India hit out at China for giving “ constructed” names to several places in a disputed Himalayan region on their border as Beijing looks to assert sovereignty over the home.
Several stretches of the lengthy frontier are disputed and relations have estranged dramatically since 20 Indian dogfaces failed in a brawl in June 2020 on one section between Ladakh and Tibet.
Since also, both sides have corroborated the region with thousands of redundant dogfaces and military tackle as multiple rounds of addresses have failed to lessen pressures.
This week the Ministry of Civil Affairs said it had “standardized” the names of 15 places in Zangnan (“South Tibet”) — Beijing’s title for the region India calls Arunachal Pradesh — and gave them all formal Chinese names.
The renaming of domestic areas, gutters, and mountains followed an analogous move in 2017 involving six other locales in the same area.
“ Arunachal Pradesh has always been, and will always be an integral part of India,” India’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.
“ Assigning constructed names to places in Arunachal Pradesh doesn’t alter this fact,” spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a statement.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said “ Southern Tibet is in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, and has historically been Chinese home,” adding the renaming came within “ the compass of China’s sovereignty”.
Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says it “ peacefully delivered” the rugged table in 1951.
It fiercely defends and militarises the Tibetan border and skirmishes away any debate about Chinese literal power of the region.
India meanwhile sees China’s new Land Borders Law, approved in October and set to come into force on January 1, as a hardening of Beijing’s position.
The law calls China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity “ sacred and unassailable” and enables Beijing to “ take measures to guard the territorial integrity and land boundaries and guard against and combat any act that undermines territorial sovereignty and land boundaries”.
India said in October that it anticipated that “ China will avoid bearing action under the rationale of this law which could unilaterally alter the situation in the India-China border areas”.
