https://www.scmp.com/rss/325005/feed A former Indian Army colonel, Ajai Shukla is an analyst and commentator on defence and security affairs en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com In a shock to the Indian military, its most senior serving soldier, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, was killed in a helicopter crash on Wednesday as he was flying to give a lecture at the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) in Wellington, in Tamil Nadu. The incident comes as a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which shared a relationship of trust with the late general. His loss also weakens the Indian military’s potential response to any Chinese adventurism of the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3158986/india-mourns-death-top-general-bipin-rawat-what-does-his-loss-mean?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3158986/india-mourns-death-top-general-bipin-rawat-what-does-his-loss-mean?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 08 Dec 2021 23:30:47 +0000 On Monday, the Indian government unilaterally reshaped its special constitutional relationship with its northernmost province of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), under which that princely state had joined the Indian union. In October 1947, with Pakistan-sponsored Pashtun militias closing in on the summer capital of Srinagar, the Hindu king of the Muslim-majority kingdom signed an Instrument of Accession, giving New Delhi full control over J&K’s defence, foreign affairs and communications, while allowing... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3021525/indias-dispute-pakistan-over-jammu-kashmir-has-loser-new-delhis?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3021525/indias-dispute-pakistan-over-jammu-kashmir-has-loser-new-delhis?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 05 Aug 2019 14:15:14 +0000 The face-off between New Delhi and Islamabad may appear to be winding down, but domestic rhetoric in India is only rising. On Thursday, after Pakistan announced the release of a captured Indian pilot, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a crude pun to an audience of scientists in Delhi: “This was just a pilot project. We were just practising. Now we will carry out the real thing.” For Modi, the personal political stakes could not be higher. As India and Pakistan edged closer to full-blown... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2188317/india-pakistan-crisis-modi-gambling-nuclear-stakes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2188317/india-pakistan-crisis-modi-gambling-nuclear-stakes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:30:52 +0000 India’s Supreme Court is considering a petition that calls for an investigation into the government’s purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets made by French company Dassault Aviation for an allegedly inflated 7.85 billion euros (US$8.96 billion). At stake is not just the modernisation of the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) ageing fleet, but also the credibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who came to power in 2014 promising to end corruption. With elections due in early 2019, the opposition is on the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2174774/what-dogfight-court-would-mean-modis-rafale-jet-deal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2174774/what-dogfight-court-would-mean-modis-rafale-jet-deal?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 26 Nov 2018 01:00:30 +0000 It was political change in the Maldives that prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make his first visit to the Indian Ocean archipelago last weekend. The Maldives was the only member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) that Modi had yet to set foot in after more than four years in power. New Delhi’s relations with Male had steadily deteriorated, as China cultivated ties with Abdulla Yameen, the strongman president who many believed was in Beijing’s pocket. Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2174776/maldives-indias-modi-sees-glint-chinese-pearl?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2174776/maldives-indias-modi-sees-glint-chinese-pearl?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Nov 2018 02:00:41 +0000 The summit meeting last week between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin was an effort by New Delhi to allay Moscow’s growing apprehension that its long-standing strategic partner and largest arms buyer has been lost forever to the United States. In concluding a US$5.43 billion deal for five regiments of Russia’s S-400 Triumf long-range air defence system, New Delhi signalled that, notwithstanding the growing US-India strategic and military partnership,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2168298/india-and-russia-may-be-allies-can-they-find-common-ground?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2168298/india-and-russia-may-be-allies-can-they-find-common-ground?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 12 Oct 2018 07:43:42 +0000 During the Kargil conflict in 1999, the Indian Army was mounting costly uphill attacks to evict Pakistani infiltrators from our side of the Line of Control (LoC), which divides the disputed state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Tempers were running high in the formation in which I then served. To make the Pakistan Army pay a price too, we staged a carefully planned raid on one of their forward positions one night, overrunning it and inflicting heavy casualties on the defenders. Inevitably, Pakistani... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2166132/surgical-strikes-modi-plays-politics-indian-army-soldiers-pay?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2166132/surgical-strikes-modi-plays-politics-indian-army-soldiers-pay?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Sep 2018 02:00:30 +0000 The Indian government, rattled by a vocal opposition campaign that has charged it with financial wrongdoing and endangering national security over the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft from French company Dassault, is now soft-pedalling the purchase of other weapons badly needed by its overstretched and ill-equipped military. In March, a senior general testified before a parliamentary defence committee that more than two-thirds of the army’s equipment was obsolete, while only eight per cent... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2165161/how-modis-rafale-defence-deal-has-left-india-lagging-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2165161/how-modis-rafale-defence-deal-has-left-india-lagging-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Sep 2018 05:00:00 +0000 Last week, an Indian parliamentary panel fluttered the dovecotes in Thimphu – Bhutan’s capital – by recommending New Delhi encourage Bhutan to deploy more soldiers in the disputed Doklam area, where a year ago several hundred Indian and Chinese soldiers stood eyeball-to-eyeball, raising real fears of bloodshed. Non-violent patrol confrontations are common along the undefined, 4,588km Sino-Indian border, but the face-off at Doklam was unique. Indian soldiers were not defending Indian soil; they... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2160260/doklam-year-bhutan-more-worried-about-india-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2160260/doklam-year-bhutan-more-worried-about-india-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Aug 2018 05:45:00 +0000 In autumn 1986, as a young army captain deployed in India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own territory, I readied to go to war with China. The provocation: a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) company, about a hundred men, had entered territory that India claimed and established camp on a yak grazing ground called Wangdung, across a rivulet called the Sumdorong Chu, north of the hotly disputed Tawang township. Road to Doklam: When will China and India start... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2107957/we-are-human-too-india-and-china-have-start-talking-and-stop?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2107957/we-are-human-too-india-and-china-have-start-talking-and-stop?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Aug 2017 07:48:35 +0000