frontier noted for cheeriness unknown anywhere else on the disputed 1,010-km frontage that India and China share from Sherjun La on their tri-junction with Bhutan to their tri-junction with Myanmar.
The nucleus of this conviviality, nurtured over only the last few years, is in regular meetings between border army personnel. The two delegations get one critical element out of the way before the wine begins to flow: if patrols from both sides happen to run into each other in sensitive stretches of territory, there will be no escalation. They will, instead, shake hands and return quietly to their respective posts, to continue the patrol another day. As one officer said, “You will find it hard to understand how important it is to emphasise this between us over and over again.”
Yet, neither side wants to actually bump into the other at zones like Asaphila in East Arunachal, a stretch of wasteland that both claim and separately patrol but — and here’s the thing — neither occupies. Both also remember the embarrassing face-off in June 2003, where the Chinese disarmed a small Indian patrol and marched them back to the border. Now, at border meetings, therefore, the two sides unofficially exchange patrol schedules in some parts, if only to avoid having to cross paths.
The meetings are strictly confidential, but the Indian Express was among a group invited to witness the last one on October 30 at Bum La, a few weeks before the Chinese president arrives on a visit.
It starts rather grandly, with both delegations marching up to the Heap of Stones, a structure that sits bang on the international border, where the two delegation leaders add a rock to the pile to applause — the higher the heap gets, they say, the better the brotherhood. The 12 men from both sides are then marched off to well-heated tents on the Chinese side, where they begin talking. The meetings don’t last for more than 30 minutes.
But the military sheen on the inside is betrayed by a good measure of carousing on the outside. Indian officers are yet to get a fix on the Chinese obsession with rupee currency. PLA troops will happily exchange Yuan, cigarettes, watches, cameras, for rupee notes. They’ll gamely chase you around in the snow for your army balaclava, but stiffen up if you demand their red-starred military hat in return.
When the meeting ends, out come crates of light Yunan red wine and trays full of food — and here starts the truest manifestation of Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai if ever there was one. Chicken claws, strange-smelling fillets, slabs of pork ribs batter fried in a hot chilli paste, and you remember being told they liked their food bland! Hugs all around, frat-party drinking rituals between senior officers, raunchy humour carefully passed through a pair of embarrassed interpreters. The Chinese officers’ spouses love perfume, so jawans haul crates of the stuff into a waiting Lexus SUV, in exchange for boxes of wine, confectionary and dragon mobiles. In 20 minutes, the thin air and multiple glasses of five per cent proof wine has everyone quite red-nosed. Older Indian officers assure younger Chinese jawans they’ll have copies of Playboy sent to them soon.
Outside the straight-backed confines of the tent, the two delegation leaders get to lay it on the line a final time before saying goodbye, but this time they’ve dispensed with their interpreters. The telling little dumb charade is flawlessly clear: Face-to-face, meet, no shooting, shake-hands, take photographs, knock back a few, wave goodbye.
shiv.aroorexpressindia.com
