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Big stick, no carrot: weni, widi, wici?

By Bharat Karnad | Deccan Chronicle

Bharat Karnad Photographer unknown

India-China relations are the regional version of Punch & Judy Show that is leaving Asian audiences appalled. Repeatedly staggered by Chinese jabs and punches, India, instead of retaliating, rewards the bully. Over the years, China has armed Pakistan with nuclear missiles, violated agreed upon principles to resolve the border dispute and then reasserted its claims over Arunachal Pradesh, and encouraged by its fast expanding military-use infrastructure on the Tibetan plateau and in the Indian Ocean region flexed its military muscle, consistently dumped light manufactures in the Indian market and prevented high-value Indian imports, taken the first steps to dam and divert the Brahmaputra in Tibet, and has condoned Islamabad’s use of terror against India. By approving deals worth $16 billion during the visit by Premier Wen Jiabao, Manmohan Singh has decided this Chinese policy of deliberate insults, provocations, and pinpricks resulting in what he has called the “low level equilibrium” obtaining in the bilateral relations ought to be reinforced.

While Beijing must love the Indian Prime Minister and his way of dealing with the China problem by turning tail, there must be many uneasy governments in Asia at-large, especially in the South East Asian littoral, dispirited by Delhi’s open display of timidity in the face of Chinese over-confidence. Coming so soon after the recent East Asia Summit in Hanoi where the growing fear of the Communist behemoth congealed into a collective desire to contain China, it must have chilled the hearts of many who hope that between the United States and India there is enough economic, political and military heft to provide them cover and to compel second thoughts in Beijing. Indeed, the moderate Wen Jiabao’s trip to South Asia may be seen as an attempt by Chinese hardliners to distance Delhi from the emerging Asian consensus even as the proven special relationship with Pakistan is shored up.

As it turned out, however, the Manmohan Singh regime showed surprising bit of steel by refusing to once again commit itself to the “One China” concept given Wen’s reluctance to treat Jammu & Kashmir as an integral part of India. Now that the breach has been made and equivalence belatedly established between Tibet and Jammu & Kashmir, the Indian government will have to move in the direction of declaring that because India in 1955 and subsequently had recognised Chinese sovereignty only over the “Tibetan Autonomous Region”, and because Tibet was never ever allowed to function as a genuinely autonomous region, Delhi is now obliged to accord this suffering land an identity separate from China’s.

A start will have to be made with small gestures, like showing Tibet in a different colour on all official and unofficial maps. A series of such actions will in, any case, be necessitated by the fact that the Indian government cannot now back down and Beijing is unlikely to risk offending Pakistan by recognising the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory rather than just the Indian part of it and thereby render its own substantial military and civilian presence in Gilgit-Baltistan illegal.

To depart from a rank bad policy and have it take a tough turn will require the Indian government to first acknowledge the granular reality that the edifice of India-China entente Manmohan Singh is so carefully erecting has shaky foundations, that given the clashing national interests, there is greater potential for differences, disagreements, and discord than for peaceful reconciliation.

But Delhi seems to be in deep denial mode — Sino-Indian ties are hunky-dory and no nonsense about it! When reminded at a press conference that the Chinese ambassador Zhang Yang had described them as “fragile”, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao tied herself into knots to explain why Zhang, who merely called a spade a shovel, was wrong!

Then again, it is not just South Block whose brains turn to putty when contemplating meaningful policy change and hard options regarding China. The rest of the strategic community undergoes similar convulsions. Thus, strategic commentators are impressed by Chinese officials reciting verses from the Upanishad, those with intelligence backgrounds deride India’s “soft” response to China’s assertiveness and caution against “demonising” China, supposed realists react, for instance, to the tit-for-tat option of covertly nuclear arming Vietnam as payback to China (something this analyst has been advocating for some 20 years now), by advising reciprocation on a lesser issue such as stapling Chinese visas instead!

Then there is the retired military brass. Scarred by the 1962 war experience, these Generals pre-emptively rule out hard actions by touting India’s incapacity to mount any retaliation whatsoever, all the more vehemently to argue that efforts targeting Pakistan need redoubling! And finally there are the benighted academics who urge what amounts to turning the other cheek long after the slap-happy Chinese have rearranged India’s face several times!

With policy dissonance informed by extreme risk aversion and an instinctive dislike of uncertainty of outcome and any harshness in policy pertaining to big powers, it is little wonder that Indian strategy is in the doldrums and Chinese leaders such as Wen Jiabao return home feeling reassured that India can’t hack it as a great power.

Copyright © 2010 Deccan Chronicle

Published in Deccan Chronicle