The Dragon Invasion (INTERNATIONAL) May 16-31 -2013 ( JustInPrint)

The Dragon Invasion (INTERNATIONAL) May 16-31 -2013 ( JustInPrint)http://www.justinprint.in/

The boundary between India and China extends over 2200 miles. The boundary of Sikkim with the Tibet region of China extends over 140 miles while that of Bhutan extends over 300 miles. The entire length of this border has been either defined by treaty or recognised by custom or by both and until the present controversy no Chinese Government had ever protested against the exercise of jurisdiction by the Government of India upto the customary border. The problem is due to the long Sino-Indian border 4,057 km  is disputed.

The Government of the People’s Republic of China contends that this boundary is entirely undefined. This is wholly incorrect. The traditional border has been well-known for centuries. It follows the geographical principle of the watershed which is in most places the crest of the Himalayan mountains. Moreover, in most parts the boundary has the sanction of specific international agreements.

On April 15,2013 Chinese troops are about 10 kms inside  Ladakh (Depsang area) and have made a remote camp as well. Even Chinese helicopters entered Indian territory.India continues to say it hopes to resolve issues with China peacefully !

Repeated entry inside Indian territory by Chinese has become a normal news , may be for us and the government too. So let them enter and take up all our country and we will see when we can schedule a meeting with their officials to solve the issue peacefully.

The China-Indian clash served to confirm the suspicion that China had grown power drunk because the boundary question was opened by the Chinese when they were strong enough to inflict their will upon India. Till then the Chinese refused to be drawn into discussion on the ground that the time for the negotiations was not ripe.

What is the Government up to, only they know the best? Feels so helpless to realize someone is capturing our country slowly since decades and claims our part of land as theirs and we let them do so? The government prefers to remain silent on the issue as it prefers on any other topics. The opposition is helplessly accusing as they always do and all goes to deaf ears. We the Mangoes of India, we are busy watching IPL, or at the most discussing Chinese invasions over office coffee breaks , office gossips and over a peg or two. Rural mangoes probably may not even know about the news. Looks like no one is bothered.

If the East India Company can what is the harm if China ends up ruling us or even taking away half our country? Who cares !! In India nobody cares , capture a 5 year old girl or parts of country nobody cares .

India is planning to extend a red carpet treatment to the new Chinese Premier, when he arrives next month for a summit meeting with his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh. It is his first overseas trip, and Li Kiqiang will attempt to show how serious and sincere China is in dealing with India. He will emphasise the great importance it attaches to this relationship, at least outwardly.

There have been reports of consultation between the giant neighbours on counter-terrorism and the first ever dialogue on Afghanistan.

 Across the eastern Ladakh border, however, Chinese troops have moved some 10 km inside the Indian territory and both sides are facing each other at the Line of Actual Control.  Fortunately, no clash has taken place so far, and no injury or death reported, on either side. Flag meetings are said to be in progress.

 Apparently, their move was met with no resistance, and Indians were taken by surprise.  This unexpected move by the People's Liberation Army and the flag meetings are expected to produce the stale result of both sides claiming for “status quo”, as the perception of Line of Actual Control would differ.

 On the TV news channels, however, it was reported that the Chinese have demanded that Indian troops to dismantle the structures built by them (how long ago, we do not know) as a precondition for talks to resolve the issue amicably!

In the last few years, ever since the Chinese became a financial super-power house, it has relentlessly attempted to expand its overseas activities, in all fields. Without declaring a war it is at loggerheads with its ASEAN neighbours. It has its navy patrolling the South China and Japanese Seas and has threatened everyone on the Spartleys Island, where it is involved in some construction activities. Other claimants, whether it is the Philippines, Indonesia Malaysia and others have not been able to do anything.

 Japan, though has the US support, does not feel as safe as it was before. And China is obviously using its proxy of North Korea to threaten South Korea. It is also eyeing at the possibility of entering Afghanistan when US troops are withdrawn. This is more likely to be a move engineered by Pakistan which is averse to Indian influence in that country.

 It must be borne in mind that China is already building an all-weather port in Baluchistan and is fully entrenched in Myanmar. The Chinese expansion policy is slowly, but firmly, enlarging in our neighbourhood, ably and silently supported by Pakistan.

Chinese influence in Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and attempts to break-through in Afghanistan with financial assistance are increasing. It made inroads in Nepal and possibly considers Bhutan as a harmless spectator.

 Pakistan is an annexe of China, a shift from being a handmaid of USA. Only question is do we have a credible strategy of nullifying this reality and do we still tie our defence forces in shackles of finance, policy and support rooted as the Govt. is in 2 or 3 year electoral thinking always?

