India’s Failure Against PLA In Ladakh in 2020 Was Due To Political Indecision, Says Ex-Army Chief Gen. Naravane – Analysis

In his yet unpublished book entitled Four Stars of Destiny, India's former army chief, Gen. M.M.Naravane blames the highest echelons of the country's political leadership for the setbacks suffered by the Indian army in the Ladakh sector of the Sino-Indian border in 2020-21. 

Naravane was army chief between December 2019 and April 2022, a period that was one of the most consequential in recent military history, after the 1962 border war.

A point which emerges from Naravane's account is that unlike the People' Liberation Army (PLA) of China, the leadership of the Indian army is not an integrated military-political institution. China's political leadership is represented at the very top of the PLA, providing the strategic thinking. China's top leadership is part of the over-arching Central Military Commission, the head of which is none other than President Xi Jinping. But in India, the military and political leaderships are not intertwined in the same way. The two are distinct entities with the political leadership having the final say in matters of war and peace. Therefore, the PLA in Ladakh, as elsewhere, was better equipped to quickly tackle tactical and strategic challenges, as compared to the Indian army which lacked such a well-integrated back up. 

Here are excerpts from the book gleaned from a long article by Sushant Singh in the latest issue of New Delhi-based magazine "The Caravan".

Rechin La/Kailash Range Incident

Gen.Naravane recalls the epoch making Rechin La/Kailash Range  incident in Eastern Ladakh in August 2000 to make his point.  On 31 August 2020, Lt.Gen. Yogesh Joshi, chief of India's Northern Command, received information at 8.15 pm saying that four Chinese tanks, supported by infantry, had begun moving up a steep mountain track towards Rechin La. Joshi reported the movement to the Chief of Army staff, Gen. Naravane. The tanks were within a few hundred metres of the Indian positions on the Kailash Range, the strategic high ground that Indian forces had seized, hours earlier, from the PLA. 

Rechin La and Kailash range are on the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the Sino-Indian border. Here, every metre of elevation translates to strategic dominance. Indian soldiers fired a warning shot. But it had no effect as the Chinese kept advancing. Naravane began making frantic calls to the leaders of India's political and military establishment, including Rajnath Singh, the Defence Minister; Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor; General Bipin Rawat, the Chief of Defence Staff; and S Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs. "To each and every one my question was, 'What are my orders?'" Bu there was no answer.

Meanwhile, the situation was deteriorating dramatically, demanding clarity.  At 9.10 pm, Joshi called Naravane again. The Chinese tanks continued to advance and were now less than a kilometre from the Rechin La pass. At 9.25 pm, Naravane called Defence Minister Rajnath Singh again, asking "for clear directions." None came.

However, there was an existing protocol. Naravane had clear orders not to open fire "till cleared from the very top." But his superiors did not give any clear directive.

Message from PLA Commander

Meanwhile, a message arrived from the PLA commander, Major General Liu Lin. He proposed a cooling down of sorts: both sides should stop further movement, and local commanders would meet at the pass at 9.30 am the following morning. It seemed like a reasonable proposition. At 10 pm, Naravane called Rajnath and Doval to relay this message.

Ten minutes later, Northern Command rang again. The Chinese tanks had not stopped. They were now only five hundred metres from the top. Joshi said that the "only way to stop them was by opening up with our own medium artillery, which he said was ready and waiting." But An artillery duel with the PLA could escalate into something very large. 

"My position was critical," Naravane writes. He was caught between "the Command who wanted to open fire with all possible means" and a government committee "which had yet to give me clear-cut executive orders."

Naravane made yet another call to the Defence Minister, who promised to call back. Rajnath called back at 10.30 pm. He had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Modi's instructions consisted of a single sentence: "Jo uchit samjho, woh karo" (Do whatever you deem appropriate).

This this was to be purely a military decision. "I had been handed a hot potato," Naravane recalls. "With this carte blanche, the onus was now totally on me."

COVID Shut Down  

It was COVID 19 shut down time in India. "The country was reeling under COVID-19. The economy was faltering. Global supply chains had fractured. Would we be able to ensure a steady supply of spares, etc., under these conditions, in case of a long-drawn-out action? Who were our supporters in the global arena, and what about the collusive threat from China and Pakistan?" Naravane wondered. 

