‘Inalienable and integral’: India rejects China’s attempts to rename Arunachal places

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Tuesday reiterated that Arunachal Pradesh is an "inalienable and integral part of India", amid a row with China over Beijing's attempts to rename places in the border state, news agency ANI reported. Let me reiterate this once.

The remarks came after India formally identified 27 locations in Arunachal Pradesh by their standard names on the official Survey of India map, amid China's repeated attempts to assign Chinese names to places in the state. The government said the move is aimed at.

What Happened

New Delhi has consistently rejected Beijing's practice of assigning Chinese names to places in Arunachal Pradesh, describing such efforts as "vain and preposterous" and maintaining that they can never alter the reality that the state "was, is, and will" remain an integral.

• Several of the 27 locations have significant strategic and historical importance, including Long Ju, which witnessed an early Sino-Indian military clash in 1959, and Thag La, where initial engagements of the 1962 conflict took.

• The official list also includes Jairampur, a key logistical centre in eastern Arunachal Pradesh, as well as Jaswant Garh and the Sher-e-Thapa Memorial, both built to honour Indian soldiers who fought in the 1962.

• China issued its first list of six names in 2017, followed by 15 designations in 2021 and another 11 in 2023.

Key Details

India has consistently rejected these claims as "fictitious", stressing that such unilateral attempts only seek to create "baseless narratives" and do not change the ground reality.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by Mid-Day as more details emerge