POLITICAL DIARY

New Delhi, 19 April 2008

India Goes Overboard

KOWTOWING TO THE CHINESE

By Poonam I Kaushish

The security said it all. Seventeen thousand policemen, National Security Guard commandoes, Chinese security personnel, clogged roads, lakhs stranded, over 45,000 man hours lost, 3 lakh cars burning 1.3 lakh litres of extra fuel, 50 flights cancelled and over 200 passengers stranded. All to keep away the Tibetan protestors and the Indian public from the Olympic torch run on New Delhi’s Rajpath stretch and its onward journey to the airport on Thursday last. So much for keeping alive the Olympian spirit!  

Worse, New Delhi’s lack of self esteem was on full national public display when it kowtowed to the Chinese paranoia about the safety of the Olympic torch from protesting Tibetans. It is all very well to assert that New Delhi as the host country was only trying to securitise the safe passage of the torch along with trying to do a balancing act: Of maintaining ties with China while preserving the "unique" relationship with the Tibetans and continuing to host the Dalai Lama.

However, by playing both ends against the middle it ended up with egg on its face. Heavens would not have fallen if the Tibetan protestors had been allowed to protest on the sidelines of the Olympic ceremony. Specially, after the Dalai Lama had given a clarion call to his followers to abhor violence. Till date the Tibetan protests have been peaceful. Moreover, India is a democracy with strong fundamentals of free speech and expression unlike Communist China gagged by its Government. Remember, the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Also, recall, that Beijing did not raise the ante against the UK and France when the Olympic torch was snuffed out and carried away by Tibetan protestors in London and Paris. What prevented New Delhi from following the American lead? Fearing that Tibetan protestors would try to abort the torch ceremony in San Francisco, it changed the venue at the last minute.

If truth be told, New Delhi allowed itself to be outmaneuvered by Beijing yet again. Asserted a China watcher: “I appreciate high idealism, the ideals of democracy. But I think what one has to look at is, ‘What is your leverage? What is your possibility of bringing about change in Indo-Sino ties?’” “Zero.” Raising a moot point: Why do we always kowtow to the Chinese? Are we scared? 

Specially against the backdrop that Beijing has shifted the goalpost on the border issue immediately after the Prime Minister’s return from China early this year. First, it took strong exception to Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal and accused India of building bunkers on the Sikkim borders. It claimed that Indian troops were transgressing into the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and building structures along it and the Indo-Bhutan border. No matter the Chinese had destroyed bunkers on the India-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction in November 2007.

Not only that. In the last few weeks Beijing has got New Delhi to cancel the Vice President’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, summoned our Ambassador past midnight to protest against storming of its Embassy in New Delhi. Chinese hackers have broken into External Affairs Ministry’s computer network possibly accessing e-mails through which officials communicate policy and decisions across the ministry’s offices in India and in our foreign missions.

Topped by an anti-India article on the China Institute of International Strategic Studies website titled ‘A Warning to the Indian Government: Don’t Be Evil!’ and replicated in the People Liberation Army’s journal. Calling India “arrogant”, it states: The present situation is just like in 1962, when India “misjudged the situation” and initiated a war “with the support of two superpowers”. It is on the “same old path of confrontation with China. To realise its ambition of becoming a regional and global power India was stationing its troops along its borders, particularly the Siliguri Corridor and borders it shares with Nepal and Bhutan.”

Clearly exposing Beijing’s thinking on strategic affairs viz New Delhi. Let’s face it. The genesis of the Sino-Indo border dispute is not Arunachal or the LAC but the strategically important Tibet, sandwiched between India and China, which acted as a buffer and was regarded as an impregnable barrier to security threats from India's north-east. Till the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 changed the equation between Beijing and New Delhi for all times to come.