But more than Mao, it was Nehru who contributed to his own disgrace by blundering twice on China.  His first blunder was to shut his eyes to the impending fall of Tibet even when Sardar Patel had repeatedly cautioned him in 1949 that the Chinese communists would annex that historical buffer as soon as they installed themselves in Beijing.  An overconfident Nehru, who ran foreign policy as if it were personal policy, went to the extent of telling Patel by letter that it would be a “foolish adventure” for the Chinese Communists to try and gobble up Tibet – a possibility that “may not arise at all” as it was, he claimed, geographically impracticable!

 In 1962, Nehru, however, had to admit he had been living in a fool’s paradise. “We were getting out of touch with reality in the modern world and we were living in an artificial atmosphere of our creation,” he said in a national address after the Chinese aggression.

Nehru had ignored India’s military needs despite the Chinese surreptitiously occupying Indian areas on the basis of Tibet’s putative historical ties with them, and setting up a land corridor to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir through Aksai Chin. Although Indian military commanders after the 1959 border clashes and casualties began saying that they lacked adequate manpower and weapons to fend off the People’s Liberation Army, Nehru ordered the creation of forward posts to prevent the loss of further Indian territory without taking the required concomitant steps to beef up Indian military strength, including through arms imports.  Nehru had convinced himself grievously that the Chinese designs were to carry out further furtive encroachments on Indian territory, not to launch major aggression. 

 The world is changing through information technology, and economic interdependence. India and China both realise the need to adapt to these tectonic changes, if they hope to develop as economically stable and politically lasting entities. The leadership in both states is aware of the need to ensure the social and economic well-being of their peoples. In that lies real security and stability, the two essential conditions for development. They realise that autonomous behaviour in internal and external relations is no longer feasible in international arena. The need to assure neighbours of their interests through confidence building measures, placing ancient disputes in correct perspective, reaching for consensus instead of conflict resolution by force are the need of the day. India and China both realise the need for military strength commensurate with their security and the anxieties of neighbours. The reality after the Cold War is of a world order based on equity amongst states and constructive engagement through trade and economic development. Even as some hegemonic and other similar mindsets are still to be seen, the future of inter-state relations is well set on the course of cooperation. China and India realise the need for cooperation and for moving away from old animosities through mutual agreements. They have resolved to find solutions to their disputes through negotiations. Indian initiatives in South Asia and Chinese efforts in finding solutions to its issues of contention with Russia, Japan, USA and in the Asia Pacific are evidence of their new awareness. In some ways China is adding a healthy dose of “Idealist” balance to its policies. India on the other hand is introducing an element of “Realist” pragmatism to its policies. They are in the process going beyond the culture constraints of the past. Kautilya and Sunzi would have both approved of such a reorientation.

In the military perspective, the best way to remove the prospect of war remains the removal of the bone of contention. There has never been a better time than the present to take cooperation between India and China to the levels they are capable of reaching. The need of the time is to formally and finally resolve the disputes between the two giant sized states. The conflicts of the past between China and India were not of nations but between states following different policies to secure themselves. Now that the two states are in a better environment of “Realist-Idealist” mix, specific measures can be looked at. The border dispute should now be formally and finally settled. This will need accommodation from both sides and that should not be an insurmountable problem given the new circumstances. The larger issue of weapons rivalry between the two states and through either of them into the region is another issue which requires urgent attention. If these two vexing issues are taken in hand, the way ahead in the 21st Century would be free from the compulsions of the past and pave the way to a stable future. If that is achieved, the military perspective which so dominated the India-China relations in the last  years would be balanced by the larger contexts of economy, trade, and international cooperation. China and India would then be partners in providing a lead through the principles of Panchsheel and in moving the world away from military conflicts. It would be a condition which both Kautilya and Sunzi would have approved.

The Daulat Beg incursion is just a posturing from the Chinese which is meant to be sorted out in a few days after it has served its diplomatic purpose and rationale. However, China committed a mistake by hoisting a war on India in 1962 over the territory issue. The 1962 war virtually formalized and sanctified the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the eyes of the world just as Pakistan’s misadventure in imposing the Kargil War on India in 1999 virtually sanctified the Line of Control (LoC) before the international community.

Borders have become mostly irrelevant today as the two nations are well-integrated economically. But disputed borders have been the greatest problem in healthy relations in any region of the world and therefore it warrants a solution, as soon as possible. In this case, a solution is not possible unless the public is willing to understand the problem. Politicians will always engage in grandstanding over this issue and may even be willing to sacrifice more Indian lives again if it is able to fetch them votes. But the public needs to understand.

The biggest problem in solving territorial disputes is that people attach their emotions and sense of patriotism with the land, and not with the people living there exactly in the case of Kashmir. Finding a solution is difficult because convincing the people that they have always been disillusioned by political experts, is difficult. Can India go for a war and put thousands of lives and years of development at stake for a place which has no strategic significance, where nobody lives and which was never even our own? Only the masses hold an answer to that.

Siddhartha Shankar Mishra,

Sambalpur, Odisha