Amid opposition parties’ political fury over Chinese soldiers’ attempts last week to transgress the LAC (line of actual control) in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang, the Congress has demanded prime minister Narendra Modi explain his ‘relationship’ with that country. The party tweeted a graphic claiming Chinese state-run media Global Times said ‘(if) Modi loses Gujarat then that will have a negative effect on China’ and added the hashtag ‘#JawabDoModi’.
“What is your relation with China… #JawabDoModi (answer, Modi)…” the Congress declared; the ‘JawabDoModi’ cry was also raised by the party in 2014, when opposition parties united to criticise Modi for not sacking then union minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti over alleged hate speech.
Fast forward to 2022 and ‘JawabDoModi’ rings out again, this time over China’s blatantly illegal attempt to change the status quo in the north-eastern state.
On December 9 Indian and Chinese troops clashed in the Tawang sector. India responded to China’s incursions in a ‘firm and resolute’ manner and forced a retreat, the government said. The Indian Air Force had also been called to action; defence sources told news agency ANI ‘in the last few weeks there have been occasions when our jets had to be scrambled…’ to tackle enemy drones. Defence minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament there were no fatalities – unlike the June 20202Galwan Valley clash – and no serious injuries to Indian soldiers.
The scuffle, though, provoked outrage in Parliament and accusations by the Congress that the prime minister and the government were ‘hiding the truth’. The party said Singh’s account was ‘incomplete’ and – in jibes reminiscent of those during the Galwan incident – claimed that the Modi government had remained a ‘mute spectator’ to China’s actions as it crossed borders.
