Northeast raises voice against China renaming Arunachal localities

By Nava Thakuria*

Guwahati: Citizens’ bodies in the northeast now raise their voice against China renaming Arunachal localities. Already India’s Ministry of External Affairs retributed stating that “just by naming something, you don’t change the reality. Reality is what it is. Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part, inalienable part of India and it will remain so”.

Denouncing the “hopeless attitude” of the Communist regime in Beijing to rename several localities of Arunachal Pradesh, a forum of nationalist citizens in the northeast asked the Chinese Communist leaders to respect the sovereignty of a nation which became their neighbouring country only after grabbing the land of the 14th Dalai Lama.

The Patriotic Peoples’ Front Assam (PPFA) today also urged the Union Government in New Delhi to ratify its stand on Tibet as being an independent nation so that China will never remain a neighbouring country for India.

“China does the tricks very often to draw the international media attention to cover up their invasion over the Tibetan people and their holy land in the 1950s, following which Dalai Lama had to escape Potala palace and take refuge in Dharamshala of Himachal Pradesh in northern India. Indians are unanimous in supporting the cause of Tibet even though New Delhi has not materialised their wish. Probably the time has come to show Beijing its real face as an aggressor and morally support the decades-long movement for an independent Tibet,” said a statement issued by the PPFA.

Mentionable is that the Chinese Civil Affairs Ministry announced its fourth list with so-called standardised geographical names for places, mountains, and rivers, inside Arunachal Pradesh on March 30, 2024.  It called the hilly State Zangnan and renamed over 30 places along the line of actual control (LAC), which Beijing often claims as part of southern Tibet.

New Delhi had promptly rejected such renaming of Arunachal localities by China, terming it as a senseless attempt to invent those names. Indian foreign ministry asserted that the change of names will not change the reality. “China has persisted with its senseless attempts to rename places in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. We firmly reject such attempts. Assigning invented names will not alter the reality that Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India,” the MEA stated on April 2, 2024.

*Senior journalist