The army was ready to go to war. But going to war can never be a purely military decision, Sushant Singh points out in his article. War is too serious a matter to be entrust to military men as the French statesman Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) famously said. Decisions on war should be taken by the political leaderships. 

This was the practice in India before. For example, during the 1999 Kargil conflict (again in Ladakh), under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, every action was debated and approved in meetings of the cabinet committee on security, India's final decision-making body on national security, chaired by the Prime Minister. Memoirs from that period show the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) being able to own its decisions and issue clear directives to military commanders. The same was true of Indira Gandhi during the 1971 war that led to the liberation of Bangladesh.

But, in August 2020, according to Naravane's account, there was neither any authorisation to fire nor any restriction. No guardrails. No contingency framework. By handing such a monumental decision to the army, the prime minister had effectively abdicated the responsibility of initiating, or avoiding, a military conflict with China, Sushant Singh says in his article.

"It is not the army chief's role to weigh India's political and economic situation, assess potential US diplomatic backing, factor in the COVID-19 crisis, or calculate the risk of Pakistan and China combining forces. Those assessments are meant to be made by the government. Political instructions to the military on such matters must be precise and unambiguous, not reduced to a vague injunction to act at one's discretion," Singh says.

No Permission to Open Fire First 

However, there was one rule applicable to the India-China border. India cannot fire first and become an aggressor. 

So, Naravane made his decision. "We cannot be the first ones to fire," he told Joshi. To do so would hand the Chinese a justification, a "casus belli," to escalate the situation by claiming victimhood. This calculation was deliberate and strategic. Instead of opening fire, Naravane ordered Joshi to deploy tanks "right to the forward slopes of the Pass" and position them nose‑down, so that their main guns were physically pointing straight at the PLA armour at close range. This would make it clear that any further Chinese advance would be directly targeted.

The order was executed immediately, Naravane writes. "The PLA tanks, which had by then reached within a few hundred metres of the top, stopped in their tracks. Their light tanks would have been no match for our medium tanks. It was a game of bluff and the PLA blinked first."

By the following morning, both sides agreed to flag meetings at the Chushul–Moldo meeting point. 

Galwan Clash 

The first week of May 2020 had seen "a few tense face-offs with the PLA" in eastern Ladakh. On 5 May, one such incident took place at Patrolling Point 14 in Galwan, foreshadowing what was to come. 

Much of the competing claims made by India and China along the LAC—across vast stretches of inhospitable and uninhabited terrain—are asserted through patrolling by soldiers, the construction of observation posts and other infrastructure, and control over grazing grounds. The Galwan River flows from east to west, joining the Shyok River near the Indian outpost on the Darbuk–Shyok–Daulat Beg Oldie road. From there, Indian patrols would move upriver towards Patrolling Point 14 (PP-14) roughly ten kilometres away as the crow flies but far longer on foot, requiring multiple river crossings. The terrain made it difficult to complete patrols in a single day.

About a kilometre short of PP-14, a small seasonal rivulet flowing north to south joins the Galwan River. "After crossing this junction, it was relatively easy to go up to PP-14. Just south and east of this junction was a flattish piece of ground which could also be developed into a helipad. For the Indian side, the alternatives to avoid a multi-day patrol were either to establish a temporary observation post at PP-14, which would have been in violation of protocols, or construct a motorable track as far forward as possible, at least till the nala river junction. Army engineers had already begun work on such a track in the summer of 2020, including the construction of bridges. These construction parties later appeared in videos released by Chinese state television to portray India as the aggressor.

The PLA, by contrast, had no road connectivity to PP-14 from their post near Galwan, some 25 kilometres to the east, except for a natural surface track, which they too, were improving. 

The PLA had not only objected to Indian patrols reaching PP-14 but had begun insisting on patrolling up to the nullah junction—an unprecedented demand that India "firmly and categorically denied," Naravane says. 

Cabinet Committee on Security 

On 6 May 2020, during a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) at the Prime Minister's residence, convened to discuss the situation created by Chinese actions at Doklam, Naravane brought to everyone's attention the emerging situation in Eastern Ladakh. As the prime minister's special representative on China, NSA Ajit Doval was expected to speak to the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, about Doklam. Naravane suggested that "this latest provocation at PP-14 could also be brought up." But that suggestion was rejected. 

