Hours after the MEA rejected China's naming of 30 places in Arunachal Pradesh, geostrategist Brahma Chellaney on Tuesday said India's reactive and risk-averse approach gives Beijing a free hand to keep provoking New Delhi. He said China has considerably upped the ante in recent months over India's Arunachal state, "but the Indian foreign ministry has yet to shed its defensive mindset."
"Why is that India only reacts, but never provokes? In fact, India prefers to play victim, instead of proactively countering enemy designs or upping the ante against the foe. Is it thus any surprise that, over the years, India has repeatedly been taken by surprise by adversaries?" he asked in a tweet.
On Sunday, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs named 30 places in Zangnan, the Chinese name for Arunachal Pradesh which Beijing claims as part of south Tibet.
The MEA rejected China's claim on Arunachal and said it has persisted with its "senseless attempts" to rename places in the Indian state. "We firmly reject such attempts. Assigning invented names will not alter the reality that Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India."
After China named 30 places in Arunachal, Chellaney, a Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, said India should remind the PRC (People's Republic of China) that it occupied Tibet by mocking international law and that it now wants to extend its Tibet annexation to Arunachal, which India will never allow. It should be told, he added, that the real issue is that China imposed itself as India's neighbor by annexing Tibet.
Tibet, located on the northern side of the Himalayas, was an autonomous region till 1950 when China annexed it. In 1954, India recognised Tibet as a part of China, with the signing of the Panchsheel Agreement between India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and China's Premier Zhou Enlai.
On March 26, Chellaney said China claims that India's Arunachal state is part of Tibet, though the Dalai Lama says this assertion has no historical basis. "Should India continue to recognize Tibet as part of China when Beijing openly seeks to extend its Tibet annexation to Arunachal?" he asked.