India, China go sweet and sour with a little chopsuey
Standoff at Doklam does not give a tactical advantage to China as India is no gentle pushover
The tension on the Bhutan and Sikkim border is palpable. India knows that over the past two months the Chinese have indicated they have an agenda. It is not so much to declare war and engage in a military excursion, as it is to engage in a dry run and assess the mood of the region. There is no tactical advantage to an open-ended fight and India is not a gentle military pushover. That the dragon, so to speak, will continue to belch fire is a given for the time being.
For India, it is a window of opportunity to bring the northeastern states deeper into the fold and address their concerns. Over 44 million people in the seven sister states of that region are integral to the rest of India but most of the billion citizens in the subcontinent would be hard-placed to list them. No, Sikkim is not one of the seven. The country has displayed a rather cavalier indifference to their brethren in the east. This has left them vulnerable to blandishment from across the SinoIndian border and even in Bhutan there is enough ground support for an alliance with China. Indian indifference was underscored recently when the Centre took over a month to disburse emergency aid to these states inundated by floods. In the interim nearly 200 people were killed and several thousand rendered homeless.
Add to this alienation the mental imagery Indians have of the Chinese and one can understand why no major ongoing game plan has ever been sculpted to ensure what the Dalai Lama said earlier this week about the Hindi-Chini bhai
bhai (Indian and China are brothers) slogan that takes us back to the late 50s, a benign visit by Chinese Premier Chou En Lai to India and the seeding of the 1962 orchestrated conflict.
Before we go to that visit, Indians have to learn about their neighbour and be armed with that effective knowledge. Currently, the mindset is fuelled by a childhood fear of things oriental, a visual Hollywood feed of Mongol hordes and Genghis Khan typecasts. Ignorance of China as a nation and the Chinese as a people, even greater ignorance of the language and an overbite of western stereotyped Chinese men, women and children crusted in ridicule and caricature have further contributed to this free running imagery. For most Indians, too, the ignorance is frozen at Chinese food outlets and shoemakers and there are very few takers for understanding deeper facets of Chinese culture.
India has very little concept of the Chinese mind and its intelligentsia has followed the images sandwiched by the western media...the inscrutable little Chinese merchant, the Confucian wizened owl with flowing moustaches, Susie Wong and the Anglo-Saxon Hong Kong bred Bruce Lee facsimile. This is
China’s interests in India are, perhaps, a little more territorial than India’s in China. The absence of a mutually acceptable boundary is interpreted separately by both sides and herein lies the areas of darkness.
an unpromising basis for appreciating a neighbour, be it friend or foe.
That China has the potential to be a threat is far too obvious a possibility. India has known that since 1962 when the Indian army’s Lt General BM Kaul escalated a conflict and discovered to his horror that China had retaliated with surprising ferocity. An unprepared Indian army, poorly equipped, inadequately supplied and armed with obsolete .303 wooded rifles was driven off the heights of NEFA, Ladakh Dohia and the passes of Nathu La and Jelep La in what was really an ill-concealed attempt by General Kaul to crown himself a hero and then at least make semi-military moves to take over the mantle of civilian power from Nehru.
The genesis of this plan went back to 1959 when Chou En Lai was the General’s guest and thousands of children and trucked in adults lined the streets chanting, Hindi-Chini bhai bhai. Operation Amar, a housing enterprise for soldiers of the famous fourth Infantry Division, was the centrepoint of the Chinese leader’s visit.
Three years later, the skirmishes designed to embolden the ambitions of the military coterie perished when military strategists got carried away and went a bridge too far. General Kaul’s book The Untold Story and Brigadier JP Dalvi’s The Himalayan Blunder underscored the lack of preparedness and the wastefulness of life as well as the absurdity of the border. Legend has it that two British subalterns having imbibed a fair amount at the officer’s mess pushed off to their quarters and cheerfully picking up foot ruler drew a line across the mountains, thereby divvying up the territory, old chap.
Whether true or not, the two countries and successive governments have done little to come to grips with that imperial gift and reorganise the split.
Things have changed dramatically since 1962. India’s military presence on the mountains is professionally organised. While media pundits might whisper cautions of the 1962 hammering, Indian servicemen have no such hang ups. Indian military morale needs no exhortation and unlike Chinese media’s propagandist calls for solidarity, Indian media is cheerfully ready to expose India’s weaknesses in a bid to win maximum TRPs through sensational reportage.
The Chinese are aware that such military conflicts are destined to be without victories. What victories lie in such inhospitable terrain? Again, the Chinese, currently warming themselves with the winds of commercialism can neither afford nor need to pit 1.5 billion people against 1.2 billion Indians. On the contrary, the problems are common and they are civilian and social in nature.
Traditionally, India and China are not enemies but trading partners.
At this precise moment China’s interests in India are, perhaps, a little more territorial than India’s in China. The absence of a mutually acceptable boundary is interpreted separately by both sides and herein lies the areas of darkness.
India’s refuge to the Dalai Lama and the Indian insistence in public forums for the freedom of Tibet from Beijing’s control has been a durable thorn. China also sees India’s absorption of Sikkim as provocative but is unlikely to shake the status quo. India sees China as holding onto Indian territory, which it must return in the northeast frontier region. Bhutan is a new pawn on the chessboard of these two giant contestants and in an uncomfortable Catch 22 with the young king still hedging his bets towards India. As for Kashmir, China knows adventurism here will force the Indian hand and with hostility on 18 fronts and nations there is no gain in creating a nineteenth.
None of these issues are perilous to security. They are just ongoing stumbles in the 55-year effort to upgrade the peace process. The deployment of weapons on the Tibetan border has been known to the world for years. Is it possible that China sees India as an equally potential threat with the size and firepower of her standing forces?
For those on the Indian side who believe China has more military might should understand that the numbers in conventional non-nuclear wars are limited in usage. Beijing is aware that India’s forces are a match for the first 15 days. With major problems of its own in terms of finance, lack of water, pollution a huge unemployment problem, poverty and restlessness in the vast nation and a rural stagnation, these 15 days would further push the Chinese on the backfoot with no tangible gain.
Keeping India unsettled and off balance as it second guesses Beijing would be enough intent for the moment. Bikram Vohra is a former editor of