Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney’s evocative poem comes to mind as PM Modi — after concluding a highly successful, hectic tour of France, Germany and Canada — gets into preparation mode for the much more difficult China visit early next month. Written in an entirely different context, of a religious strife-torn Ireland, it would seem to be an apt metaphor for the India-China conundrum too. For it is not only the solution that is similar (in case of the India-China tangle) but the problem as well, essentially — how to overcome the legacy of history and realise the potential possibilities — even though here it is State policies and postures, and not animosity and antagonism amongst the people, that lie at the heart of the imbroglio.
It is a formidable challenge. For it needs no great perspicacity to see that the envisioned dawn is not going to happen on the basis of pious pleadings or the like. It will require redressal, frontally, of the huge trust deficit that plagues the India-China relationship.
The discourse in both countries recognises this, the two governments in particular, but only at the level of lip service. They have failed to come to grips with the gap in earnest. Therefore, they are both culpable — China more actively so, through its acts of commission, and India for its passivity because of its acts of omission.
A quick review of the current avatar of the relationship, leaving aside the bygones of the 1950s and 60s as bygones — i.e., post-1976, when the two countries resumed Ambassadorial-level ties (after the hiatus of 1962) — brings this out quite clearly.
Boundary issue prevarication
Initially, the border issue was well understood to hold the key to success of the ‘normalisation’ exercise. late President KR Narayanan, personally picked by then PM Indira Gandhi to be the (first) Indian Ambassador to explore possibilities of a dignified reconciliation, had opened his innings in Beijing with crystal clear clarity on that count, that was put across to the Chinese side without mincing words on many an occasion in the critical ice-breaking initial interactions.
And former PM Vajpayee had conveyed this feeling more authoritatively during his historic patch-up visit of 1979 as Foreign Minister (the first political level interaction between the two countries since breakdown of communication in the early Sixties), in his inimitable good humoured manner by citing Kabir to counter Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s suggestion to shelve the problem for succeeding generations (after beginning with a repeat of late PM Zhou Enlai’s 1960 offer for a “package deal” based on an East-West swap and receiving the predictable regret from his guest).
After a decade of desultory pursuit of that objective, India yielded to the Chinese position/preference during the 1988 visit of late PM Rajiv Gandhi, and agreed to “work hard to create a favorable climate and conditions for a fair and reasonable settlement of the boundary question, while seeking a mutually acceptable solution to this question”... i.e., not to allow “differences (on the border) …… to come in the way of improvement of relations”. (emphasis added)
It was a major concession by India — a statesmanlike gesture made in good faith, overcoming historical animosity and overruling adversarial perceptions deeply etched in the Indian public mind. What it got from the Chinese in response, however, was something quite different from an earnest attempt to come to grips with the issue — its being put on the back burner, i.e., shelving of the dispute, in effect, in the name of creating conditions conducive for its resolution.
For, more than a quarter century later, the boundary question is still nowhere near resolution. The so-called “negotiations” have dragged on and on, through changing mechanisms — eight rounds of talks at Vice-Ministerial level (1981-87), 15 rounds of the Joint Working Group (1988-2003) and 18 of the Special Representatives (2003-to date), with precious little to show for their labours.
Some progress was there, of course, in 2005, with the SRs hammering out an “Agreement on Political Parameters & Guiding Principles for Settlement of the Boundary Question”. Article VII of the Agreement provided that the boundary “should be along well defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features” and that both countries would “safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas” while reaching a “boundary settlement”. This formulation was widely interpreted to be presaging Chinese readiness to finally drop their claims in the Eastern sector (i.e. Arunachal Pradesh), as part of a package deal involving Indian concessions in the Western sector (i.e., Aksai Chin).
But that promise proved to be short lived, as China went back on the spirit of Article VII the very next year by publicly repeating claim to the whole of Arunachal Pradesh. And used it to reopen issues and create other complications in the SR talks.
The Chinese volte face came as a great shock to the Indian side, severely undermining their credibility in Indian eyes (and reviving bitter memories of the fifties and sixties, when China had famously switched from a ‘when did we say that Kashmir is not yours’ stance to ‘when did we say that Kashmir is yours’ refrain in less than a decade).
The country had gone along with China’s preference (for first creating a favourable climate for resolution of the border dispute) in good faith and worked sincerely with it towards that end (through the 1993 and 1996 agreements for border management). But China had shown that it had no compunction in going back on the very first concrete step towards a border settlement, finally arrived at not a day too soon after 17 years of patient negotiations (not to mention the 10 years of infructuous effort preceding 1988), no sooner than the ink on it had dried.
The conclusion was inescapable: China was in no hurry to get the border issue out of the way, possibly because it suited her to keep the pot boiling and India off balance, on the back foot. This then is the first, and foremost, source of the trust deficit — China’s record of poor delivery on the boundary issue, to put it mildly and say no more (about the perfidy and cynical calculation underlying that record).
Disingenuous diplomatic conduct
The other major contribution to the trust deficit comes from China’s diplomatic conduct, which has been anything but becoming of a “strategic partner”.
