Modi accused of surrendering to China after denying border incursion
- The hashtag #ModiSurrendersToChina is trending after Narendra Modi said no Indian territory was lost during last week’s border clashes with China
- Modi said the Indian army can take steps to resolve tensions, but Beijing said Indian troops provoked the skirmish, and that China claimed the Galwan valley
“Neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our posts captured,” Modi told opposition leaders at an all-party meeting late on Friday.
His statement raised questions over where the soldiers were when the clashes took place – in Indian or Chinese territory – in an area where a large part of the boundary is unmarked. It also contradicted the assertions of his own foreign ministry.
Just two days earlier, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that the Chinese army had tried to erect a post in the Galwan Valley on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control – a 3,488km (2,167 mile) undemarcated border. In a statement after the call, New Delhi accused China of an “intent to change the facts on ground in violation of all our agreements to not change the status quo”.