SHRINKING BOUNDARIES

India has two line – 1- The Line of Control (LoC), between India and Pakistan -- dividing the Indian portion of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu & Kashmir from its Pakistan-occupied  Jammu & Kashmir. 2 -- The Line of Actual Control (LAC) separating India and China, or a Cease-Fire Line (CFL). 

These lines were established when the last major wars with these countries  — the 1971 War with Pakistan, 1962 War with China and the subsequent withdrawal of the Peoples Liberation Army to a more suitable, more defensible and more logistically maintainable line to him. 

India was a merely a mute or helpless party.    

Under the international law, a ceasefire line is just that — a provisional stand-still accord ending active military operations without surrendering legal or other claims on territory held by either country pending a final negotiated settlement of the boundary. 

Implied in the notion of a CFL, therefore, is the sanction available to any of the parties to violate it at any time for any reason, including gaining of military or other advantage or strengthen of territory to bolster its claims. 

This is the legal status of the LoC and LAC that both Pakistan and China respectively supposed to stay on. 

But, India has been adhering to these lines i.e., LoC., LAC.  and CFL.. but neither China nor Pakistan ever care for these agreements. Above all, these lines are marked on Indian land. Meaning there by that China and Pakistan are sitting on Indian land or Indian boundaries have shrunk.   

India, strangely, has espoused the sight that these Lines are, for all intent and purposes, international borders whose violation New Delhi will not accept. But neither China nor Pakistan care for New-Delhi. 

Due to this policy of surrender and acceptance by India of the LoC as a settled border,  has weakened New Delhi that it cannot raise boundary disputes in other areas like in western Kashmir and the Northern Areas, inclusive of Gilgit, Hunza, and Baltistan illegally occupied by Pakistan since 1947, thereby strengthening the Pakistani claim that the only matter remaining to be resolved is the status of Indian Kashmir and all other areas are Pakistani territory. 

What a great nation we are or we have no nationalism and patriotism. Always ready to give our land to the enemy nation or we are afraid of their might. 

Same is our attitude with China when we talk about a boundary dispute. We have accepted the Chinese seizure of Tibet and the violent incorporation of the Tibetan people by supporting the myth of an ‘autonomous region of Tibet' as integral part of China. We have emboldened the Chinese position that peace will come when Arunachal Pradesh is also given to China as only another part of Tibet — ‘southern Tibet' — is surrendered to Beijing. India has thus lost ground politically, legally and morally vis-à-vis both Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Chinese-occupied Tibet. 

Where as it is a universal truth that Kashmir and the Northern Areas, inclusive of Gilgit, Hunza, and Baltistan are an integral part of India. Similarly, Tibet was an independent nation before the Chinese invasion. Not only this in India there is very strong pro-Pakistan and pro-China lobby which support Pakistan and China blindly in all the c disputed and matters. 

Neither Pakistan nor China has made such suicidal mistake as Indian has committed, and repeatedly violate the LoC and LAC with armed intrusions, artillery duels, air, and indiscriminate firings, to highlight the disputed nature of these borders and to ensure their individual territorial claims are alive and strong but new Delhi remain silent or dance to the  enemy music, or barks for for the status quo sanctity which New Delhi pleads.  

Thus, frequent military intrusion on the LoC and LAC by on the borders of Pakistan and China, are doomed with tensions being fuelled by sensation-seeking 24/7 electronic media and print media, both in fact are pro-enemy and as ignorant of the meaning of CFL in international law as the officials of external affairs (MEA). 

The main reason for India's problems with the LoC and LAC is the weak and unpatriotic the Indian political leadership, the Indian government, and especially the MEA. Indian media, secularist, communists, NGOs, activists, etc., have also weakened Indian position by criticizing their own government and supported the enemy nations. 

Indians lack what great theorist of geopolitics Halford Mackinder called, "the map-reading habit of mind". The importance of growing and safeguarding sovereign territory on land and sea is rarely understood by Indians. Even in meetings and conferences Indian nonsensically talk and howl about high morals. 

Indian leaders have no patriotic feelings. They shout hollow slogans like non-violence, brotherhood, friendship, secularism, social justice etc., which have no meaning for either to Pakistan or China.   

This unprofessional and unpatriotic attitude was shown by Late Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri at Tashkent, surrendered to the sycophancy of Field Marshal Ayub Khan seeking "Rahmat", and our great kind-hearted generously returned to Pakistan the Haji Pir, unmindful of the great sacrifice our soldiers made to capture it in the September 1965 War, without knowing its strategic importance for Indian Kashmir and which piece of land has ever since been used by Pakistan to infiltrate terrorists and Jihadis in J&K and elsewhere. 

Six years later same mistake was repeated by Late Indira Gandhi with great pride, with Bangladesh liberated, 93,000 Pakistani Prisoners of War (PoWs) for bargain, and Islamabad on its knees, a supposedly hard-headed, Indira Gandhi, again surrendered to Pakistan, instead of caring for the interest of India, in a mysterious, misplaced bounty, accepted the cajoling of  Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's who after signing the agreement vows to fight a thousand years war. 

India, still paying the very heavy price due to the short-sightedness of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi. 

The main reason of such political high-handedness is that the Indian military simply does not press the elected rulers and the Indian government to do the right thing for the nation. They also remain silent on such crucial occasions. 

Some years back the then government headed by Dr.Man Mohan Singh was almost vacating Siachen Glacier, of Indian troops but in an unprecedented warning by some patriotic generals, it has to stop its plan.  The so called grand compromise with Pakistan could never see the light of the day. 

The value for geography and the spatial concerns of strong strategy were at the core of British imperial policy of ‘distant defense' based on Indian control of the Indian Ocean, influence in regions stretching from the Caspian Sea to Central Asia, and the strengthening of the ‘Mongolian fringe' to the north and the North-East. The Same policy is adopted by today's superpowers America, Russia and China but Indian leaders never learn any thing. 

Those strong geo-strategies were discarded by Jawaharlal Nehru. He has more faith in his romantic antics. For the sake of so called peace and friendship Nehru gave Tibet to China on a platter, never spoke on the taking of Aksai Chin by China, Coco Islands were gifted to Myanmar and, in 1974, the Kachchateevu Island to Sri Lanka. India has never recovered. Perhaps again Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi is committing the same mistake, with the implementation of much-hyped Indo-Bangladesh boundary agreement.   

India nor Indian leaders are ready to learn from past failures and beatings. Indian boundaries are very regularly shrinking and there is no sign of stopping this shrinking. Our first love is hollow slogans like friendship, brotherhood, non-violence, secularism, social justice and nation last.