HOW TO BE NEIGHBOURS INA WORLD IN TURMOIL
Dialogue between heads of states has calmed the political pitch somewhat among India, China and Pakistan
PRIME Minister Narendra Modi has earned encomiums visiting 54 countries as of this month, using his political guile and India’s market size and rising economic clout.
But his real test, as he prepares to seek re-election, comes not in bilateral bonhomie with leaders he has hugged but in dealing with China and Pakistan. It is not because he would like to, but because of regional and global compulsions.
His heart-to-heart talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Wuhan came after last year’s tense 75-day stand-off on the India-Bhutan-China border in the Himalayas.
Talking to China is necessary because not talking in this fastchanging geo-strategic environment could be more problematic.
Track-2 dialogue with Pakistan is revived, in a shift from “no–talks-till-terror-persists” stance. India failed to isolate Pakistan except in the stunted South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
Talking to Pakistan is always problematic, especially after raising domestic political pitch. The dialogue has calmed that pitch for now.
Talking to either or both needs a positive but cautious stance without shrill nationalistic postures. It is unlikely to fetch Modi votes in elections.
Modi inherited a difficult legacy, having to deal with neighbgours who began relationship to counter “enemy’s enemy” (India). It is now “all-weather” and “iron-clad.”
China surrounds South Asia as never before, significantly diminishing India’s role among neighbours who have, like much of the world, embraced the China-led Belt and Road Initiative.
Tiny Maldives ‘declines’ Indian gifts. Sandwiched between two giants, Nepal is more equidistant than before. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka eagerly await Chinese goods and funding of infrastructure projects. And Pakistan is poised to grow under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), feeling bold enough to defy the mighty Americans.
Given difficult choices, India distanced itself from the Dalai Lama, China’s bugbear it hosts. Modi in a bold step travelled to Wuhan for a, ‘informal’ standalone meeting with Xi. If Modi took the plunge weeks before Shanghai Cooperative Organisation (SCO) summit, the recentlycrowned Xi also travelled out of Beijing.
Both leaders were acutely aware that the last time they tried this on swings in Gujarat, border stand-offs followed at Chumar and Doklam costing the relationship dearly.
Out of Wuhan, and before the SCO summit that Indian and Pakistani leaders will attend, it has been decided that their troops would be for the first time involved in a joint multinational military exercise in Russia to combat terrorism.
It requires stressing that terrorism, its very definition onwards, is the principal difference between India and Pakistan wherein China, despite being a victim, has been openly partisan, much to India’s chagrin.
Indians think that this is unlikely to change after Wuhan and the SCO summit. Nor would there be respite from more Chumars and Doklams.
Xi and Modi resolved to act with ‘restraint’, hoping to have better perceptions of mutual concerns and sensitivities. This has echoes of what previous Indian premiers, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, had discussed with the Chinese leadership of their times. But things did not change on the ground.
Hence, unsurprisingly, after the “informal talks” at Wuhan, mutual differences did not evaporate – they cannot and were not expected to.
Dealing with a China well on its path towards global hegemony, India will continue to offer a challenge, howsoever unequal. This is inherent in its existence as China’s neighbour.
Xi will push BRI, and India will continue to oppose it, ignoring any Chinese sops like shifting the route from disputed Kashmir territory. This stance may soften, though, if Afghanistan and Iran are involved in CPEC.
China will not stop trying to encircle India. India will counter this by building friendly bulwarks on China’s periphery with Japan and others.
Indians know that while world watches and friends like the USA, Japan, Australia and Singapore may show concern and help strategise counter moves, nobody else will pull the Indian chestnuts out of the fire breathed by the Chinese dragon.
That underscores the need for military preparedness – and expenditure. The Wuhan summit coincided with news that India will build 96 more border outposts along the China frontier.
Former Indian foreign secretary and ex-envoy to Washington and Beijing, Nirupama Rao notes: “The distilled essence is: let us give each other space and let us rationalise our opposition to each other and our differences in a grown-up way.”
A welcome move out of Wuhan is that China will cooperate with India in Afghanistan. Given China’s increasing role in Afghan imbroglio, that is bound to be on specific projects. China will share the goodwill that India enjoys in that country but without jeopardising Pakistan’s interest and involvement. Islamabad is unlikely to lose sleep over any SinoIndian move in what it insists is its strategic backyard.
The Himalayas are becoming a ruse since the Chinese and Indian ambitions clash in the maritime environment of the Indo-Pacific. Three democracies — India, the United States and Japan — confront China just as China-Pakistan strategic cooperation makes India uneasy. In a multipolar world, that underscores the future security scenario.
In this Cold War-2, alignments have changed. The West wooed Pakistan earlier, baiting an India it labeled pro-Moscow. Today, ironically, keen to ‘contain’ China and its ally Russia, the West is cozy with India.
Putting things in perspective, India’s differences with China are political, military -- even strategic. What is overlooked is that India and China never fought a war till the colonial era when the two suffered created boundaries that are disputed.
With Pakistan, it is ideological baggage of a millennium and more. That ignores the fact during centuries of Muslim rule across South Asia, Hindus and Muslims learnt to live together and assimilate a composite culture until the 1947 Partition – something that Partition has failed to destroy.
Outcome of Wuhan and SCO, a work in progress, may impact Asia as a whole. Stability in IndiaChina relations in a world in turmoil would be a lesson for others, big and small, pushing their narrow “we first” agenda.
Three democracies — India, the United States and Japan — confront China just as ChinaPakistan strategic cooperation makes India uneasy.
The writer is a columnist for The Hans India. He also lectures at the Indian Institute of Mass Communications