Sumdorong Chu, Ladakh-like India-China face-off which took 9 yrs to end but without violence
The 9 years saw diplomatic wrangling, a defiant Indian general keen on 'teaching the Chinese a lesson' & a PM more inclined towards diplomacy, but not a single drop of blood.
Editorial Staff
Sumdorong Chu, Ladakh-like India-China face-off which took 9 yrs to end but without violence
The India-China face-off in Eastern Ladakh has been labelled by some as “unprecedented”, especially due to the high number of deaths of Indian soldiers in the 15 June clashes in the Galwan Valley, even though the two countries fought a war in 1962 and were involved in a bloody conflict in 1967.
But another confrontation in the summer of 1986, almost exactly 34 years ago, on the other end of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh, has many similarities with the tensions between the world’s two most populous nations today.
It was June of that year and New Delhi was caught in a sweltering summer when the temperature in the capital’s policy-making circles went up several notches — the result of the heat being felt high up in the Himalayas.
On the morning of 14 June 1986, a patrol party of the Indian Army’s 12 Assam Regiment spotted a Chinese post and a few structures right near the Thandrong pasture on the banks of the Sumdorong Chu rivulet in Tawang district of Arunachal …
