Rahul Singh
Unlike our ministers who have a habit of speaking out of turn — often on subjects outside their given responsibility — Chinese officials are very careful when they make public pronouncements. What they say has invariably been cleared in advance at the highest level and is part of a carefully considered policy.
Which is why what the recently appointed Chinese Ambassador to India, Mr Zhou Gang, had to say to New Delhi journalists the other day in his second “on-the-record” press conference must be taken very seriously, indeed. He made two main points which need to be noted by the Indian authorities and by the Indian public.
Firstly, that, there was no question of his country vacating Aksai Chin, which he claimed had been a part of China since “ancient times” and over which Beijing exerted “effective administration”. Secondly, that Kashmir was not an integral part of India, because it was “disputed territory”. He tried to moderate his country’s views by saying, in the same breath, that China was committed to solving the boundary dispute with India “in accordance with the principle of friendly consultation, mutual understanding and mutual accommodation”.
This is nothing but double-speak at its worse.The Chinese hard-line follows the statement some time back by Union Defence Minister George Fernandes to the effect that New Delhi regarded China as its “main threat”. Beijing reacted with outrage. This was followed by India’s nuclear tests which were also condemned by China, another bit of hypocrisy, considering that China has been a nuclear weapons power for many years. Looking back, Mr Fernandes’s statement regarding China was clearly a calculated one, intended to justify the tests, which were already in the works. But let us first examine what the Chinese envoy had to say.
Before that, however, a little background. Aksai Chin is a part of Ladakh and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Surreptitiously, in the years of Jawaharlal Nehru’s well-meaning but rather naive “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” (Indian and Chinese are brothers), China occupied Aksai Chin, building a road across Indian territory to connect two sections of Chinese territory.Nehru knew about it but kept quite and hid what was really a blatantly aggressive and unfriendly act from the rest of the nation. He imagined that it was an aberration, and that he could still get India and China to be on amicable terms. Beijing had other plans. They did not include friendship with India.
When the Chinese occupation of Aksai Chin could no longer be hidden from the Indian public, Nehru tried to make light of the matter in Parliament by dismissing the lost territory as land of little value “where nothing grew”. His explanation infuriated not just the Opposition but the general Indian public as well.Inexorably, India was dragged into a war with China in the high Himalayas for which the Indian troops were not in the least bit prepared. The Chinese army, on the other hand, battle-hardened by both the war against the Japanese and against the Americans in Korea, was totally ready. The result was a brief yet bloody clash in the Himalayas in which the Indian army was completely routed.
To make the humiliation complete, the Chinese troops, with the plains of north-east India at their mercy, made a unilateral withdrawal from the areas they had occupied. However, they continued to insist that they did not recognise the McMahon line drawn by the British in the North-East, thereby laying claims to vast tracts of Indian territory behind that line. And, of course, they continued to occupy Aksai Chin. To make matters worse, they acquired, amicably, from Pakistan a part of what India calls “Pakistan Occupied Kashmir” (POK), which rightly belongs to India and Islamabad had no business to gift it away.
So in many ways we have a lot to be bitter about the Chinese government. It initially spurned our hand of friendship, it occupied our territory, it went to war against us and defeated us, and then helped Pakistan to become a nuclear power by transferring nuclear technology to Islamabad.
But in the last two decades or so, the geopolitical situation has completely changed. The Soviet Union, a long-time ally of India, has disintegrated. In China, a new leadership, more concerned about giving their people a better life rather than arm the country to its teeth, has been in power. And it has succeeded. We in India have not.With the May nuclear tests, we have decided to take on China, or so the BJP-led government says. Our main threat is not Pakistan, but China, says the BJP. Beijing retaliates with its traditional line: Aksai Chin is ours — along with other parts of India, such as Arunachal Pradesh — and has been since “ancient times”. And Kashmir is “disputed territory”.
If New Delhi really want to raise the ante with Beijing, it should earnestly take up an issue where the Chinese are vulnerable. It should take up the Tibetan cause. We made the cardinal mistake in Nehru’s time of conceding China “sovereignty” over Tibet (the British had carefully used the word “suzerainty”). We did nothing when the Chinese invaded Tibet and tens of thousands of refugees, including the Dalai Lama, were forced to seek shelter here. A vital bufffer between India and China was removed, making it easier for the Chinese aggression in 1962.
If we really want to put the heat on China and retaliate in a meaningful fashion to what the Chinese envoy has said, we should openly espouse the cause of independence for Tibet. If Beijing can claim that Kashmir is “disputed territory”, we should question the present status of Tibet and the many human rights abuses that have taken place there. The question is: does the present Indian government have the guts to do that?

DISCLAIMER:

The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article.

Courtesy: The Tribune: July 27, 1998