Taking both India and China forward

Jaideep Saikia

(Jaideep Saikia is India’s foremost strategist and

bestselling author. He can be reached at jdpsaikia@gmail.com)

When a friend called me rather late on 22 August 2025 to inform me that
the latest dialogue between India and China “has decided to resolve the border through a piecemeal approach rather than a broad resolution so that early harvest adds to confidence building between the two Asian giants”, he also jibbed, saying, “Isn’t the communique by the two Asian giants just exactly what you had been recommending by way of your ‘Line of Amity’ concept between India and China in a subsector rather than in a one-fell-swoop resolution of the entire 3,488 km India-China boundary?”

Indeed, this friend had not only heard about my “Line of Amity” proposal that I had conceived of and flagged in the “Track II Dialogue” with China in 2014, in which I was a member of the Indian delegation, but he had also been an observer of the webinar that I had erected on 30 August 2020 titled, “India-China Boundary: Eye to the Eastern Sector.” My objective was to test my “Line of Amity” theory.

There were several heavyweights that I had brought together for the webinar. There were former Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, former Chief of Staff of the Eastern Indian Army Command Lt Gen. J.R. Mukherjee, former Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai, former General Officers Commanding of the Tezpur and Leh Corps Lt Gen. Anil Ahuja and Rakesh Sharma respectively, Lt Gen. Sanjay Kulkarni, Myra McDonald of the “Height of Madness” (Siachen) fame, Prof. Srikanth Kondapalli, Prof. Eeshan Kalita, Dr. Alex Waterman and Maj Gen. A.K. Bardalai. What made the exercise a challenging one was that it was held just after the unfortunate incidents in Galwan. As I told a few people in the days that followed the webinar, the timing of the webinar was deliberate. My rationale was that if even an “academic breakthrough” could be engineered when India-China relations were at their lowest, one can imagine what can be achieved when they are at their highest. But I must confess that there was complete, unadulterated opposition to my “Line of Amity” suggestion, including derision for what was termed as out-and-out inanity on my part. After all, I was not a military man and had “elementary” knowledge of the lofty issues pertaining to the India-China boundary. The fact that I had traversed almost the entire Eastern Sector and witnessed aspects for myself was pooh-poohed.

Almost a year later, on 21 April 2021, I was delivering a speech on India’s security challenges in Guwahati’s India Club. Referring to the India-China boundary issue, I had reiterated my “low-high-bilateral-dichotomy” by alluding to a scene from the Hollywood movie “Crimson Tide”. The movie, as buffs would know, is all about submarine warfare between the United States and Russia.

In one of the heady scenes, the US submarine’s galley catches fire, and naturally the entire crew’s efforts were geared towards quickly dousing the flame before it reaches the nuclear reactors. But the captain of the submarine calls instead for an “Alert Drill”, a maritime parlance stating that the boat needs to be on “Action Station”, ready for and against enemy engagement. In any event, the fire was combated. The Executive Officer (XO) of the submarine, played with class by Denzel Washington, later queries the Captain about the need to announce an “Alert” when there was a fire raging inside the boat. The captain of the submarine, enacted by the redoubtable Gene Hackman, coolly informs his XO, “The worst of times are an opportunity to test out the best.” I wonder if I had subconsciously taken a page out of the “Crimson Tide” script, but the film was probably in the back of my mind when I shepherded a formidable team to discuss my “Line of Amity” during the 30 August 2020 webinar. In any event, I am happy that neither Doklam-Galwan-Yangtse nor the duality of Indian and Chinese belligerence of the last four years has disallowed the present thaw from taking shape.

But for those who came in late, an update of Jaideep Saikia’s “Line of Amity” theory.

The history of conflict is replete with indiscernible waypoints that only in-depth study can unravel. But the truism that governs its visible exterior is such that only analysis holds its own. The India-China relationship has had its share of problems and has battled them in the past.

Therefore, aspects such as whether Carl von Clausewitz, author of “On War”, was influenced by Sun Tzu, the sixth-century Chinese thinker, or not have to be unearthed only by the doggedness of examination. But the fact of the matter is that both their works, despite apparent differences in their philosophies pertaining to combat, have certain inherent convergences.

Clausewitz, a Prussian military strategist, has written that “(war) has certainly a grammar of its own, but its logic is not peculiar to itself.” He also states that “war is only a part of political intercourse, therefore by no means an independent thing in itself.” Such assertions resonate in Sun Tzu as well, especially when he affirms that “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” In other words, victory is better achieved by diplomacy—an important plinth in “political intercourse”—rather than by taking recourse to war.

