The India-China Conflict

Submitted by George Callaghan…

China attacked India and not for the first time. The People’s Republic of China is already illegally occupying Indian land. Some of this was seized by China by brute force in the 1960s. Some of it was grabbed by Pakistan in 1947. The Pakistanis ceded some of the stolen land to their Chinese confederates. Pakistan’s support for Beijing’s position on the border is champterous in actuation. Thus far China has not invoked this as casus foederis.

In June 2020 Chinese troops assaulted the Indian Army as the Indians guarded their sovereign territory. This dastardly attack upon an unoffending national has rarely been equalled in the chronicles of history. The Indian soldiers did not retreat. In the face of overwhelming odds they did not retreat but went to meet their deaths like the true Indians that they were. Unterrified they met their doom rather than dishonour the name of their motherland. In this hour of tribulation every Indian worth his salt shall call to mind the words of Subhas Chandra Bose: give me blood and I shall give you freedom.

India’s territorial integrity is inviolable. The nation has the absolute right to defend her sovereignty. The Republic of India has never trespassed under the loam of another nation. Delhi’s scrupulous adherence to the niceties of international law redounds very greatly to India’s credit. Further, it underscores the unimpeachable moral authority of the Indian State.

Nehru in his white bread way trusted the Chinese. Jawaharlal Nehru was a gentleman and made the mistake of believing that one good turn deserves another. He was a great man but sometimes a naif. In 1962 the Chinese launched a completely unprovoked attack on India. Hindustan had long proffered the land of friendship to Cathay. Such amicable overtures were rudely rebuffed by Beijing. India’s magnanimity can find few parallels in history. Even now India stretches out the hand of forbearance. Too often China has grasped the olive branch held out by India only to use it as a stick with which to beat the peace-loving people of India. Such shameful treachery has rightly angered the long-suffering people of India. Every sepoy knows it is his bounden duty to immolate the invader. India’s case is legally and morally inassailable.

The frontier between India and China was fixed by international treaty in the British era. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not denounce this treaty when the PRC was founded in 1949. The PRC never sought to settle its claims peaceably. Instead attacked India to gain more land.

The Chinese dictatorship has so often taken the side of sheer evil against goodness. Beijing sold weapons to the Sudanese junta knowing that these were being used to commit genocide in Darfur. India’s endeavour has been to advance humanitarianism, equality and equity.

A weaker man would not attack a stronger man. The Chinese Military is stronger than the India by any metric. China also has the advantages conferred by being a control freak society without a free media.

The Government of India published a returned of the killed. My heart goes out to the gallant jawans who mostly nobly laid down their lives for their Beloved India. By stark contrast PRC shall not tell us how many of its soldiers were slain. There can be no clearer proof which is the open society and which is the oppressive one.

Between India and China there is no doubt who wins the beauty contest. India had freedom of expression. India has freedom of conscience. India has freedom of association. India has free elections. India has fair trials. India has an independent judiciary. India outlaws torture. India has a minimum wage. India has separation of powers. India agonises about executing even the worst of the worst. India is a force for humanity and justice. None of this applicable to China. India’s love of liberty is not strictly germane to the rightful ownership of the disputed area. But India’s status as a beacon of freedom must count for something. India’s elan vital makes that nation so alluring for many a foreigner.

In the 1960s India had her Green Revolution. The government strove might and main to guarantee a sufficiency of comestibles to everyone. At this same time the Communist regime in China starved millions to death with malice aforethought.

In this case dualism is no exaggeration. Seldom has a conflict between so categorical between good and evil. India is acting in furtherance of freedom. China seeks to extinguish the last embers of liberty even in its own city of Hong Kong.

India’s honesty and basic decency throws the Chinese Government’s wickedness into embarrassingly sharp relief. Beijing’s control freakery is worrisome. Beijing is leagued in an axis of unfreedom to quench the flame of freedom wherever it burns. The PRC is the paymaster and armourer of savagely cruel regimes from Pyongyang to Ashgabad.

China is estimated to execute more people than any other land in the world. The number of people put to death is a state secret. Why is this one of China’s numberless secrecies? Because the level of violence of the regime against her own citizens makes even the tyrant sick with shame.

People can be executed for many crimes less than murder including even peculation. Beijing’s indifference to human suffering and promiscuous use of the supreme sanction tells you all you need to know. Mao Zedong is till on every banknote. Mao slew millions upon millions of Chinese people. He did his level best to demolish so much of the country’s heritage in the Cultural Revolution. Yet this diabolical tyrant is still honoured in China. Criticism of him is criminalised. This egomaniacal antichrist made Hirohito seem mild by comparison.  At least twenty million Chinese families have reason to curse his name but it would be more than their lives are worth. His image befouls every public place in China. The exaltation of Mao is a scar on the conscience of the world.

President for life Xi boasts that those who oppose his iron rule shall have their bones ground into powder. For once the despot speaks true. This was no idle threat. The Government of China is as malign an influence as you can find in the world. The Communist Party treats its own people with appalling cruelty. How then shall they treat those whom they regard as foreign devils?

The PRC professes the cause of anti-racialism abroad and practises the most frank and rebarbative racialism at home. The Uyghurs are severely oppressed. Over a million men, women and children are locked up without trial or charge. For years and years the PRC flatly denied that it had incarcerated the Uyghurs. Now even the PRC admits that it has held these luckless people for years. Beijing will tell outright stinking lies every day.

