Bordering on progress
Reports from China on the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are so much full of clichés like "positive," "breakthrough" and "meeting of minds" that it is difficult to get the real picture. Both countries, giants in their own way, follow different ideologies and have done well economically. But they are suspicious of each other. Has Manmohan Singh's trip allayed the distrust which the two have harboured for years?
The cooperation in civil nuclear field, the 60 million-dollar mutual trade, the support for the Security Council's membership or the 11 bilateral documents is welcome. They indicate progress and the economic prowess which one is beginning to recognise in the other.
The litmus test is how far China has given in on the border dispute. Here the score is zero. In fact, China has resiled from the earlier understanding given to India. The formulation at Beijing this time was that both sides "seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution" on the basis of the political parameters and guiding principles announced in the past. This is nothing more than a pious statement.
The understanding given to New Delhi was that the line of demarcation would not go through the populated areas. It meant that China had moved away from its claim on Arunachal in the northeast. New Delhi wanted this to be written down. Now China has talked in terms of small, medium and dense pockets. Another thing agreed upon earlier was the exchange of maps. There was not even a mention of that.
It is no use getting euphoric over gestures like the private dinner given by the Chinese Premier to Manmohan Singh. The hype was bigger when India's first Prime Minister Jahawarhal Nehru visited China in 1954.
One million people had turned out to welcome on a 12-mile-long route from the airport. It was described as a "Roman triumph." We who were following the visit got equally involved emotionally like the media personnel covering Manmohan Singh's trip. We too refused to report odd border incidents that had cast a shadow on the sun-lit mountain tops. New Delhi will be committing the same mistake by minimising the dispute for the sake of good relations.
The progress on the dispute has been dismal. The meetings of different Indian prime ministers with their counterparts and the unending rounds of talks between the officials of the two countries have not made China withdraw even an inch from the Indian territories it nibbled at during the fifties and occupied after the 1962 war.
China has not responded even to the Colombo proposals which the six non-aligned countries, led by Sri Lanka, had formulated in December 1962 to keep the two sides disengaged after hostilities. The Colombo proposals suggested the withdrawal of Chinese forces by 20 kilometres from the line of actual control on November 7, 1959.
As days went by, India accepted the status quo on the border and took steps to have economic and trade contacts with China. Incidentally, the same kind of arrangement was offered to Pakistan which it rejected.
India had proposed that both countries could have trade and economic ties and not let the dispute on Kashmir come in the way. Islamabad said that unless the Kashmir issue was settled, there was no question of having business relations with India.
The problem India faces with China is that the status quo on the border is 45 years old. What is de facto looks like becoming de jure. I concede that all the claims of India cannot be justified. There has to be a give-and-take policy. But, at least, China should implement the Colombo proposals to prove that it is willing to go beyond the status quo. By all means, we should move on and overcome the hurt of the past. Yet the aggression should be "a permanent piece of education," as Nehru said, lest emotions should make us one day write off the occupation of Indian territories.
Nehru went to the farthest to accommodate China. A CIA report of the sixties, now available from the archives, says that Nehru was "so afraid" of annoying China that he went on overlooking its intrusion into India. The report says that he would rather accommodate China than confront it. This is factually correct. Even when some soldiers of Indian patrol into the Aksai Chin road were killed by the Chinese, Nehru did not register any serious protest. He went on saying that it was a clash of wills, not of arms. All border violation reports which were forwarded to Nehru ended up in a "border file" in the Home Ministry.
The bureaucrats would laugh at Nehru's inaction, particularly in the Home Ministry where I worked as Information Officer. I too felt let down by my hero, Nehru. However, when I now analyse events of those days I feel that Nehru, although disappointed over the behaviour of China which he projected to the world, wanted to go to the maximum limit to stay friendly with China. He could visualise the dangerous fallout if the two were to clash.
He wrote to the chief ministers: "It is a little naïve to think that the trouble with China was essentially due to a dispute over some territory. It had deeper reasons. Two of the largest countries in Asia confronted each other over a vast border. They differed in many ways. And the test was as to whether anyone of them would have a more dominating position than the other on the border and in Asia itself. We do not desire to dominate any country and we are content to live peacefully with other countries provided they do not interfere with us or commit aggression. China, on the other hand, clearly did not like the idea of such a peaceful existence and wants to have a dominating position in Asia."
Whatever distance we span with China and however close ties we develop with it - Manmohan Singh's trip has done that - we should never forget that at the height of Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai relationship, China crossed India's border to defeat it. Nehru too tried to give China a new vision. But it was at that time opposed to the path of "cooperation" for the development and peace and had opted for "self-reliant detachment and confrontation." Times have changed. China has now a stake in peace because it does not want any obstruction in its soaring growth rate.
Manmohan Sing, too, has given another angle to the relationship: the two countries can dislodge the West as the centre of global economic gravity. But confrontation, as he said, has to be avoided. This may persuade China not to insist on India accepting the status quo as a border. Beijing should realsie that Manmohan Singh cannot sell that. It has political overtones which can disturb the economic rhythm.
Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.
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