Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi has told China to abandon its "expansionist attitude" in a rare foray into foreign policy as his campaign gathers pace for the coming general election.
Mr Modi, prime ministerial candidate for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was portraying himself as an Indian patriot in a weekend speech in the Himalayan border state of Arunachal Pradesh - a territory claimed in its entirety by neighbouring China.
"No power on earth can take away even an inch from India," he told a rally in Pasighat in the far northeast of India. "China should give up its expansionist attitude and adopt a development mindset." He wore a traditional hat from the local Adi tribe decorated with a hornbill's giant beak.
Mr Modi, who has focused until now on his plans to restore economic growth and boost investment and jobs in India, said: "I swear by this land that I will not let this nation be destroyed, I will not let this nation be divided, I will not let this nation bow down."
India's governing Congress party has in the past been equally insistent on rejecting China's claims and keeping Arunachal Pradesh as part of India, but Mr Modi is eager to burnish his nationalist credentials in the run-up to the election to be held within three months.
Sanjaya Baru, director for geoeconomics and strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, likened Mr Modi to Shinzo Abe, the nationalist Japanese prime minister whose goals include economic revival as well as pushing his country to stand up to an increasingly assertive China.
"Modi would project himself as a more nationalistic leader, just in the way that Abe does," said Mr Baru, adding that Indian foreign policy under a Modi government would probably not be fundamentally different in reality from that of Manmohan Singh, the current Congress prime minister.
"I think he [Modi] would be a nationalistic prime minister but at the same time open to the world . . . Narendra Modi would be the Shinzo Abe of India." Mr Modi already had a good relationship with Japan, in part because of Japanese industrial investment in Gujarat, the state where he is chief minister, added Mr Baru.
India has complained of repeated incursions by Chinese troops in recent years across the so-called Line of Actual Control on their long Himalayan border, while Japan and other east Asian states have protested against Chinese claims to islands in the South and East China Seas.
At another rally in Assam, another north-eastern state in India, Mr Modi criticised the Congress government for being too soft on illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, who are mostly Muslims, can be absorbed into the local Bengali population and tend to vote for the secular Congress party.
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