Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inaugurated nearly 2.5 kilometer long tunnel under 4,190 meter Se La, which along with 2023 inaugurated Nechiphu tunnel will allow faster deployment of troops in defence of China coveted Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh.
Se La reminds India of its ignominious fall during the 1962 war with China due to poor military and political leadership (ANI)
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
While PM Modi delivered the Se La tunnel within five years of laying the foundation stone in Feb 2019, Se La reminds India of its ignominious fall during the 1962 war with China due to poor military and political leadership.
The seventh brigade of Indian Army withdrew from Tawang after heavy losses on October 23, 1962. The virtually impregnable Se La fell to the Chinese on November 18, 1962 due to weak military leadership with its brave 62 Brigade commander Brigadier Hoshiar Singh killed in an PLA ambush on November 23, four days after Beijing had handed a humiliating ceasefire to India in Peking on November 19, 1962.
According to Official History of 1962 war, both Se la and Bomdi La fell due to loss of morale of troops led by Major General M S Pathania of fourth division and virtual surrender by the 65 brigade commander A S Cheema.
{{/usCountry}}
{{#usCountry}}
According to Official History of 1962 war, both Se la and Bomdi La fell due to loss of morale of troops led by Major General M S Pathania of fourth division and virtual surrender by the 65 brigade commander A S Cheema.
{{/usCountry}}
Despite protests from Brigadier Hoshiar Singh of Se La Brigade, General Pathania panicked due to reports of Chinese outflanking Indian troops at Se La through side tracks around the pass and Bhutan and ordered withdrawal with lack of leadership from either the Army Chief Gen P N Thapar, Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen L P Sen and Corps Commander Lt Gen Brij Mohan Kaul, who was replaced by Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh on October 24, 1962 and then reappointed due to his proximity with Defence Minister V Krishna Menon and Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru on October 29, 1962 .
The building of the tunnel under Se La is also an affirmation that India today is confident enough to take on the PLA challenge in the Tawang sector. The Chinese had built a road from Bum La to Tawang along with a bridge within two weeks after Tawang fell to the enemy in 1962.
With Chinese renaming many features in Arunachal Pradesh in mandarin since 2020 and still coveting the Indian border state by calling it ‘South Tibet’, the tunnels at Se la and Nechiphu will allow flexible and faster deployment of Indian troops and armour in Tawang sector in the worst case scenario. Se La tunnel is about defence of India and not merely tourism.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
Home/India News/Se La tunnel will allow faster Indian response in case of Chinese aggression
{{^htLoading}}
Advertisement
{{/htLoading}}
SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
{{#usCountry}}{{/usCountry}}
Hindustantimes wants to start sending you push notifications. Click allow to subscribe
