Mending The Chinese Nets

 Jaishankar's meeting with Xi is a diplomatic breakthrough and a harbinger of peace. The Russia-India-China platform offers stability and prosperity for the region

Pic credit: Dr. S. Jaishankar's X post

It is indeed a massive breakthrough and a harbinger of peace. Minister for External Affairs Dr. S. Jaishankar has walked the tightrope to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s gathering at Tianjin early this week; his visit culminating with a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday. This is Jaishankar’s first trip to China after the military standoff in eastern Ladakh began in April 2020.

Such a diplomatic turnaround in just five years is no mean achievement, particularly when Indian diplomacy is hostage to domestic political wranglings. The magnitude of the icebreaker must be measured against the cost of hostilities with the world’s second largest economy and the second biggest arms producer.

India can ignore and punish Pakistan at will for Pahalgam-like transgressions, whatever the western press might say. But it must have a special relationship with China –– one with deep respect for mutual interests.

The media in India creates political and even diplomatic narratives. There were attempts to fashion a false bonhomie between India and Pakistan with certain individuals and media organisations beating the drums of people-to-people contact, exchange of “performers” and lighting of candles at the border.

All of this was triggered by western interests to create a seamless South Asian market and sphere of influence reinventing British India. Interestingly, the moniker “South Asia” replaced the geographical and historical reality of the “Indian subcontinent” to erase the shared civilisational footprint from Gandhara in the north to Kolamba in the south.

These South Asian propagandists never thought it proper to light a lamp of goodwill at the India-China border, thereby clearly exposing the interests of their promoters. If it is peace that India seeks then it is most imperative to light candles at Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh because India has a longer border with China than Pakistan. And it is easier because there are common civilisational values of Buddhism in the East, whereas in the West there are only memories of invasion, colonial humiliation and the holocaust of Partition.

After every war with Pakistan and every act of heinous terrorism by its semi-state actors, India used to revive backchannel diplomacy, remotely controlled by puppeteers. Whereas in the East there was just one war, that too long ago in 1962, yet India never paused to arrive at a clear understanding of China’s strategic objectives in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. India mistook Chinese tactical restraint for its timidity till it made salami slicing excursions a regular feature of its offensive military manoeuvres.

While sanctimoniously attacking China for its betrayal in 1962, India never thought that it could have been a response to its offering sanctuary to the Dalai Lama in 1959, apart from the disputes over the colonial maps. The war exposed Jawaharlal Nehru’s lack of understanding of Chinese sensibilities and capabilities, and his disastrous lack of preparedness. China understood the Dalai Lama as a western tool, hosted by India for strategic gains. Whereas India gained only China’s suspicion that grew into a long winter of animosity.

China was proven right when the West gave its grandest knighthood, the Nobel Peace Prize, to Tenzin Gyatzo in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square uprising. India needs to introspect on its strategic objectives in hosting a government in exile that threatens Chinese territorial sovereignty. Nehru could have done it on a whim, or his western friends could have nudged him into setting up a Tibetan government by “betraying” the interests of a very friendly neighbour –– India was the first non-Communist country to recognise the People’s Republic of China.

After 38 years of relative calm and normalcy, the Ladakh standoff again made the Indian commentariat wonder why. Everyone pondered over the strategic objectives of the Chinese aggression. Now, the reason appears rather straightforward: India’s involvement in Quad. NATO getting replicated in the Indo-Pacific, just to contain China, obviously triggered a response. And it happened in a non-kinetic, hostile contact, leading unfortunately to casualties on both sides.
India, hopefully, understood the message that it cannot afford to play the Ukrainian comic’s role in the Himalayas to contain the US’ competitor.

But efforts continue in the western press, faithfully and devotedly copied by the Indian media, to paint China as the villain in the post-Pahalgam attacks on terror training centres in Pakistan. Sure, 80 per cent of Pakistani arsenal is of Chinese origin. But Pakistan used to acquire almost 100 per cent of its arms from the West till recently and particularly during the 1971 war. That never deterred India’s quest for a continuing unequal relationship with the West.
The US, after arming the Pakistanis to the teeth with fighter jets and tanks, sent its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal to threaten India in 1971. But China refused to get involved despite Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger pushing Zhou En Lai hard.

And it has maintained its strategic restraint all along. A rising power would sell arms to anyone ready to buy. If Pakistanis are buying Chinese arms with American aid and World Bank loans, India is selling Brahmos missile systems to the Philippines, which does sabre-rattling with China. Arms sale, by itself, is not an offensive gesture.

Whether China offered operational transparency through its satellites or not is a question that can be answered unequivocally only by the two principals. So far, the primary proof of Chinese involvement in Operation Sindoor is gushing war poetry written for a London newspaper by a Churchillian writer, deeply despising India. This claim cannot be taken at face value.
If Pakistan is China’s iron brother, then it is the West’s iron child. A sibling can develop rivalry, but a parent will never give up on its child. India has overlooked the West supplying arms and legitimacy to Pakistan all along, now it must ignore Pakistan as a minor irritant that gets activated by the West to embarrass the incumbent Indian government.

A possible realignment of Asiatic forces on the Russia-India-China platform offers stability and prosperity for the region. A big eastwardly step by the government indeed.