India-China war at 60 : A Review

india china
Map Courtesy : A.G. NOORANI, The Truth About 1962 (frontline.thehindu.com)

India-China war of 1962  ended in late November 1962, 60 years ago, by an unilateral ceasefire declared by China despite having an upper hand in the battle field. China had made a peace offer, both before and after the war, but was not reciprocated. Zhou Enlai had announced:

“ Beginning from 21 November 1962, the Chinese frontier guards will cease fire along the entire Sino-Indian border. Beginning from 1 December 1962, the Chinese frontier guards will withdraw to positions 20 kilometres behind the line of actual control which existed between China and India on 7 November 1959.”

This article is a brief review of some aspects of the India-China war 60 years later. It is necessary and useful to go into the war that began on October 20 and ended on November 21, 1962, involving the 3225-km long border. Indian people need at this juncture:

“Fully open out all archival records about our border dispute with China and through them convince the Indian public that the position taken by India in the past was not a rational one and that China was not altogether perfidious as it was made out to be, ” Avtar Singh Bhasin wrote.

“The India-China war in 1962 happened more than half a century ago. However, people are largely still ignorant of what brought us so much of ignominy… To untangle the Gordian knot that India-China relations have become, the people of India need to know what actually went wrong in that short span of a decade and a half of India, post-independence…”

“The position taken by India in the past was not a rational one and China was not altogether perfidious as it was made out to be.”

The above lines are by Avtar Singh Bhasin in the Preface to his book, Nehru, Tibet and China (Penguin Random House India, 2021, 403 pages).

bhasin

Bhasin (photo above) is a most authentic and competent scholar: he retired from the India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in 1993 as Director Historical Division after three decades of service. He is the Author -Editor of  India-China Relations 1947-2000 A Documentary Study (Vol  I-V); Geetika Publishers; Pages: 5,636. This voluminous collection includes 2523 documents, compiled over a 5-year span by AS Bhasin. He published an annual series ‘India’s Foreign Relations’ for the Ministry of External Affairs from 2002 t0 2013. His area of research has been India’s relations with neighbouring countries.  Among other sources, he relied  on the documents available at the Nehru Memorial Library, i.e. material in the personal collections of Jawaharlal Nehru and many other Indian foreign policy actors, now open for access by scholars.

The 1962 war was an old type one wherein around 1400 Indian soldiers were killed and 4000 captured as per Indian sources, which claimed 1300 Chinese soldiers were killed. No civilian deaths, insignificant if any, were officially recorded. It is unlike modern wars waged in recent decades by USA; ironically the so-called ‘hitech wars, with high precision’ weapons, led to millions of deaths of civilians, passed off as collateral damage.

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Unilateral Ceasefire by China

Zhou Enlai had declared a unilateral ceasefire to start on midnight, 21 November; the ceasefire declaration stated:

“Beginning from 21 November 1962, the Chinese frontier guards will cease fire along the entire Sino-Indian border. Beginning from 1 December 1962, the Chinese frontier guards will withdraw to positions 20 kilometres behind the line of actual control which existed between China and India on 7 November 1959.  In the eastern sector, although the Chinese frontier guards have so far been fighting on Chinese territory north of the traditional customary line, they are prepared to withdraw from their present positions to the north of the illegal McMahon Line, and to withdraw twenty kilometres back from that line. In the middle and western sectors, the Chinese frontier guards will withdraw twenty kilometres from the line of actual control…”

Thus China decided that it would not retain any gains of the war it had in its hands. In fact, it was a political decision, not a military contingency, taken by the CPC led by Mao, even before the war had commenced, as shown by authentic reviews. (China’s Decision for War with India in 1962; A detailed analysis  by John W. Garver, cited by Wikipedia. He is a renowned author and Professor Emeritus of International Affairs, a specialist on China.)

Zhou had first given the ceasefire announcement to Indian chargé d’affaires on 19 November (before India’s request for United States air support), but New Delhi did not receive it until 24 hours later… but for the most part, the ceasefire signaled an end to the fighting. The United States Air Force flew in supplies to India in November 1962, but neither side wished to continue hostilities.

Nehru  ‘practically outsourced the defence of India to the US’ : Bhasin

Toward the end of the war India increased its support for Tibetan refugees and revolutionaries, some of them having settled in India, as they were fighting the same common enemy in the region. The Nehru administration ordered the raising of an elite Indian-trained “Tibetan Armed Force” composed of Tibetan refugees. The CIA had already begun operations in bringing about change in Tibet.