The Uyghurs are held in so-called ‘re-education camps’. The very phrase should put a chill wind in your mind. The few who have escaped explained that they are deracinated there. The luckless Uyghurs are forced to chant totalitarian slogans until their brains are numbed. The mind befogged, the body emaciated and the spirit broken only then may zombified Uyghurs be released onto the street to do the bidding of their vindictively grinning masters.

Imagine if you were locked up for your ethnicity or religion? Why does Beijing feel compelled to jail these people? Because they are bad – Beijing says. A whole nation or religion is bad? There is no clearer example of bigotry. It is an act of the most livid injustice.

Pakistani silence on this head is deafening. What happened to the Umma? Muslims are supposed to care about their fellow Muslims. Yet when the Mohammedans of Xinjiang are treated cruelly for their faith nary a peep of protest escapes Islamabad. Pakistani will denounce India long and loud for any transgression real or imagined. But when China abuses Muslims foully the Pakistani Government loses her tongue. They dare not upset their ally against India.

The Uyghurs were not detained in time of war. There was no exigency for doing so nor is this a temporary measure. Many nations have used internment in extremis. It is true that some Uyghurs seek self-determination. China is utterly airless. As the mildest dissent is ruthlessly crushed, as the government is barbarously sadistic, as peaceful protesters were shot dead by the thousand there is no peaceful means to achieve even a modicum of justice. It is true that some Uyghurs want to see their sovereignty restored to them. The Uyghurs were independent as recently as the 1940s. They were aggressed by China which is the prison of peoples.

Han Chinese rule over the much put upon Uyghurs is rendered more protracted by the lights of perverted science. Facial recognition technology is now misused by the control freak regime to monitor the Uyghurs. This is literally Orwellian. The Uyghurs are living in a dystopia. Is there no escape from this morass of oppression?

A few Uyghurs took up arms when there was no other means to liberate themselves from an almost unexampled regime of unfreedom. A handful have struck down those whom they believe to be their false oppressors. I do not condone the use of force in this case. But if violence is damnable then Beijing is myriad times more culpable than the Uyghurs.

Would I rather live under Indian rule or Chinese? I do not tarry for a trice. I would prefer tenfold to live under Indian’s shining aegis. Bharat has ever striven for the upliftment and emancipation of mankind. India’s endeavour is the realisation of human dignity and equality throughout the globe.

India has her own development agency. Public spirited young Indians are doing their uttermost to assist those less fortunate than themselves in other lands.

The situation is not absolutely categorical. I do not pretend that India exists in a state of prelapsarian purity. For the poor India is not always locus amoenus. Though India is not as wealthy as China this is no reason to subject Indian to barbaric depredations. Bharat is not as economically developed as China for several reasons. The Indians have had to spend large sums fending off unjustified attacks by Pakistan. Pakistan is armed, abetted, incited and funded by China to do this. Curious that the butchers of Beijing should calumniate the overwhelmingly secular Uyghurs for religious fundamentalism while Beijing at the same time does all it can to strengthen a genuinely religiously fanatical regime in Pakistan. As for religious fundamentalism what about the Chinese Government itself? Its exaltation of Mao, his Little Red Book and the rest of grisly gang is quasi-religious.

The reasons that Hindustan is not as wealthy as China include the fact that India putshuman rights above wealth. India recognises that value and price are not always the same thing. India will not demolish homes with compensation. There are some standards of health and safety to be observed in workplaces. The Government of India makes some attempt to mitigate pollution. People have the right to form trades unions, to engage in collective bargaining and to strike. There is some corruption in India which is partly because India rightly recognises the presumption of innocence. People are not slung into prison on the mere suspicion of taking unlawful payments. India respects the rights of the people and does not worship the brute god of Mammon. The humblest denizen of Bihar is freer than the richest oligarch in Shanghai.

There are bad people in every country. By no means all Chinese are bad. There are some in India who behave in a manner which is unworthy of the glorious name of India. Though some have sullied India’s reputation nonetheless India’s moral superiority is unarguable. My heart goes out to the Indians in their valiant struggle!  Every liberty loving person across the globe should stand with India. Let India’s cause be our own!

India in her righteous range shall win back every inch of her sacred soil. The infamous aggression of the liberticides shall be given short shrift. The indomitable will of the Indian national shall prevail. The Chinese will not subjugate the Indians. I shall rejoice in each mighty stroke of war meted out by the might of India. Nothing shall bring India’s proud soul under even if the last entrenchment of liberty shall be her grave!

Those of us in the anglosphere and the Commonwealth ought to look upon the Indians are our kith and kin. A kindred nation owes a duty of solidarity to those under attack. India is assailed by a foe bereft of all legal or moral considerations.

Though the PRC has rights enshrined in its constitution these long ago fell into desuetude to the extent that they were ever even extant. The regime’s mercy is evanescent even towards its own countrymen.

This article is not in the least wise sinophobic. I do not bear any ill will towards the Chinese. I detest their execrable government. Its cruelty is scarcely surpassed in the annals of human depravity. I only wish that the downtrodden people of China were introduced to the blessings of liberty which have long reigned in India.

By devotion to duty, by unconquerable fidelity, by ingenuity and heroism India shall prevail. May Providence bless India’s arms with victory.

I pray that before long India’s resplendent green, white and saffron tricolour complete with the cyan chakra shall be unfurled over liberated territory and flutter proudly over India’s sovereign soil. The genius, the compassion, the creativity and the common decency of Indians have along ago won me over to their side.

India: ancient, gallant, glorious, serene, sagacious, immortal, magnificent, majestic and ever triumphant.

I recall the words of Sir Rabindranath Tagore: victory to thee!

Jai Hind!