To strengthen their communication skills and cultural understanding with their Chinese counterparts amid the simmering border row with China, Indian Army personnel will now enrol in a Chinese language course at Tezpur University in Assam.
The university signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Army on Wednesday to offer a 16-week course in Mandarin for the army personnel, according to a defence spokesman.
Lt. Col. Mahendra Rawat said that the course will help the army personnel to engage with the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) in various situations, such as border talks, flag meetings, joint exercises and border personnel meetings.
He said that the course will also enable the army personnel to convey their points more effectively and understand the PLA's perspective better.
Tezpur University is one of the leading institutions in the northeast that offers foreign language courses, including Chinese. The university was established in 1994 by an act of Parliament as a central university.
China and India fought a war along parts of their poorly demarcated 3,800-km frontier in 1962 and clashes in mountainous regions in recent years have seriously strained relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
At least 24 soldiers were killed when the two sides clashed in the Ladakh region, on the western part of their border, in 2020, but the situation calmed down after diplomatic and military talks.
In December last year, troops from the two sides clashed in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh.
Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said last month the situation in Ladakh was fragile and dangerous, with military forces deployed very close to each other in some places.
The latest flashpoint between the two sides flared earlier this month when China's Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a statement in which it said it had "standardised" the names of 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh, including five mountains, in what China calls its southern Tibet region.
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