Indian officer’s remarks at odds with consensus

The mistrust and misgivings harbored by highranking Indian officials toward China have more often than not only helped to fan an aggressive patriotism in India, which has done a disservice to the efforts of the two countries to build trust and establish rapport. This was evident once again on Friday, following the remarks made by India’s Army Chief of Staff General Bipin Rawat, who, in an apparent move to beef up the Indian army’s morale before India’s Army Day on Monday, vowed to handle China’s “assertiveness”, saying China may be powerful, but India is not a weak nation.

Coming so soon after the tense more than two-month standoff that resulted after Indian troops crossed the border into Donglang in June, these remarks — and his call for India’s infrastructure development on the northern border “to be speeded up” — are illjudged by any standard, and serve only to push the sensitive border issue between the two neighbors to the fore again.

Although the two nations have exercised restraint and expressed their willingness to mend their fences since the Donglang standoff, that cannot disguise the fact that the sensitivity and complexity of the border issue still exist, and how to prevent a strategic misjudgment is a pressing challenge for both sides. Against such a backdrop, the remarks by the chief of the Indian Army do not conform to the consensus reached by the leaders of the two neighbors, nor to the general trend of improving bilateral relations, as China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Monday.

Admittedly, misperception and narrow-mindedness have prompted some in India to perceive the two neighbors as strategic rivals, something that the United States is hoping to make use of in its geopolitical maneuverings — Rawat’s talk of “China’s assertiveness” echoes the term the US likes to use to portray Beijing as a bully and so cast its actions in a bad light.

However, a head-on clash on the border, even on a limited scale, would squander the consensus achieved by the two sides and shatter the delicate trust that needs to be nurtured.

Although any progress that has been made so far may be imperceptible, both sides say they remain committed to solving the border disagreements through dialogue. And certainly by averting a full-blown military confrontation in August and taking steps to talk and resolve the crisis, both countries demonstrated they do not want to come to blows.

After all, China and India, if they bear in mind that their common interests far outweigh their differences, are bound to discover they can coexist and prosper peacefully together.