India’s official map of Arunachal Pradesh. ((Map courtesy: State Remote Sensing Application Centre, Government of Arunachal Pradesh)
New Delhi: China has again attempted to stake its claim on India’s Arunachal Pradesh by renaming 11 places in the state in its language with standard Chinese and Tibetan characters citing them as parts of so-called South Tibet. Beijing indulged in similar behaviour twice earlier when it renamed the Indian state’s six places in 2017 and a further 15 in 2021.
In a statement, China’s civil aviation ministry said the move was to standardize some geographical names in “South Tibet”.
Among the 11 places China renamed in Mandarin, two are residential areas, five are mountain peaks, two are rivers and two are other areas. China’s civil aviation ministry also categorized the renamed places and their subordinate administrative districts.
Beijing claims 90,000 square kilometres of Arunachal Pradesh as part of Zangnan or South Tibet. New Delhi had been steadfastly rejecting China’s claim and maintained the entire state as an integral and inalienable part of India’s territory.
This time too, the reaction from New Delhi wasn’t different. In response to media queries on this issue, India’s foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said, “We have seen such reports. This is not the first time China has made such an attempt. We reject this outright.
Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India. Attempts to assign invented names will not alter this reality.”
It may be mentioned that in December 2022, Chinese troops unilaterally tried to alter the status quo at the line of actual control in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector. However, alert Indian troops thwarted the attempt and pushed the Chinese back into their side of the LAC. This resulted in a clash without the use of firearms, which led to some injuries on both sides.