India-China relations are fraught with a surfeit of mistakes. Indeed, despite attempts by both the countries to bury the past and make a new beginning, misunderstandings continued to simmer over certain fundamental issues. The unfortunate incident in Galwan in 2020 had been the latest when I convened the webinar on 30 August 2020.

But I was quite clear that the reasons for the intrusion in Eastern Ladakh were pure Beijing messaging to both the United States and also India’s neighbours.

While it sought to “inform” the United States that India cannot be used as a countervail to its anti-China overtures, China was attempting to caution India’s neighbours that India cannot be relied on as a security foil. But the most important reason was to restrict India to its land commitments and away from embarking upon maritime quests, a right which China seeks to be its singular prerogative. It is another matter that it failed in its endeavour.

Earlier an impasse was witnessed in Doklam. It has an interesting narrative, one which gains in importance when the fact about the Chinese having “informed” New Delhi “in advance” about its plan to build a road in the plateau is factored in. If this information is correct, then the conflict that had marked the “conflict” can be said to have been unnecessary.

The point that is being made is that if the Chinese were bent upon constructing a motorable road that would take it right up to the Royal Bhutan Army post at the base of Zampheri Ridge, a course of action that would severely compromise the security of the tenuous 22 km Siliguri Corridor which connects the Northeast of India to the rest of India (especially were the Chinese to cross the Torsa Nullah), then expedience should have egged Indian strategists to find a way to circumvent the problem instead of involving itself in both pointless rhetoric and tedious logistical activities such as advanced troop deployment.

Indeed, if the building of the road by the Chinese—and consequently putting in place sophisticated infrastructure in the “base”—poses a security threat to the “Chicken’s Neck”, the circuitous route that could have been adopted was to seek out other “corridors” and routes to the Northeast, calling, thereby, not only the Chinese bluff but also negating the threat which the road would create.

Although much has changed in the region (read: Bangladesh), such pragmatic acts would not have been too demanding an affair during that period, especially as New Delhi had an able partner in Dhaka at the time. In any event, notwithstanding the truism that both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, too, were military men, the fact of the matter is that rhetoric always takes a front seat in any imbroglio when it can be conveniently avoided.

At any rate, a solution of sorts—with an eye to circumventing the status quo that prevailed—was proposed by me on 26-27 August 2014 during the course of an Indo-China “Track II Dialogue” in which (as aforesaid) I was a member of the Indian delegation. With the knowledge that neither side would surrender ground (the instances which were quoted were that of Thagla Ridge held by the Chinese and the Namka Chu River that runs south of the Ridge held by the Indians in the Kameng Sector, which I found least contentious) as well as the fact that the only solution lies in converting the “Line of Actual Control” into an international boundary, I took recourse to semantics.

The phrase “Line of Actual Control”—if even a step is to be taken in the direction of later-day resolution (even by the generation that is to come!)—must be replaced by a classification that does not ring of belligerence. “Line of Amity” is the name that I proposed. If unyieldingness is inevitable and the status quo is the only outcome of protracted negotiations, it was my considered opinion that at least a change of nomenclature that resonates with accommodation could herald a positive mindset change from the continual and non-progressive status quo. The name “Line of Amity” also has the distinct possibility of bringing future leaders of both the countries to the table without the baggage of the past as well as the suspicion that has accompanied almost all Indo-China boundary dialogue and could well be the prerequisite for entente cordiale.

I also laced my plea by stating that altering the name from “Line of Actual Control” to “Line of Amity” would not have any legal implications or bring forth questions about the principle by which delineation of boundaries is normally undertaken. I hazarded this aspect despite the fact that the watershed principle is generally applicable to the Thagla Ridge, which the Chinese presently occupies, and the “Line of Actual Control” in the sub-sector almost approximates the “Line” which Henry McMahon drew in 1914 during the Simla Conference. The name “Line of Amity” also has the distinct possibility of bringing future leaders of both the countries to the table without the baggage of the past as well as the suspicion that has accompanied almost all Indo-China boundary dialogue and could well be the prerequisite for entente cordiale.

As Sun Tzu stated in his The Art of War, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity,” and “opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

Today, when I hear about the India-China “détente-in-construction”, I not only feel smug about the “Line of Amity” concept that I had sired, but also because I get the unmistakable feeling that, however belatedly, people in the corridors of power are actually listening to my counsel.