The People Next Door by T.C.A. Raghavan

Author:T.C.A. Raghavan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2017-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

Political and diplomatic moves in the early 1980s, intense as they were, faded in the face of another looming confrontation. This was in the most inhospitable part of the western Himalayas, which became the intersection point of Chinese, Pakistani and Indian strategies to dominate these heights. Point NJ 9842 of the ceasefire line of April 1949 suddenly acquired a new resonance as Pakistan and India sought to outguess each other in a chess game to reach and command the Siachen glacier. In the 1962 India–China conflict, the Chinese had forcibly occupied the ‘right ear’ of J&K—the Aksai Chin. In the border settlement between China and Pakistan in March 1963—announced as the Swaran Singh–Z.A. Bhutto talks commenced—Pakistan conceded an area of 2,700 square miles (6,993 sq.km) of territory to China. This was an area to the west of Aksai Chin—the Shaksgam Valley. India, of course, did not recognize this agreement: What was Pakistan’s locus standi, it felt, to cede territory in J&K?

The significance of the area beyond point NJ 9842 lay in the phrase used in the 1949 ceasefire line delineation—thence north to the glacier. What was ‘thence north’? To India, normal cartographic principles meant that the line must follow the topography of the area—the watersheds and the mountain ranges. From the late 1970s, Pakistani maps had, however, started to show the Line of Control beyond NJ 9842 as a straight line extending to the Aksai Chin, in effect bringing the Siachen glacier into Pakistan’s side of the line. This meant that the Chinese-controlled Aksai Chin and Shaksgam Valley would now be separated only by Pakistan- controlled territory. For Indian military strategists and thinkers, the motive was straightforward—Pakistan was claiming the glacier in concert with China and this continuous stretch of territory controlled by Pakistan and China would pose a threat in the future to Ladakh and Kargil.

These maps acquired an even greater importance as reports came in of Pakistan sponsoring mountaineering expeditions into this area. Amidst intelligence of a possible sudden Pakistan military move to control the glacier, the Government of India decided in early 1984 that the Indian Army should pre-empt this by establishing its own posts and defensive positions. When this was done, it was through a relatively small but logistically difficult and dangerous operation. Its success led inevitably to the Pakistan Army’s attempts to dislodge the Indian troops. These attempts failed but to secure existing positions Indian deployments grew even in the face of an inhospitable terrain and climate. Then, as a military officer has explained:

Militaries the world over are particular about securing the next height and the Indian Army is no exception to that visceral military compulsion. The belief that if one does not take the next higher ground, the enemy will, creates that unending urge. It leads to the occupation of ground which would otherwise have been left unoccupied. The Pakistan Army, driven by the same logic, probed and prodded.37

With India dominating the heights, the Pakistan Army was kept at some distance from the glacier.

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