The latter (conferment of “strategic partnership” status) again was a major ‘give’ on the part of India, as in 1988. In an act of extraordinary generosity (incomprehensible in terms of time-honoured basic principles of diplomatic practice prescribing reciprocity andproscribing one-sidedness), India accepted China as a “strategic partner” in 2005 —ahead of Japan, and despite the Sino-Pak nexus being as nefarious as it was. And without a solution to the border problem.
What did it get in returnIJ No more than a preliminary agreement towards resolution of the border issue, and even that only to witness it being withdrawn the very next year, as above. And whyIJ Had India given China any cause for concern on any aspect of the bilateral relationshipIJ On Tibet, Taiwan or any other core concernIJ The answer to that ‘why’ question ranks even lower, in terms of base motivations, than the prevarication on the border issue.
Because it had nothing to do with India-China relations. It lay rather in China’s peevishness at India’s civil nuclear agreement with the USA that was concluded a few months after the 2005 India-China Agreements. In its resentment of India daring to get close to the USA! Without a moment’s thought for the utter incongruity of China taking exception to India’s fledgling attempt to improve relations with the USA, given its own intense and many-sided relations with America that even included, most notably, a long-standing “dialogue on South Asia” ! Coercive diplomacy and big power huff, Chinese style, in other words.
little surprise it is then that China felt it was within its rights to “teach India a lesson” (in the notorious words of the late Mr Deng Xiaoping w.r.t 1962 that will not be easily forgotten in India). By baring its fangs on the border issue and putting the 2005 boundary Agreement on hold, completely unconnected though the two developments were. Displeasure was signaled in a scarcely concealed manner separately too, just in case India had not got the message.
So rankled China was, apparently, that it did not hesitate to extend its spite to undermining India’s diplomatic standing more generally, in the multilateral sphere as well. In the UN, on its candidature for permanent membership of the Security Council, for instance, and in the NSG, when the question of acknowledgement of India’s impeccable record in respect of nuclear non-proliferation (in the form of a waiver of trade and other restrictions) came up in that grouping in 2008.
There are other areas, where again China’s approach cannot be said to have been in keeping with the declared status of the India-China relationship as a strategic partnership. Its equivocation on the 26/11 terrorist attack for instance. Or its caginess on trans-boundary water and environment issues, falling far short of full disclosure and leaving considerable room for greater transparency. Or its ill advised dabbling in Buddhist traditions and practices and inhumane and repressive approach towards Tibetan traditionalism, both of which have far reaching impact on the Himalayan communities on both sides of the mountains, not just one, and China’s public image in India in general (as far as trustworthiness goes).
And the anti-India edge of Sino-Pak relations, which the Chinese have the gumption to project as unexceptionable without batting an eyelid, continued unabated after pocketing “strategic partnership” status from an obliging India, including in POK.
Indian culpability
China’s calculus of cleverness can, for a moment, be understood or explained away in terms of hard headed pursuit of what it deemed to be its interests, lowly and inconsiderate of the other side as that may be. But what of the Indian side, which does not appear to have thought it necessary to confront China with its disingenuityIJ
Not even in its non-official discourse and Track II interactions, which stand guilty of buying into the officially sponsored “strategic partnership” trope unquestioningly like babes in the woods in the first place, and failing to hold China to account (to its professions and rhetoric), in the second. Not to speak of the official one, outwitted by Chinese power play under cover of diplomatic niceties.
The 2005 Joint Statement on conclusion of PM Wen Jiabao’s visit had promised — nay committed to — pursuit of “early settlement of the boundary question” as a “strategic objective”. It is a feat of Chinese diplomacy that it managed to do just the opposite in less than a year and a half, without raising eyebrows on the country’s standing as a “strategic partner” of India in the Indian discourse!
This is the culpability — of passivity and acts of omission — the Indian side has to own up to, and make amends for now, post-haste. Otherwise, the ‘dignity deficit’ underlying the perceptual ‘power asymmetry’ in the India-China equation will not be redressed.
Conclusion
A deep distrust divide afflicts India-China relations. The discourse in the country has, however, fought shy of calling a spade a spade. It is a case of ‘the Emperor has no clothes on’, but no innocent child around to point to the obvious.
This has to change, and the trust deficit addressed, if India-China relations are to be rescued from the web of words camouflaging prevarication and inaction they are mired in. The “strategic partnership” needs to be reviewed.
These aspects deserve high level attention and must form part of the Indian side’s preparations for PM’s visit to China next month. A bold course correction strategy would need to be devised.
Such a strategy could be centred around a new approach concentrating on specifics, of ‘beneficial bilateralism’ (and not vague, poorly thought out ‘strategic dalliances’ with a calculating strategic adversary bizarrely projected as a strategic partner). Strategic analysts and planners in Government have their task cut out for them
NEXT WEEK: PM’s Visit to China: An iconoclastic agenda
(The author is a former senior diplomat with a background on China and strategic affairs, currently with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. His take on India-China relations and aspects of China’s internal processes can be seen in more detail at http://www.nias.res.in/aboutnias-people-facultyambassadorsaurabhkumar.php)