Charu Sudan Kasturi
The Telegraph
June 3, 2015
Modi learnt to have warned counterpart Li that India could retaliate to its Arunachal policy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that Beijing’s policy of issuing stapled visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh could eventually trigger a tit-for-tat response from New Delhi.
The unprecedented Indian warning, issued when Modi visited China last month, was not spelt out in as many words, but was explicitly signalled during official talks on May 15, two senior Indian officials familiar with the conversation have independently confirmed to The Telegraph.
The officials clarified that the caution – kept secret by the foreign office both during and after Modi’s visit – did not mean India had any plans to issue stapled visas to any section of Chinese nationals in the coming future.
But the message, which one diplomat said the Chinese leadership “clearly understood,” was meant to signal that the Indian government was willing to take any step necessary to redress its concerns over the policy, the officials said.
Like Arunachal Pradesh – which India controls but is claimed by China – Beijing controls Aksai Chin, territory that New Delhi insists actually belongs to Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir. China calls Aksai Chin a part of its Xinjiang Autonomous Region. India does not at present have a policy of issuing stapled visas to those from the thinly populated Aksai Chin travelling to this country.
Modi’s caution suggests a calculated attempt to delink economic ties with China from strategic differences. Two hours after the talks with his Chinese counterpart, Modi announced electronic visas for Chinese tourists, even though foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar had that morning said “no decision” had been taken on the proposal.
The Indian government, both under Modi and his predecessor Manmohan Singh, had till now in part held back on easing visas for Chinese nationals in protest against Beijing’s practice of issuing stapled visas.
“It’s silly to link the stapled-visa issue to the electronic visas for Chinese tourists,” said R.N. Das, a China expert and a former senior fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.
“Issuing stapled visas is China’s way of saying it questions our control over Arunachal Pradesh and that doesn’t depend, in the least, on whether we make it easier or harder for their nationals to visit India,” Das added.
Narendra Modi
Li Keqiang
Ironically, when China first started issuing stapled visas to Indian nationals from Arunachal Pradesh in the mid-2000s, some viewed it as a positive step – a sign that Beijing at least acknowledged the region’s disputed status. Till then, China would refuse to issue any visa to residents of the north-eastern state, arguing they were Chinese citizens and so didn’t need a visa.
The Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for a boundary settlement, agreed on by the two nations in 2005 as the first of a three-stage resolution process led by special representatives of India and China, strengthened New Delhi’s argument.
In the 2005 agreement, China for the first time conceded that “in reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas”.
But India has never accepted Arunachal as disputed, and allowing nationals from the state who are issued stapled visas – as opposed to normal, stamped visas – to travel to China would represent acknowledgement that the state is contested.
Immigration counters at all Indian airports have specific instructions to not allow any national with a stapled visa to board a flight to China.
In 2009, China also started issuing stapled visas to Indian nationals from Jammu and Kashmir, which Islamabad, a close ally of Beijing, claims is also disputed.
China then started issuing visas with a watermark that showed the country’s borders as including not just Aksai Chin but also Arunachal. India responded by asking its embassy and consulates in China to issue visas with a similar watermark showing the country’s territory as inclusive of both regions.
But India never issued different visas to different sections of Chinese nationals.
Saurabh Kumar, former Indian ambassador to the UN in Vienna and now an adjunct faculty member at Bangalore’s National Institute of Advanced Studies, said he was not in favour of publicly discussing any classified conversation the Prime Minister had with the Chinese premier. “But generally, every country has the right to respond in kind to provocation of this (stapled visa) nature,” Kumar said.
Over the past few years, Indian officials have mulled multiple options to resolve the stapled-visa dispute in a manner that acknowledges the differing views of New Delhi and Beijing on Arunachal Pradesh, while not distinguishing between travellers from different parts of India.