Naravane calls it "providential" that the army detected the Chinese move to occupy PP-14. Naravane and Lt.Gen. Harinder Singh, happened to be on an aerial reconnaissance mission when they spotted what Naravane describes as a Chinese "surreptitious build-up." 

But a Chinese statement claimed that "Indian border troops, who have crossed the LAC by night and trespassed into China's territory, have built fortification and barricades, which impeded the patrol of Chinese border troops. They deliberately made provocations to unilaterally change the status quo of control and management. The Chinese border troops have been forced to take necessary measures to respond to the situation on the ground and strengthen management and control in the border areas." There were scuffles and fisticuffs between the Indians and Chinese. 

A few days after the PP-14 clash, there was another one on the north bank of the Pangong Lake, Naravane writes, which saw more scuffles and "even stone-throwing, resulting in minor injuries to both sides." Around the same time, there was a face-off at Naku La in Sikkim. "All of these," Naravane concludes, "were the result of aggressive behaviour on the part of the PLA, which seemed to be looking for a fight."

By mid-May, the probing evolved into something far more serious. In what Naravane describes as "an extremely unusual move," the PLA established positions at PP-15 and PP-17A in considerable strength, deploying "fifteen to twenty Armoured Personnel Carriers, heavy vehicles including dozers, and troops in the hundreds." These were areas where, in the past, both sides had conducted routine patrols before withdrawing to permanent bases. 

"This area (Gogra/Hot Springs) had never been contested in the past," Naravane writes. "This sudden escalation was unprecedented as well as unwarranted."

On the north bank of Pangong, Chinese aggression took a different form. The lake stretches for roughly a hundred and sixty kilometres, with about a third in India and the remaining two-thirds in Tibet. The northern shore is cut by ridges that descend into the lake—Fingers 1 to 8 from the Indian side. The LAC here is neither delineated nor demarcated. Indian patrols traditionally went up to Finger 8, while the PLA came till Finger 4. Both sides would contest this activity and lodge protests. At times there would be jostling and pushing.

On 18 and 19 May, Indian patrols encountered PLA forces in contested areas between Finger 4 and Finger 8. This time a large column of vehicles suddenly appeared from the direction of Sirijap Fort, carrying not the usual Chinese Border Defence Regiment troops but regular PLA soldiers "in full combat gear." They were equipped with riot shields, batons, barbed-wire-studded clubs and pyrotechnics. 

Faced with this sudden show of force, the outnumbered Indian soldiers were pushed back west of Finger 4. Several of them were injured and reported the loss of stores and damage to radio equipment.

Blames Local Commanders

Naravane blames commanders in Ladakh (presumably the corps and division commanders) for being underprepared and repeatedly so. He attributed the lapse to "a lack of information-sharing within the formation and attempts to underplay the situation."

In Delhi, meetings of the CCS and the China Study Group (an informal group of top officials, headed by Doval) followed. The prevailing sentiment, Naravane notes, was that India had to do "something." But, he adds, "Something doesn't happen overnight." The scale and timing of the PLA build-up, he suggests, had the "blessings right from the very top," a phrase that, in the Chinese context, could only refer to President Xi Jinping.

Open Snow Leopard

The Indian army immediately launched Operation Snow Leopard, inducting reserve formations. A meeting of Indian and Chinese commanders was held at Galwan in the second week of May. Both sides agreed to restore the status quo ante. But Naravane recalls that "as the deliberations were winding down," the PLA made an unexpected request. Since it was getting late, and their main location was far away, they asked permission "to pitch two tents in the vicinity of the Junction as a temporary arrangement only." The Indian commander said that "he would consider this request and would have to consult his superiors on it." The two sides broke off "just as dusk was setting in."

However, after making "a show of going back," the Chinese "returned with two tents, pitched them up, and presented us with a fait accompli." 

Naravane believes this was a premeditated tactic, one that would "become a recurring feature in the negotiations." The PLA would assume that their proposals had been accepted when actually they had only been "heard."

When Naravane learnt of the episode the next morning, he "immediately turned it down," only to be told that the tents had already been pitched. He did not accept the Northern Command's argument that the location was unsuitable for camping and that the tents would be submerged once water levels of the river rose in the summer. 

Therefore, the Indian army headquarters repeatedly told the Northern Command to tell the Chinese that the camps could only be temporary and that they should withdraw. But the Northern Command insisted that it was not an issue and they could get the camp vacated at any time. This assumption would prove dangerously wrong.

India responded by deciding to pitch its own tents in the same general area. Naravane does not specify who took the decision or whether it was discussed within the CCS. When Indian troops moved to implement it, there was a violent reaction from the Chinese side. 

Colonel Santosh Babu, the commanding officer of the 16 Bihar Regiment, "went forward with a small party of troops to attempt to defuse the situation." The PLA attacked Babu's party. What followed, Naravane writes, was "a free-for-all." As darkness fell, both sides rushed in reinforcements. "A see-saw engagement continued throughout the night."

Although armed, neither side opened fire, relying instead on batons, clubs, and stones hurled or rolled down slopes. The difference in terrain and connectivity on both sides proved decisive. "Due to better connectivity on their side, the PLA were able to move troops forward in APCs, which changed the balance in their favour," Naravane says.

"Many of our boys, who had either got disoriented or had been briefly detained by the PLA without food or medical aid, returned to base. However, fifteen of them succumbed to the combined effects of their injuries and hypothermia. It was one of the saddest days of my entire career ... losing twenty men in a day was hard to bear," he writes.

Scores of Indian soldiers were in Chinese custody. The last lot of ten soldiers, including four officers, were released after three days. . The PLA subsequently released videos and pictures of Indian soldiers and weapons in their captivity. But India stayed silent about these soldiers, while negotiating for their quiet return. The Indian government neither acknowledged the abuse nor issued any demarche to the Chinese for this ill-treatment of Indian soldiers. In February 2021, China officially acknowledged four PLA fatalities and bestowed honours on some of those who had been injured or killed. 

However, on 17 June 2020, Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar told his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi that "the Chinese side took pre-meditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties. It reflected an intent to change the facts on ground in violation of all our agreements to not change the status quo." 

But two days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed at an all-party meeting that "Na wahan koi hamari seema mein ghus gaya hai aur na hi koi ghusa hua hai, na hi hamari koi post kisi doosre ke kabze mein hai"—no intrusion occurred and no posts were captured. The statement contradicted the foreign ministry's account and was later echoed awkwardly by official clarifications. China promptly used Modi's remarks internationally to validate its position.

For his part, Naravane claimed that India had asserted  its rights at Galwan. "For the first time in over two decades," he writes, "the PLA had suffered fatal casualties." The Indian Army had showed the world that the neighbourhood bully would be challenged.

Indian Political Establishment's Restraint 

However, the Indian government still did not approve of opening       fire first to deter the Chinese. Firing was allowed only in case physical security was threatened and only by that group threatened, none else. 

After the China Study Group meeting, Indian forces moved to occupy multiple strategic positions: north of Pangong, they seized Finger 4 and the passes of Ane La and Kiu La, while on the south bank, they took Rezang La and Rechin La, dominating the Spanggur Gap from a height of 4,350 metres. "We definitely caught the PLA with their pants down," Naravane writes. The PLA's response was equally swift. It began moving troops toward the Kailash Range. While they were at lower heights than the Indian soldiers, "if they were to come up in strength and try to outflank or surround our localities, then we would have to take action," Naravane writes. "The situation was tense and nearing breaking point." 

At 5.30 pm, the PLA requested a flag meeting at the Chushul–Moldo Meeting Point, signalling a potential breakthrough. HS Gill, a brigade commander, attended the meeting, which lasted till 11 pm. The Chinese representative, Naravane recalls, said that the two armies should "abide by the strategic guidance of our leaders, that they don't want war and that we should freeze all movement till the next SHMCL (Corps Commanders) meeting.

By 31 August, the Chinese were probing Indian positions, which had prepared field defences and laid barbed wire, about fifty metres ahead, which was meant to be the Red Line—if the PLA breached it, Indian soldiers would open fire in self-defence. In the Kailash Range, a PLA company came within thirty-five metres of the field defences set up by the 13 Mahar regiment at 2 pm, firing two rounds into the air and demanding that the Indian soldiers dismantle their fortifications. 

