Which country has recently reaffirmed Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India?

Question

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Correct — A, USA. On 16 February 2023 Senators Jeff Merkley, Bill Hagerty and John Cornyn introduced Senate Resolution 75 in the 118th Congress, titled 'Reaffirming the state of Arunachal Pradesh as Indian territory and condemning the People's Republic of China's provocations in South Asia'. Its first operative clause states that the Senate 'unequivocally recognizes the state of Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of the Republic of India and supports the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity' — the exact formulation the question uses. Two of its recitals matter even more than the resolution itself, because they record what American policy already was: that 'since the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the United States has recognized the McMahon Line as the international boundary between the People's Republic of China and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh', and that the United States recognises Arunachal Pradesh 'not as disputed territory but as an integral part of the Republic of India, and this recognition is not qualified in any way'. That is why the stem says 'reaffirmed' rather than 'recognised' — the position dates from the 1960s and was being restated. What prompted the restatement is set out in the text: China's Ministry of Civil Affairs published a map in December 2021 assigning Mandarin names to 15 geographic features in Arunachal Pradesh — eight residential settlements, four mountain peaks, two rivers and one mountain pass — and in December 2022 Chinese and Indian troops clashed along the Line of Actual Control in the State, the biggest confrontation in the Eastern Sector in six years. The resolution also condemns China's construction of two villages close to the LAC, commends India's border-village development through the Vibrant Villages programme, and notes India's G20 presidency in 2023. One honest caveat a student should carry: a Senate resolution is an expression of that chamber's sense, not a treaty or a statute, and this one was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Its significance is as a public, dated restatement of the American position — which is exactly what the question is testing.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Australia is India's Quad partner alongside the United States and Japan, signed the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement with India in 2022, and is a natural guess for any 'friendly country backs India against China' question. But Canberra's public line on the India-China frontier is the standard one of urging restraint and peaceful resolution; it has issued no formal declaration that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India. The 2023 reaffirmation in the news, and the recognition dating to 1962, are American.  (c) Germany is India's largest trading partner in Europe and the two governments hold Inter-Governmental Consultations at head-of-government level, so the relationship is close — but it runs on trade, green hydrogen, migration and mobility, not on the Himalayan boundary. European states generally avoid taking a position on the sovereignty of specific disputed territories in Asia. Nothing equivalent to Senate Resolution 75 exists on the German side.  (d) This is the trap for a candidate who reasons from friendship rather than from the record. Russia is India's oldest defence partner, but it is also China's closest strategic partner, and Moscow has consistently declined to take sides on the India-China boundary, treating it as a bilateral matter for the two neighbours. Precisely because it will not choose between Delhi and Beijing, Russia has never described Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India in the way the US Senate resolution does.

Concept: Arunachal Pradesh is claimed in full by China, which calls it 'Zangnan' or South Tibet. The boundary India relies on is the McMahon Line, drawn at the Simla Convention of 1913-14 between British India and Tibet and named after the British negotiator Henry McMahon; China refused to ratify it and rejects it to this day. The dispute became a war in 1962, after which the two armies settled along the Line of Actual Control — a line of control by mutual perception rather than a demarcated border, which is why patrols still collide. China presses its claim through non-military instruments as well: it has issued successive lists of Mandarin place names inside Arunachal Pradesh, objected to visits by the Dalai Lama and by Indian leaders, and refused ordinary visas to residents of the State, offering stapled visas instead. Tawang is the emotional centre of the claim — it holds the Tawang Monastery, the largest in India, and is the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, which is why Beijing links the territory to its authority over Tibetan Buddhism.

State PCS 2023 Q48 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q48 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer