The Hindu
N. Sathiya Moorthy
December 12, 2015
Thirteen detailed essays that talk about China’s claim over Arunachal Pradesh in a way that is accessible to the average reader
A collection of 13 essays, taking off from a 2012 seminar held in Itanagar, Voices from the Border: Response to Chinese Claims Over Arunachal Pradesh, could not have come at a better time for new-generation Indians who want to know the political facts about the run-up to the 1962 war. Though individual authors — starting with former Indian Ambassador to China C.V. Ranganathan — have given their independent views on the subject, the underlining argument could also address anti-China jingoism across India, arising mainly from the humiliating defeat in 1962.
N Sathiya Moorthy
No essayist has mentioned it, but it is not easy for India, as an ‘Aksai Chin deal’ would also involve portions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), which Islamabad had gifted away to China. This in turn makes what essentially should be a bilateral engagement into a trilateral one, which India has vehemently opposed, at least since the India-Pakistan Simla Accord (1972).
As some of the essayists have recalled, India’s ‘Forward Policy’ is what had provoked China into the 1962 war. To the extent that one accepts the argument, all contemporary political criticism of the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, should cease. What then should remain is an opening for a new set of negotiations, under a new leadership in the two countries.
The essayists have dealt in great detail with the historicity of the border dispute, while still making it interesting reading for the average reader. Though Indian and other non-Chinese strategic thinkers often accuse China of sticking to history, India too has not done otherwise. It takes the two nations nowhere in the contemporary geostrategic and global economic setting. For China, Arunachal Pradesh is not about hydro-power and mineral resources, as some have argued in the book. The culture-based historicity being attached to the Tawang monastery too may have been over-stated. If there are visible differences in the Chinese claims over a period, there are also unacknowledged contradictions in India’s position. India accepted Tibet as a part of China in the 1950s, but it not only gave humanitarian asylum to the Dalai Lama and his followers, it went on to facilitate the establishment of a ‘Tibetan government-in-exile’ within its territory.
It may all be about Chinese anxieties on what has since evolved into a U.S.-centric, post-Cold War geostrategic axis, at times out-sourced to new-found friends like India too. At the same time, in the existing and emerging geostrategic world order, China too needs to acknowledge that if ‘military might’ and ‘power projections’ were the only criteria for ‘super-power’ status, then the Soviet Union should not have collapsed. India, in its turn, should acknowledge that much of the fiscal benefits from the economic reforms over the past decades might have been expended on large-scale military imports from those FDI-offering nations, to keep China at bay. It should also recognise that geostrategic partnerships of the U.S., Australia and Japanese kind — whether stand-alone or in combination — can only irritate China into increasing border skirmishes on the land and encouraging ‘anti-India’ militancy along the border State, without having to escalate any or all of them into a full-fledged battle.
To the extent that the recent Naga peace accord or the Indian Army’s ‘hot pursuit’ into Myanmarese territory with the host government’s acceptance have shown the way, it is better for the future. Yet, India’s ‘allies’ cannot be expected to fight India’s battles, particularly those on land and over Arunachal Pradesh, if they refuse to let them be escalated into an all-out Indian Ocean war. That would be a different story altogether, which India might win or lose at the same time.
