Our diplomatic offensive at UNSC was weather-proofed enough to drown out both Pakistan and China

Given the suddenness of the revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, its bifurcation and changed status to a Union Territory, Modi 2.0, in contrast, had amply prepared its diplomatic offensive, anticipating queries, anxieties and sensitivities of the Big Five members of the United Nations, other world leaders and predictable hitbacks from neighbours Pakistan and China. So although China, being an all-weather friend of Pakistan, backed its push for an informal consultation on Kashmir in the UN Security Council, in the end there was status quo on it being a bilateral matter and acceptance that abrogation of Article 370 was facilitated by a legal clause and, therefore, qualified as an internal matter of India compliant with its statutes. Even US President Donald Trump, who had stirred up a hornet’s nest by offering to mediate, has now advised Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to settle the issue within the bilateral framework. Having failed to internationalise Kashmir enough, a desperate Pakistan did not relent, calling Kashmir a “nuclear flashpoint” even after the UNSC rebuff. While it is but expected to keep the storm and fury going, if only to justify its long-term politics, fact is that the US has made its value to it contingent upon its role in managing the Taliban in Afghanistan post its intended pullout from the region. Besides, the Trump administration has also cut back some funding to it despite Khan’s latest visit to Washington. The huff and puff is, therefore, posturing for a long-held constituency that it has nurtured in the Valley, which has been tamed by India’s pitch of Pakistan-exported terror camouflaging itself as self-determination, and now the complete revocation of special status which swamps all separatist sentiments. Truth be told, even India had clouded the “no first use” theorem a day before, saying it could be reviewed depending on the nature of external provocation. Our western neighbour, too, took off on this statement. India has anyway been predicating the Kashmir question on a tremendous threat perception from Pakistan just as the latter is seeking to externalise our internal matter. To that extent, this bluster works for both. Of course, the lockdown of the information highway has not helped either and strengthened stereotypes rather than reconciliation. If the government indeed wants to push its development narrative, then a tight-fisted channelisation of information is clearly counter-productive. There has to be a mature way of dealing with protests on the subversion of what has held together Kashmir’s matrix with us since Independence. And a jackboots approach to suppressing debate in a digital age may actually quite backfire and damage the tide of opinion in our favour at the moment.  

China may not be too happy about the UT status to Ladakh that would give India strategic heft in a region that lies next to Aksai Chin. But so long as the Line of Actual Control is as it is, it won’t have any ground to push its belligerence on Kashmir. China, which got the Shaksgam Valley in 1963 from Pakistan, has so far argued that its claim there is contingent on the final resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. Now it is part of the UT of Ladakh, nullifying that legitimacy. But China will have to unwillingly accept this considering that it is looking at greater economic cooperation with India and wouldn’t want to jeopardise that template of neutrality with a resurrection of border issues. Besides, if it accuses India of making territorial changes, then it also is not exactly immune to helping Pakistan make those changes courtesy the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Its own oppressive role in the Hong Kong protests and Tibet has denied it a moral standpoint at a global forum. And it is this record that didn’t wash with other members. Over the years, China has been pushing its agenda of winning hearts of Ladakhis through its own kind of cultural diplomacy, influencing several Buddhist sects and groups and playing them against each other. It has been funding monasteries in the area to link them to the larger Chinese Buddhism, a strategy which has allowed it to make inroads in the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia too. Given Dalai Lama’s ill health, China is already preparing to have a say in the dominant Tibetan Buddhism in the region. The reorganisation now allows New Delhi direct decision-making and first-hand engagement with the Buddhists of Ladakh and could well strengthen  Himalayan Buddhism as a counterpoint. China may be an irritant but depending on the relevance of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), that allows it a backhand entry to India without pushing the Belt and Road Initiative, and its stumbling trade block with the US, it is but posturing at the moment.