India - China: Relations And Developments-2

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From Deccan Chronicle

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Dr SIngh, don’t forget 1962</b>
By Balbir K. Punj

The news report that the Indian government was shocked that the Chinese protested Indian troop movement in Sikkim and elsewhere along the eastern border should surprise no one. It seems Dr Manmohan Singh, who was in China only a few days ago, could not connect the warmth of his reception by the Chinese then with the cold protest they have launched now. <b>The Prime Minister was careful not to offend the Chinese on the eve of his visit. So his projected visit to Arunachal Pradesh was so designed that he could avoid visiting Tawang district which the Chinese claim to be their own.</b>

To please the Chinese further, the government increased the number of Chinese flights from India, <b>and the security restraints on Chinese businesses in India were removed</b>. What the Prime Minister got from Beijing, however, was nothing more than some rhetorical statements that India and China must develop a joint vision for the coming decades of the 21st century.

There was also some statement on Chinese support for the Indian civilian nuclear programme, that in reality amounted to nothing concrete. But for a Prime Minister besieged by China’s fifth column in India — the CPI(M), that is — these goody-goody words were enough to get him applause from the Marxists who keep him in power. In Beijing, the Indian officials interpreted the Chinese statement as a huge success for the Indian Prime Minister.

The gloves were off in no time. <b>Contrast the Chinese diplomatic protests at Indian soldiers repairing some of the abandoned facilities along the Sikkim-Bhutan border — that China interpreted as troop movement — with what our government did when report came of the Chinese Army strengthening its position along the entire eastern border on the Tibetan side. A BJP Member of Parliament had even exposed China’s repeated incursions into Arunachal Pradesh. </b>

At first the government ignored it. Then the Army itself admitted that the Chinese were strengthening their position, but claimed that it was not alarming enough. To ensure that there were no irritants between the two countries on the eve of the PM’s visit to Beijing, the troop movements across the Line of Actual Control on the eastern and north-eastern border were described as normal.

Now it has been revealed that the <b>Army thought it serious enough to ensure that one of the mountain divisions that India had shifted from that border to J&K was ordered back to this place. </b>

It is this that the Chinese are protesting, in addition to restating their claims along the Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh borders with China. The reference to Indian movements within Sikkim is surprising, when earlier the government had claimed that China had agreed to accept Sikkim as part of India after the Chinese President’s visit to New Delhi.

<b>It is now revealed that the Chinese had in fact demolished several unmanned but abandoned Indian bunkers along the LAC. Obviously, despite being aware of this, New Delhi had underplayed the significance of these moves</b>. It had gone to the extent of telling its ministers not to attend the Dalai Lama’s functions in order not to provoke the Chinese.

Compare all these Indian reactions and responses now to what happened in the years leading up to the 1962 debacle.

It reads like history repeating itself. How can we forget the description that the well-known crypto-communist <b>V.K. Krishna Menon, then defence minister of India, gave to Ladakh’s northern areas when the Chinese incursions came to light? Menon said that “not a blade of grass grew” there, and therefore, we did not need to bother about it. The result was that the entire area was occupied by the Chinese soon enough.</b>

When Chinese incursions through the eastern and northeastern borders came to light, these were again dismissed as of no great consequence. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai came to Delhi and charmed Jawaharlal Nehru into issuing a joint statement that sidelined the border conflict. But the Chinese gave up nothing.

Finally, with the border incursions becoming more and more belligerent, Nehru had to admit that he had asked the Indian Army to get the Chinese removed. During the entire years of the so called Panchsheel and India-China bhai-bhai, <b>New Delhi failed to face up to the fact that the Chinese had already defined their geo-political strategy and wanted to be on the Indian side of the Himalayan foothills, thereby depriving India of a chunk of its territory and gaining military advantage.</b>

Even its earlier incursion into Tibet that finally forced the Dalai Lama to escape to India, was part of this strategy. Yet, the Indian side signed away its recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet without getting any credible concession from Zhou Enlai on the border issue. <b>The Nehru-Menon thesis was that, China, having thrown off colonialism, would not have territorial ambitions. It needed the 1962 debacle to disprove this thesis. </b>

We must recall how Nehru was reluctant to let Menon go even after the debacle. And it is now established that Nehru’s own sudden deterioration in health and final end were hastened by the collapse of his foreign policy with respect to China.

At the minimum, the present Prime Minister should have read this history before preparing to go to Beijing. But he too has got nothing on the border or any other issue while conceding to the Chinese their demands. <b>The big lesson from the 1962 debacle for us should have been that foreign policy cannot be based on romantic visions, but on hard geopolitical facts and lessons of history.</b>

The problem here is the UPA government itself. It depends for its survival on the support of the Marxist-led Left Front MPs. <b>And Marxist boss Prakash Karat does not fail to prove every now and then that he controls the UPA government and the government will have to act as per his diktat</b>. The Indian Marxists have been openly pro-Chinese since 1962 when they came out in support of the Chinese action against India.

Last year, <b>Karat asked the government to ignore security concerns over a Chinese company cornering the tenders for developing several Indian ports. And this the government has done now.  At the same time, as India has removed security considerations from Chinese companies working on developing Indian ports, our Navy Chief has expressed concerns about China developing a major port facility at Gwadar in Pakistan.</b>

New Delhi will be badly weakened in dealing with a many-hooded dragon as long as it has a government that is weak politically and lacks the determination to deal firmly with security concerns.  <b>No wonder the Chinese are stabbing Dr Singh in the back so shortly after his return from Beijing where they greeted him with a smile and a red carpet</b>. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->