Sadly, the romanticist Nehru committed the crucial blunder of seeing the Maoist takeover of Tibet as heralding a new era of Asian renaissance and compounded it by signing a border trade agreement with China, categorically acknowledging Tibet as a ‘Region’ of China. Without any clue of where the ‘Region’s’ borders extended to. Predictably, a few months later, Chinese maps surfaced showing large parts of Ladakh and Assam (now Arunachal) as parts of Tibet. When Nehru asked his Chinese counterpart Chou en Lai, he said that the maps were "old" and that he would have them reviewed. It never happened.

Over 58 years later, we find the continuance of Nehru’s soft approach smacking of appeasement. Manmohan Singh, like Nehru not only seems to be bending over backwards to appease the Chinese but also appears to be following his disastrously flawed China policy. Like his predecessors, he too has assured Beijing that the Tibet is a part of China. Neither has it protested over the building of a railway link to Lhasa, which will improve its capacity in case of a conflict with India. Reminiscent of the massive road building in the 50s to liberate Tibet. Even as the Chinese persist in declaring Arunachal (specially Tawang) and large chunks of Ladakh as parts of Tibet and, therefore, an integral part of China.

Also, according to a top security expert, China may be tempted to engage in cross border military moves in Arunachal to divert attention from Tibet in the future. Towards that end it has started construction on its side of the old Stillwell road connecting Arunachal with its Yunnan province through Myanmar. It wants New Delhi to reopen this link, even as India plums for the road linking Manipur to Myanmar.

With water likely to emerge as a major security-related issue in southern Asia in the years ahead, India can hardly ignore the fact that the Indus, Sutlej and Brahmaputra originate in occupied Tibet. Importantly, not many are aware that China controls the origin base of many Indian rivers that originate in the Tibetan plateau. While the country is facing a severe water crisis, Beijing has already anticipated future water shortage and planned for it. Towards that end, it has constructed a dam at the headwaters of the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra to divert their waters to its parched provinces of Xingian and Gansu. Thus aggravating India’s water woes.

Beijing has been so loath to clearly define the frontline with India that it broke its 2001 promise to exchange maps of the eastern and western sectors by the end of 2002. It continues to occupy 43,180 sq kms of J&K including 5,180 sq km illegally ceded to Beijing by Islamabad under the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement in 1963. China accuses India of 90,000 sq km of Chinese territory, mostly in Arunachal Pradesh

Scandalously, China continues to adopt double standards in regards to the McMohan line. While on the Indo-Sino border it regards the line as illegal, yet it recognizes the line demarcating its border with Myanmar.  As Myanmar is no threat to Chinese influence in the region unlike India. On Sikkim too, China may have ceased its cartographic aggression on it through its maps, but the important point, often overlooked, is that it has yet to expressly acknowledge that Sikkim is part of the Republic of India, while Arunachal is shown as a part of China and J&K as disputed. Interestingly, the areas currently in occupation of Pakistan and China are conveniently left out.

Of great concern to New Delhi are Beijing’s moves to make inroads in the Indian Ocean region. It has strengthened its presence in the blue waters surrounding  India. It has built a port in Gwadar for Pakistan, is financing port projects in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, is helping Bangladesh build its N-energy plan. Effectively rounding up India, while keeping New Delhi in good humour.

Time to take the Chinese bull by the horns and repair the damage from the blunders of Nehru and successive Prime Ministers. One way for New Delhi to get Beijing to give up its claims on Indian territories and formalise the present borders is to build counter-leverage by quietly reopening the Tibet annexation issue by China and its subsequent failure to grant autonomy to the Tibetans, despite an express pledge contained in the 17-point agreement it imposed on Tibet in 1951.

Manmohan Singh must remember that there is no place for rhetoric in dealing with China. Nor repeat the Olympic torch fiasco when in its eagerness to appease the Chinese, New Delhi scorched its national honour.  This one act carries with it a huge cost and a cross that India would have to bear for years to come. Clearly, our leaders need to proceed cautiously and realistically in their dealings with the inscrutable Chinese. --- INFA

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