INDIA NEEDS PRAGMATIC CHANGE TO MEET GEO-POLITICAL DYNAMICS
Beijing wants to promote good ties between India and Pakistan under the Shanghai Cooperation Council banner, but it is unlikely for now, with both in election mode
HONORIFIC “ji” is added to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name and India is in the Indo-Pacific region, a departure from earlier Asia Pacific. China has launched what can best be called a peace offensive. And, India is responding.
A conference was held in New Delhi before Modi’s summit with President Xi Jinping at Wuhan and followed up with another, boldly titled “Beyond Wuhan: How far and fast can China-India relations go”.
Chinese Embassy’s all-in exercise involved the government’s think-tank NITI Ayog, Institute of Chinese Studies, Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and two media bodies, Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia and Indian Association of Foreign Affairs Correspondents (IAFAC).
The twin meets resounded with caution and resolve that India and China must “avoid another Doklam”, last year’s military stand-off in the Himalayas that had brought the Asian giants close to a precipice.
Though cautious, the mood seemed right at the conference. Retired Indian general A.S. Lamba listed “do-ables” on the border. Also proposed first-ever joint military training exercise that may later extend to air force and the navy. Indian and Chinese soldiers jointly performed yoga on international Yoga Day. This, of course, comes along with the growing presence in the South Asian region that has been India’s backyard, altering its ties with immediate neighbours. India could not, or did not, deliver enough earlier. Now, everyone welcomes the Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI) that India refuses to join.
New Delhi’s response at and besides the two conferences indicates pragmatic change needed to meet the new geopolitical dynamics. Military preparedness is being hiked but without going gung-ho. More and more Indian officials and academics want to move on from the 1962 conflict. Border dispute persists, to be resolved, unofficially speaking, another day.
The Chinese come-hither look promises to balance trade since Indian imports have hiked steeply by 50 per cent in the Modi-driven four years. Higher Indian exports, among other things, will include basmati rice.
Of the growing presence of Chinese goods in Indian homes, nobody is protesting except the traders who are being competed out of their traditional festivaldriven markets of colour sprinklers for Holi, Ganesh deity idols and Deepavali-time crackers. The joke is that even slit-eyed (Chinese-looking) Ganesha is worshipped by the Hindu devotees.
This growing discourse has its advantages for India. It must balance its ties with “strategic partner” United States that wants to block Russian arms and Iranian oil to India. Now, India and China want an energy consortium to fight back American “diktats”.
Opening the latter conference, Chinese ambassador to India, Luo Zhaohui, mooted a trilateral dialogue between Delhi, Islamabad and Beijing. The Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) of which all three are members could help.
India called it his “personal” view. The Chinese Foreign Office distanced itself. But, between the vague proposal and Delhi’s rejection, there might be interesting political space that is worth exploring, if not immediately, then in the foreseeable future.
“What is important is not the shape of the negotiating table, but what is on it,” the Indian Express newspaper said in its editorial. It also urged India to be ready to sit on the table for three, proposing a three-fold agenda: “First, connectivity cooperation between the three without prejudice to territorial disputes in Kashmir; second, trilateral cooperation against terrorism without reference to so-called “root causes”; third, liberal trade and transit arrangements between the
three countries in India’s northwest.”
The Chinese envoy had last year suggested that Beijing could rename the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to overcome Delhi’s sovereignty issues over the Corridor passing through the disputed territory in Jammu and Kashmir. Delhi did not buy it — it is unlikely to given Pakistan’s move to take the disputed territory out of Kashmir.
Beijing has made no secret of its interest in promoting good relations between India and Pakistan under the SCO banner. It wants to team up in Afghanistan as well for a project yet to be conceived. Surely, India’s reach-out to China cannot be in isolation. But, combining it with Pakistan that is China’s “iron brother”, has not worked. They are unlikely to, at least for now, what with Pakistan going to the polls this month and India already in the election mode.
Here, I must admit to going wrong, yet again, for nursing optimism in this space on peace prospects in India-Pakistan relations and hoping for their positive impact on Jammu and Kashmir. They actually worsened. Border skirmishes rose during the holy Ramadan. The Indian government called off ceasefire in the troubled state. The trigger was the killing of journalist Shujat Bukhari who advocated turning the ceasefire into an opportunity and allow peace a chance.
A nasty campaign against Bukhari, conducted on both sides of the India-Pakistan border led to his killing, hours before Eid-ulFitr. Indians claim the “order” to eliminate him came from Pakistan. Sadly, a good, bold, man is gone.
Push came to an abrupt shove at the political level, too. The state government of Mehbooba Mufti fell when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruling at the federal level abruptly ended its alliance with her “soft separatist” Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).
The most unlikely alliance between “North Pole and South Pole”, as Mehbooba’s father, late Mufti Sayeed, would ruefully admit, has done little good to the troubled state. In this power-sharing arrangement, the Modi Government retained the whip hand and used it to tame the separatists. It has ended up creating a generation of teenage protesters and stone-throwers in cities and remote villages.
Modi/BJP want to alter the political course that has persisted since the Kashmir issue erupted on India’s independence and separation from Pakistan in 1947. But, the bullet-for-bullet approach leaves no room for talks, especially to the moderate separatist groups.
The political and military impasse will continue since the militant groups fed from across the border are not short of bullets and sadly, youths who want to fire and face them.
This time, I refrain from optimism, even a cautious one.
The Chinese come-hither look promises to balance trade since Indian imports have hiked steeply by 50 per cent in the Modi-driven four years. Higher Indian exports, among other things, will include basmati rice.
The writer is president of the Commonwealth Journalists Association (2016-2018) and a Consultant with Power Politics monthly magazine