Indian scholar advises India to get out of mess in Doklam

"After Indian troops trespassed and forcibly halted the activities of a Chinese road construction crew on a narrow plateau at the China-Bhutan-India tri-junction area in the Sikkim Himalayas, India has violated China's territorial sovereignty."
by Xinhua
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June 29, 2016: Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang shows a picture about the trespass of the Indian border troops at the Sikkim section at a regular press conference in Beijing. courtesy of Website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

India needs to get out of the mess in Doklam, Sourabh Gupta, senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington wrote on the South China Morning Post Sunday.

"After Indian troops trespassed and forcibly halted the activities of a Chinese road construction crew on a narrow plateau at the China-Bhutan-India tri-junction area in the Sikkim Himalayas, India has violated China's territorial sovereignty," Gupta said in his article.

"As a precondition for any dialogue, India must vacate its trespass unconditionally," he added.

China's position on, and solution to, the stand-off is "blunt and straightforward," according to the scholar.

The alignment of the China-India boundary in the Sikkim Himalayas sector is mutually defined by the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890. "On numerous occasions, Indian representatives from Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru down have formally accepted this," Gupta wrote.

Indian military's trespass into the Chinese territory in Doklam is at risk of setting a multitude of consequential precedents, the Indian scholar pointed out.