India continues to downplay Chinese incursions into Indian territory. In the latest episode, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) entered the Indian side of the border around northern Sikkim called the ‘Finger Area’ and returned after some time. A previous incursion into this territory was also called ‘minor and local’ by Government officials. However, the constant incursions are significant in the light of Chinese claims over the territory in Sikkim.

Indian at a previous flag meeting had told China that incursions by Chinese troops into the area would be taken as a breach of the treaty between India and China to maintain peace along the border. China responding in its own style called the boundary issue a "very sensitive issue" and urged India to maintain the strategic cooperation in other areas. China and India have a common border of over 4,000km, and in Chinese perception it was an issue that was left from history.

With the PLA making fresh incursions into the Fingertip Area, Indian troops are now blocking the Chinese soldiers by forming human chains to stop the Chinese from crossing over. The intrusions in Sikkim have taken the authorities by surprise as the Chinese had never disputed the boundary between Sikkim and Tibet. Possibly, the motive behind incur¬sions is to keep the dispute alive. Army officers in the area recount numerous attempts in recent months by the Chinese to cross the border and remove the heaps of stones used as border markers. The PLA troops had intruded a number of times in the recent past.

Despite recurring border problems, China’s hard-line position of Tibetan groups in India, its reluctance to collaborate on reverie issues in the Himalayas, its barely concealed opposition to India’s improving relations with the United States and to India’s initiatives in recent years to increase its presence in multilateral and global institutions. The opening of an Indian consulate in Guangdong reflects the growing Indian presence in the province.

The claim to 21 km of territory in Sikkim on the grounds that China has been administering it since the 1890s is patently absurd, but underscores China’s objective of putting India on the defensive for allowing the Dalai Lama the right of free speech in the Indian republic. On the critical issue of sharing hydrological information of the upper Brahmaputra and other rivers flowing southwards from the Tibetan plateau, yet another agreement was signed that sounds very much as if it has not gone beyond the first Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2002 and another in 2005. Decoded, this merely means that the Indians got nowhere on the hard security issues.

Given the mismatch between peace talk from Indian political leaders and increasing incursions by Chinese soldiers across several point of the Line of Actual Control, there is huge relevance to military strategists must assume that, despite all efforts to prevent it, there may be a war. There can be no arguing against that: indeed it is a more elaborate expression of the standard line about keeping your powder dry, or the 1962 slogan that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. Not surprising that when the army confirmed that latest motorized incursion in the Finger Area in Sikkim it tended to underplay the incident.