Bangalore: Senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh on Thursday claimed mistakes committed in understanding and management of border issues, resulted in the Indo-China war in 1962 and later territorial disputes with Pakistan.
Mistakes committed in domestic policy matters would be corrected in a lifetime but mistakes with regard to foreign policy issues take generations to correct, Singh, a former Defence and External Affairs Minister, said in an interaction with academicians here.
To a query on 1962 Indo-China war trauma, he claimed India has not entirely come out of the trauma and to overcome it, the country needs a robust leadership which is absent at present.
Asked about reported deployment of military personnel around Indian territory by China, Singh said, India is a nation and it cannot be surrounded by armed forces of another country.
"However, it makes little sense for China to go to war with India and it makes much sense for India to continue to be aggressively postured against China by treating them as equals and neither feel threatened nor inferior to the Chinese," he said.
There are mistakes in the understanding and management of India`s borders that led to stand-off as in the case of Jammu and Kashmir, he said.
To a reply on India-Pakistan relations during the NDA regime and now, Singh said India has to work continuously with that country to maintain peaceful relations.
"They (Pakistanis) are creating problems for themselves," he added.
On the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migrants which sparked off Assam violence, Singh said the problem can be resolved by introduction of green card.
"I don`t agree to Nandan Nilekeni and his madcap (UID) scheme which he is trying to promote," he said.
Singh said green card would take away the fear of demographic invasion and "will give some kind of a status to what we call illegal (migrants)."
PTI