"When the PLA tried to cross the barbed wire, we too fired three shots to more telling effect," Naravane writes. The Chinese withdrew, after what were possibly the first shots exchanged by the two armies in eastern Ladakh since 1962, but the situation was already crackling with the possibility of escalation. The PLA deployed its tanks towards Rechin La, but Naravane's call defused the situation before it got out of hand.

Diplomats' Participation

Negotiations in the Depsang standoff in 2013, Chumar in 2014 and Doklam in 2017, were conducted primarily by diplomats, Naravane points out. Military commanders coordinated locally, but it was officials in Beijing and New Delhi who negotiated the way out. But the crisis of 2020 marked a break from this pattern.

That summer, at the PLA's suggestion, India had accepted a new mechanism: Senior Highest Military Commander Level talks, popularly known as corps commander-level meetings. Unlike the Indian Army, the PLA is a very powerful institution, much higher in precedence and power than the Chinese foreign ministry. This was to create complications, as Naravane explains in the memoir. 

The first such meeting took place on 6 June 2020 at the Chushul–Moldo border point, after weeks of escalating tension. India was represented by Lieutenant General Harinder Singh, the commander of XIV Corps, while the Chinese representative was Major General Liu Lin of the South Xinjiang Military Region. The talks lasted nearly twelve hours, punctuated by translation delays and private consultations. Both sides agreed "in principle" to disengage at PP-14, PP-15 and PP-17A, with the modalities to be worked out later through lower-level meetings.

No Official Minutes of Meetings

Naravane notes a critical flaw in the negotiating process: there were no official records or minutes of the meeting. "The decisions arrived at were only in the nature of 'in-principle' agreements subject to ratification at appropriate levels on either side," he writes. "This arrangement had an inherent drawback in that what was said and understood by either party could be at variance based on individual perceptions, and there was no method to protect against any retraction from what had been agreed upon 'in-principle'. This was to have grave repercussions later on." 

When the issue of maintaining records was first raised, he adds, the foreign ministry was reluctant. It was only by the ninth round, in January 2021, that minutes were formally signed. Until then, "in the absence of proper records or minutes, it was difficult to move forward."

The second round, held on 22 June 2020—just a week after the Galwan clash—exposed the depth of disagreement. The PLA pushed for partial pullbacks, but India pushed for a return to the April 2020 status quo. New Delhi then insisted on holding meetings between Indian and Chinese diplomats, under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination, before or after each military round. This, Naravane notes, "would enable us to project our point in a more formal and institutionalized manner with the added advantage that minutes of the WMCC meetings were on record."

Disengagement and De-Escalation

These positions were subsequently reversed, with China refusing to even consider de-escalation, a position it still maintains. Disengagement refers to the local, tactical separation of opposing troops at face-off points, including pulling soldiers back, creating buffer zones and removing immediate face‑offs, while de‑escalation refers to the wider drawdown and thinning of forces and heavy weapons from the operationally alert posture, reducing the overall level of mobilisation and threat, not just at one or two standoff spots. 

"Both sides prepared their respective proposals based on their viewpoints, but nothing much changed on ground," Naravane writes, observing that the PLA simultaneously "continued improving their posture, building shelters and field defences, which was a sure indication of their long-term intent."

Points of Disengagement 

Another critical issue emerged in the second round: the reference point for disengagement. India and China have long disagreed on where the LAC lies, with significant differences in at least a dozen areas. 

Since both sides broadly agreed to "fall back," the question was, from where? The choice mattered, because it would establish the extent of control exercised on the ground and potentially "become a benchmark for any future border settlement." 

Two Reference Points- Indian and Chinese 

Naravane and the director general of military operations devised an innovation: two reference points, one for each side, with both armies retreating an equal distance from their own positions. 

Instead of fighting over a single line that would permanently define the border, each side would use its own reference point and retreat equally from it. 

Approved by the CSG, this approach avoided fixing a single contested line, but it carried an unspoken cost. First, India accepted the Chinese claims of the LAC for the first time, by including its version as a reference point. Second, the buffer zones it created meant Indian patrols would no longer access areas they had routinely patrolled before May 2020. 

This became the Galwan model, which was employed in other disengagement proposals as well.

Naravane writes that "the PLA also seemed to be on board" during the third round, on 30 June. It agreed to both sides pulling back five kilometres from their reference points. The space in between—the site of the 15 June clash—"was to become a buffer zone," inaccessible to both armies. 

