Sunanda K Datta-Ray
Business Standard
September 19, 2014
No two countries can be genuine partners if suspicion lies between them like a drawn sword. The Sino-Indian saga makes me wonder if we are puppets at the end of strings manipulated by politicians, bureaucrats and the military. These spin doctors are now exulting over the chemistry between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Recently, they were lauding the special bonding between Modi and Shinzo Abe. No doubt, they will tell us later this month that if it hadn’t been for those pesky American visa people, Barack Obama would long ago have discovered he and the prime minister are spiritual twins.
Of course, government machinery exists to build up our masters and tell us what they think we should know. But a responsible analysis becomes impossible if the official flow of information is the only antidote to historical ignorance, instinctive hostility and cultural unfamiliarity. Living in a regimented society, the Chinese are even more victims of these shortcomings. The 1954 Panchsheel agreement almost foundered when “petty trade” was translated in the Hindi version as “chhota-mota vyapar”. China’s Hindi experts thought the colloquialism was a contradiction in terms. How could chhota also be mota, they asked suspiciously? It had to be another devious Indian plot.
This is the real drawback in Sino-Indian relations. Trade might boom, investment pour in, and Xi and Modi flaunt their camaraderie. But that won’t generate inter-nation confidence. As Kunwar Natwar Singh, who claims to be the first Indian Foreign Services entrant to study Chinese as his foreign language, replied in 1953 when Jawaharlal Nehru asked if India needed to fear China, “Yes, we do and do not because one’s closest neighbour is one’s closest enemy and one’s closest friend”. Either way, the closest neighbour can’t be ignored. But can he be trusted? Or, to reverse roles, does he trust you?
The obvious solution to the border dispute is an Aksai Chin-for-Arunachal Pradesh swap. But Modi can’t cut a deal without endorsement by the Sangh Parivar and Parliament. Similarly, Xi needs the support of his party’s Politburo and Central Committee. But even if an exchange and a settlement are finalised, that will not automatically wish away mistrust. Trust demands extensive, continuous and uninhibited people-to-people contact. In the absence of free information, it also calls for a firm lead from the top, for opinion in both countries is shaped largely by information that the authorities choose to disseminate. Few would have known of the Depsang Plains, Demchok and Chumur confrontations if it hadn’t been for government publicists.
Depsang Plains is where Chinese troops reportedly intruded in April 2013 on the eve of the first visit by Li Keqiang, China’s new premier. “When I come to your house as a guest, would you expect me to throw a stone at your window before coming in?” asked China’s consul general in Mumbai, Liu Youfa. The clear implication was that India – not China – was responsible for the friction.
Television coverage of Xi’s visit showed Modi and his guest looking easy and relaxed. But can Modi persuade Xi to acknowledge explicitly in writing that Sikkim is an Indian state? Will he come clean and say that Jammu & Kashmir is a part of India?
I have deliberately chosen two issues that are not part of the border dispute. China has no claims in either. But, presumably, it is not prepared to surrender any bargaining counters. That includes its special alliance with Pakistan. Underlying these specific positions is what India sees as a sinister Chinese scheme to control Asia through strategic bases throughout the Indian Ocean and lavish economic largesse on the smaller countries surrounding India.
China is even more suspicious of India’s intentions regarding the Dalai Lama and Tibet. India’s recent commercial and military exchanges with China’s historic adversary, Vietnam, caused grave disquiet in Beijing. India’s reinforced ties with Japan, Australia and the US strengthen old fears of attempted containment, something the Americans have been planning since the 1950s. In the early 1960s, Russell H Fifield, a key figure in the American strategic establishment, proposed the Association of South-east Asian Nations, even choosing the acronym Asean, before any Asian thought of such an organisation.
Believing that “neither India nor Japan, acting alone, is likely to become an effective counterweight to China”, Fifield recommended an alliance of India, Japan, the yet-to-be-born Asean and Australia, naturally under American patronage to further American global aims. So, despite all the bonhomie, in Chinese eyes India is still probably what used to be called a “running dog of American imperialism.” No two countries can be genuine partners if suspicion lies between them like a drawn sword.
