Opinion | As India aligns itself with the West, is it entering a cold war with China?

After decades of uneasy peace, China has stepped up its territorial claims, while India has abandoned non-alignment in favour of robust ties with the West

An uptick in patriotic populism in China and India has also increased the appetite for territorial assertiveness

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Lloyd Austin, US secretary of defence, and Rajnath Singh, Indian defense minister, share a light moment at a joint news conference in New Delhi, on March 20. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 3:30am, 15 Sep 2021Updated: 4:15am, 15 Sep 2021

“We see the most aggressive form of imperialism functioning across our borders in India,” pronounced Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru at the height of border clashes with China in 1962.

Stunned and outraged by Beijing’s strategic offensive across the heavily-contested Himalayan borders, he accused China of “invading a friendly country without rhyme or reason or excuse and justifying it by saying that they are being attacked”.

After years of courting Chinese support for the international Non-Aligned Movement, Nehru called China “this so called anti-imperialist country becoming itself an imperialist of the worst kind”.

Despite the testy rhetoric and bloody skirmishes, the two countries stepped back from the brink, with Beijing declaring a unilateral ceasefire and withdrawing to the de facto border called the Line of Actual Control.

For the next five decades, India and China effectively settled for a “cold peace”, with bouts of rapprochement amid growing economic interdependence.

In recent years, however, China has stepped up its territorial claims, while India has gradually abandoned its non-alignment strategy in favour of robust ties with the West.

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