India-China ties in a trough

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A year after President Pranab Mukherjee spoke of India-China relations as the defining partnership of this century and called upon governments of the two countries to jointly impart momentum to bilateral ties, there is no sign of a forward movement. On the contrary, mutual distrust is threatening to destroy the good work done after the 1961 hostilities over the disputed border.

Ahead of a visit to the border state of Arunachal Pradesh by Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile in India since 1959, this month the Chinese Foreign Ministry warned that it could damage bilateral relations.

Arunachal Pradesh, which was administered by the British under the name of North East Frontier Agency, is now a full-fledged state with an area of about 84,000 square kilometres and a population of 1.38 million. China claims it is South Tibet. After India ignored the warning and the Dalai Lama went ahead with the visit, Beijing announced Chinese names for six Arunachal towns to reinforce its claim.

This was the Dalai Lama’s seventh visit since 1983 to Arunachal Pradesh, where the 17th century Tawang monastery, headquarters of the Kama-Kargyu sect of Tibetan Buddhists, is located. While China routinely objected to his visits, this is the first time it has followed up the protest with any step at all. P. Stobdan, a former diplomat, believes China only wants to discourage India from thinking it can use the Dalai Lama as leverage in the dealings between the two countries.

India-China relations are now in a trough now. Each side feels that the other is not sufficiently sensitive to its interests.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose neighbourhood policy is conditioned by the Hindutva perspective on Pakistan and terrorism, is peeved with China for blocking India’s bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group and its attempt to get the UN to brand Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a terrorist.

China is suspicious of India’s evolving strategic relationship with the United States. Also, it is unhappy about India’s indifference to President Xi Jinping’s pet One Belt One Road project.

OBOR is a global network of roads, railways, pipelines and utility grids that will link China with South Asia, Central Asia and West Asia and through them to Europe. When completed, it will be the world’s largest platform for economic, social and cultural cooperation.

India’s reservations about OBOR stem primarily from its opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which will run through Azad Jammu and Kashmir. CPEC is one of several corridors envisaged as part of OBOR. The corridors are expected to be dotted with energy and industrial clusters.

The Indian government initially cited lack of details about the elements of the project as a reason for its holding back. Last month an official spokesman spelt out its objection: “CPEC passes through Indian territory.”

The argument is, no doubt, valid but the objection comes too late. The 1,300-km Karakoram highway, which runs from Kashgar in the Xinjiang region of China to Abbotabad in Pakistan and will become part of CPEC, has been operational for about four decades already. India learnt of that road project only after work on it began in 1959.

India is yet to respond to China’s invitation to attend a meeting on OBOR which it has scheduled for May. The government must take an early decision in the matter, after weighing carefully the advantages that may accrue to the country from the project and the disadvantages that may result if it keeps out of it.

India’s absence will, no doubt, diminish OBOR’s worth as it is now the world’s fastest growing economy and one of the largest markets. But India needs to note that more than 60 countries with a combined GDP of $21 trillion have evinced interest in the project and it thus bids fair to be a success even without India. In fact, the chances are that circumstances may eventually compel India to join it so as to benefit from it.

An early positive decision may confer two advantages. It may lift India-China relations from the trough into which it has fallen. Many details of OBOR are still to be worked out. By joining the group before the details are filled in India may be able to play a role in shaping its course in a way beneficial to it.

India must not lose sight of the fact that it cannot secure its legitimate place in a reformed UN except with the concurrence of China, which is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. --Gulf Today, April 25, 2017.

Clueless in Kashmir

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Fifteen weeks after restive youth threw life in Kashmir out of gear in a wave of unprecedented protest parts of the valley are still under curfew. Where the curfew has been lifted, orders prohibiting assembly of people are in force. Schools and colleges are closed and shops shut. Some government offices are not functioning. 

In some places, policemen abandoned their posts. A few instances of snatching of weapons by protesters were reported, and 10 policemen were sacked for giving up their weapons without offering resistance.

The wave of unrest was touched off by Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani’s death in an encounter with the police on July 8. Young people, many of them in their teens, poured into the streets and stoned security personnel who replied with pellets. 

The supposedly non-lethal pellets have taken about 90 lives and injured more than 14,000 people. Pellets have blinded at least 100 youths. Two policemen have also been killed.

About 7,000 people are said to be in custody. They include several hundred detained under the Public Safety Act which allows the authorities to hold persons considered security risks without trial for up to two years.

Even as Central and state police were coping with the disturbance, cross-border terrorism flared up. In response to the attack on the Uri base, which resulted in the death of 19 soldiers, the army struck at terrorist launch pads across the LOC, killing two Pakistani soldiers and an unspecified number of terrorists.

Hardly a day has passed since then without firings across the LOC. Most of the exchange of fire caused only low casualties but last week retaliatory Indian fire killed seven Pakistani security personnel. 

The deterioration in India-Pakistan relations led to shelving of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Islamabad and mutual recrimination at the UN. Also, both the countries launched diplomatic campaigns to garner international support.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s bid to internationalise the Kashmir issue once again failed. So did Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bid to isolate Pakistan. The US backed India’s call to dismantle terror camps in Pakistan but was not willing to brand it a terrorist state. China was even more protective of Pakistan. It would not even let the UN dub Pakistan-based Masood Azhar, whom India has identified as the mastermind behind the Mumbai attacks, as a terrorist.

In the recent past, prompted by India’s growing economic clout, the West was getting out of the habit of equating it with Pakistan. By juxtaposing Kashmir with Baluchistan and human rights violations on this side of the border with those on the other side, Modi has unwittingly put the two on the same level. 

As the unrest in the valley drags on and its shadow on India-Pakistan relations persists, a question arises: what next? The protagonists have no answer. 

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti cuts a forlorn figure as she urges protesters to go back, advises the police to hand-hold the misguided youth and pleads with Modi to walk the talk as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s first Prime Minister, AB Vajpayee, did. 

She heads a coalition comprising her People’s Democratic Party and Modi’s BJP. Under the agenda of governance drawn up by the two parties they are committed to “start a dialogue process with all shades of political opinion, including the separatists.” 

While Modi is vociferous on cross-border terrorism, he maintains studious silence on the youth unrest which has virtually eclipsed the Hurriyat Conference, the umbrella organisation of pro-Pakistan and pro-independence groups, which held the ground for several years. 

The youth movement is home-grown and leaderless. Alluding to the dangers inherent in the emergence of such a force, a Kashmiri commentator wrote last week: “Resist we will, resist we must, but if that resistance means turning men against men, denying people their livelihood, pushing society into an irrevocable chaos where anyone can attack anyone else, then our doom is sealed.” 

Not just the Kashmiris, but all concerned with the issue, which has been festering since the birth of India and Pakistan as free nations, are trapped in a no-win situation. The three wars the two countries fought did not yield a solution and it is foolish to imagine a fourth one will. The situation calls for out-of-the box thinking but there is no sign of it.

India has demonstrated its willingness and ability to hold territory. It needs to show it also has the ability to win the affection of the people who, by constitutional definition, are full and equal citizens of the secular, democratic republic of India. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, October 25, 2016