After ratification via hotline, the disengagement at Galwan proceeded quickly. Within two days, the PLA dismantled its tents and vacated the area. 

But the Chinese refused to discuss the north bank of the Pangong Lake until it came up during the fourth round of SMHCL talks, on 14 July 2020. The Indian representatives, Naravane recalls, sought "a step-wise withdrawal of personnel, weapons and equipment to mutually agreed distances; as well as de-escalation, to reduce the overall forces of both sides in the region." 

But the PLA had made considerable changes to the landform and had put up a large number of shelters for habitation and administrative purposes. They had also moved forward their boats, used for patrolling the lake from Finger 8 to Finger 5, and built floating jetties. 

Positions hardened during the fifth and sixth rounds. India insisted on full disengagement and status quo ante; China focussed on "de-escalation" while objecting to India's military build-up. 

In the sixth round, on 21 September, India began including an MEA official in its delegation, mirroring the PLA's political commissar. This, Naravane explains, was essential because the "Corps Commander had to refer back on most issues, as agreeing to seemingly minor concessions in respect of Eastern Ladakh might have far-reaching consequences in relation to the settlement of the border issue as a whole." 

No Pull Back in Kailash Range 

India had gained a tactical advantage on the Kailash Range by this time. The CSG meeting preceding the sixth round decided that there "was no question of accepting a partial pullback," Naravane writes. 

The PLA's negotiating position, he adds, shifted dramatically at this point: they "changed their tune and started stressing the need for disengagement, now that the tactical advantage lay with us." 

This represented a significant recalibration. The MEA official helped, as he would "quote exactly what had transpired in various meetings (between respective Foreign and Defence Ministers) and thus gave the Chinese no room to wriggle out of their commitments."

Both sides acknowledged needing "a time-bound road map for disengagement," though fundamental disagreements persisted on sequencing and scope.

In the seventh round, on 12 and 13 October, the Chinese delegation also included a representative from the ministry of oceanic and border affairs. The PLA, Naravane recalls, proposed starting from the south bank and the Kailash Range, where India held advantages, which "was totally unacceptable to us on two counts, first, it started from the South Bank (as we had anticipated) and second, the pullback they were suggesting on the North Bank was not only partial but weighted heavily in their favour." 

The Indian delegation had assessed that the "only leverage we had was the Kailash Range and once that was given up, the PLA would then find some excuse or the other and renege on their commitments for the North Bank." Instead, India proposed commencing disengagement from the North Bank, offering token pullbacks on the Kailash Range as good faith. 

The proposal "put them in a tizzy," Naravane recalls, and, despite a lack of outcome, it meant progress since "at least the cards were on the table and there was a starting point for future negotiations and the narrowing-down of differences." 

In the eighth round, on 6 November, there was again no breakthrough, but "specifics of a road map towards disengagement were spelt out." The Chinese wanted to delink restoration of landforms from the process of disengagement, which the Indian side rejected. "If the infrastructure remained, it would make it that much easier to rush back and re-occupy the vacated areas," Naravane explains. 

By the ninth round, on 24 January 2021, the PLA agreed to withdraw beyond Finger 8 and restore landforms—an unexpected breakthrough. For the first time, formal minutes were signed.

The CSG's decision, on 27 January, to accept the deal—with the proviso that this was only a precursor to full disengagement—was political as much as military. 

Between 10 and 19 February 2021, disengagement unfolded methodically and was broadcast worldwide. What emerged, however, was not a restoration of the status quo ante, as in previous standoffs, but a new geography of separation.

Buffer Zones Against India's Interest 

Buffer zones—never publicly acknowledged as such—restricted Indian patrols in areas they could access before May 2020. When the defence minister informed parliament of the disengagement at Pangong, he did not explain that it was based on dual reference points. 

The Modi government chose silence over transparency, leaving the disengagement to be celebrated as success while its concessions remained hidden from public view.

Naravane's account reveals the Indian concessions. The buffer zones created were monuments not to peace but to managed separation, while India had conceded that Chinese claims about the LAC were as valid as its own. It was a solution born from political necessities rather than the requirements of the Indian military. The wait for a full resolution of the border question continues.