You don't have to be an expert on China to understand that Beijing is taking India for a ride on the border issue. You also don't need profound wisdom to realise that New Delhi is willingly being taken for a ride.
The bright men and women of the Congress-led UPA Government have given the spin that only the dim-witted interpret the Government's responses as erroneous and capitulating. In reality, they claim, the process of dialogue, the various confidence mechanisms and the border dispute redressal agreements the regime has entered into with the dragon — the latest being the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement of 2013, signed only days ago — are part of high diplomacy. The moot question is: What use is a diplomacy that does not take of the nation's concerns and protect its interestsIJ
It's not a dilemma which must be troubling the Chinese vis-a-vis the Indians, because they have been having the cake and eating it too for so long that it has become a habit with them. We have obliged them all the way, downplaying blatant incursions by their Army personnel into Indian land as a “small matter”, a mere “acne” on the face, a “localised problem” that did not concern national security, and a “perceptional issue”. We have been so suffused in our own obligatory conduct that on the few occasions we have decided to speak up, the tenor has dripped with apologia — as if we have been compelled to state something that is not just against our wishes but also deceitful.
We are so overwhelmed and burdened by our goodwill for China — non-reciprocated by that country — that our External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, even in the wake of the Daulat Beig Oldie incident, gushes during a trip to China about wanting to settle down in Beijing once he's done with Government work. The Chinese are naturally delighted that they can twist and turn and wrap a regional rival for power around their little finger and still make the latter feel that it is being done a favour. And so they laid out the red carpet for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his just-concluded visit to Beijing. We have been told by starry-eyed witnesses that former Chinese Premier and “old friend” Wen Jiabao “broke tradition” and hosted lunch for the visiting head of Government. For an appetiser, Wen “hugged” Singh — yet another, we are informed, unusual gesture by the former Chinese leader. One national daily has even published a glowing report on this touching moment.
China knows how to play the game. It indulges in trivial niceties to soften up the victim and then deliver the blow. Even that blow is couched in ostensibly harmless verbose, lest the target gets whiff of the reality and counter-responses. The BDCA the two countries inked during Singh's China visit is a shining example of Beijing's mastery and New Delhi's pusillanimity (or naiveté, if you will). The agreement is supposed to check aggression along the line of Actual Control and promote “mutual and equal” security. But who's the aggressor along the lACIJ China. What mechanisms does the BDCA have to check such aggressionIJ None.
The new pact has actually done away with one mechanism: Tailing the intruders and getting them out. A couple of months ago, Indian Army jawans cajoled and coerced a bunch of Chinese Army personnel into leaving our territory. But after the new deal, we cannot even do that. In other words, Indian soldiers are supposed to tamely sit and watch as the Chinese walk all over our territory, pitch tents and hoist their flags. Any counter-active step that we take will be seen as ‘aggression' and against the new BDCA.
But try telling this to the mushy Ministers of the UPA. At least the seasoned bureaucrats in the External Affairs and the Defence Ministries have not swallowed China's disguised tactics, hook, line and sinker, and they must be guiding their political masters. But they’re helpless because Singh and his team have been brainwashed by the dragon’s charm offensive to the extent that they have forgotten — or pretend to have forgotten — recent jibes from state-controlled Chinese media after India tested its inter-continental ballistic missile that can reach China, besides many faraway targets, or when New Delhi spoke on the rights of countries to international waters in the South China Sea where Beijing has been flexing its muscles. There is one truth and one myth. The truth is: China has contempt for India. The myth is: India has been dealing with China as an equal.
The UPA wants us to believe that the desire for “peace and tranquility” (it sounds so soothing) is overwhelming on both sides of the lAC. IndeedIJ If that is so, China should not be raising our hackles by repeatedly claiming all of Arunachal Pradesh and parts along ladakh as their own. It should not be issuing stapled visas to Indian citizens who belong to Arunachal Pradesh or any of the so-called disputed areas. It would not be leaving its footprint in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Chinese do these not just repeatedly, but also especially so when an important meeting between high-level dignitaries of the two countries is scheduled. They take no chances with getting the real message through.
The latest incident is of Beijing issuing a stapled visa to an Indian archer from the North-East, just days before Prime Minister Singh's visit to China. And, lest one forgets, the Daulat Beig Oldie incident happened only weeks before Khurshid's scheduled trip to China. In any other regime, the visit not just of the Minister but also of the Prime Minister would have been called off in protest.
In his book (of which an updated version was recently released), Self-deception: India's China Policies: Origins, Premises, lessons, scholar, author and former Union Minister Arun Shourie traces the issue and its journey all the way from Jawaharlal Nehru's time to present days. It lays bare the blunders that we have committed, over and over again, misleading ourselves with some self-given and some Chinese-driven assurances, that all is well.
It never has been. It never will be, unless we show some spine. Surrendering national interests is not an option to avoid a conflict. A country that has slowly nibbled away at our territory and pushed the lAC further and further into India, cannot be doing it out of love and respect for this nation. If we don't raise the issue when we meet the Chinese leaders (Khurshid did not consider it prudent to discuss the intrusion during his visit), or at best raise it gingerly and with trepidation (as the Prime Minister recently did), there is no reason why Beijing should consider us befitting of a respectful response. Make noise and you will at most be heard; take action and you will be respected — or at least feared.