“China Thaw Leaves The LAC Quiet But Volatile. The 1967 Clashes Offer Bharat Lessons”, Swarajya, 26 Sep 2026.
“There is an urban legend that has circulated online for years. A woman had a pet python that stopped eating for several days and began lying stretched out beside her at night. Unnerved, she took it to a vet, who told her the python was fasting to make room for its meal and measuring her while it did so.
The story lacks scientific basis. Pythons do not measure their prey. But the legend endures because it captures a fundamental human anxiety. How do we live in close quarters with something powerful whose intentions are difficult to read, and the signals we see are rarely the ones that matter?
Consider what has been unfolding at Taksing in the Upper Subansiri Division near the Line of Actual Control (LAC). In late June, local civil society organisations in Arunachal Pradesh informed the district administration that the China’s People Liberation Army (PLA) had constructed roads, bridges and camps at sites in the area, displacing local communities from customary grazing and hunting grounds over a period of ten to fifteen years.
Reports in late July described a face-off some distance inside the LAC, followed by the pitching of Chinese tents in early August. The Army dismissed the allegations, while Union Minister Kiren Rijiju attributed them to differing local perceptions of territory along an undelineated boundary.
Separately, a fact-finding team of the People’s Party of Arunachal Pradesh reported that the Shera 5 patrolling point had been abandoned after a confrontation in 2023………”
Read the full article at Swarajya.