Later in 1962, Bhasin asserts, Nehru’s letter ‘practically outsourced the defence of India to the US’ (p. 304). He said:

The Tibetans were not entirely guileless. A delegation under trade cover led by senior noble Shakabpa Richardson hobnobbed more with US embassy officials to prepare landing fields in Tibet for a revolt. Then there was Kalimpong, where it was widely believed that the CIA was helping Tibetans to funnel arms supplies.

As Bhasin provocatively points out, PLA’s armed foray into Tibet closely resembled the Indian Army’s takeover of Hyderabad state.

To the Chinese, these platitudes may have seemed hypocritical when juxtaposed against the continuous gun running to Tibet, the pro-western outlook of its diplomats and the hobnobbing of the Tibetans with the Americans — at one point, accepting their advice not to go to Beijing to negotiate despite Nehru’s express orders.

(Review by CSEP, Center for Social and Economic Progress, an overseas centre of the Brookings Institution)

https://csep.org/blog/indias-china-conundrum-learning-from-the-past/

We shall return to the Tibet factor later in this article.

 

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Nehru sought to protect “inherited facilities and privileges even if these were gains of the imperialist policies of the British”

Nehru

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with his Chinese counterpart Zhou Enlai in New Delhi in June 1954.

Bhasin observes, had the border in the Western sector been “discussed with China in 1954, before declaring demarcated,” as Nehru did, “perhaps all the trouble could have been avoided. By unilaterally doing so, India opened itself out to the avoidable charge of unilateralism and therefore created a dispute.”..“India remained anxious to protect its inherited facilities and privilegesthere,even if these were gains of the imperialist policies of the British, but was shy of any action which could be a challenge to China.”

Despite such an attitude on the part of Delhi, contrary to popular belief, Bhasin reveals how much the Chinese tried to resolve their border issue with India, and it was Nehru who resisted…From unilaterally altering boundaries on extant maps and withdrawing inconvenient ones to humiliating Zhou EnLai, Nehru seems to have done them all. 

Wikipdia records:

“Toward the end of the war India increased its support for Tibetan refugees and revolutionaries, some of them having settled in India, as they were fighting the same common enemy in the region. The Nehru administration ordered the raising of an elite Indian-trained “Tibetan Armed Force” composed of Tibetan refugees. The CIA had already begun operations in bringing about change in Tibet.

India led by Modi is once again at a crucial juncture of a contemporary world, undergoing what is being called ‘ once in a century  transformation’. Whither India?

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 “ Today’s era must not be of war” :  PM Modi

Prime Minister Modi recently, often and rightly, said, “ today’s era must not be of war.” Though it was initially made in the context of Ukraine war, it was later generalized, and made its way into the G-20 Declaration, released in mid-November, 2022. That must be a formulation applicable also to India’s relations, particularly in relation to China and Pakistan.

Renowned diplomat and observer MK Bhadra Kumar  wrote, September 10, 2022,  in the context of that agreement:

“ The agreement ensures that the LAC in this area will be strictly observed and respected by both sides, and that there will be no unilateral change in status quo.” Going forward, the sides will “take the talks forward and resolve the remaining issues along LAC and restore peace and tranquility in India-China border areas.”

Then he commented:

“ As for India, a crucial period of adjustment to new geopolitical conditions lies ahead which presents daunting challenges to its strategic autonomy and independent foreign policies, stemming from the West’s attempts to polarise the world community against Russia and China…Both governments have high stakes in maintaining peace and tranquility along the LAC in the present hugely transformative period in the world order.

“China’s expectation is only that India should not align with the US to pursue  hostile policies. That is perfectly understandable, too. ”

But the West is worried what if India and China agree on a peaceful resolution?

Former Prime Minister of Australia (a member of QUAD)  and an acclaimed hawk on China, Kevin Rudd repeated, “what would India then do in terms of China’s rise if the border was resolved, and India and China and Russia folded into one enormous market of mutual opportunity?” In such a scenario, Rudd could see only a binary choice for India: it should either “bandwagon” with China or “balance” China.

Rudd must be a terribly disappointed man to see that there could be a Third Way. China is not really expecting anyone to “bandwagon” with it. But the fact is:

“There is continuing Western interference in India-China relations and the fact that the government has sequestered the bilateral track with China is not going to be to the liking of the West.”

Why the worry in the Western camp?

“ Fundamentally, the contradiction is that without India, there is no “Indo-Pacific Strategy” against China. ”

Will India stand up to the precept, “ Today’s era must not be of war”?

If so it must quit QUAD,  and dump the American “Indo-Pacific Strategy.”

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“Modi, a carbon copy of Jawaharlal Nehru of 1960s?” 

But there is a yawning gap between Modi’s precept and practice. BJP berates Nehru day in and day out, but what’s the practice?

Senior political analyst  Prem Shankar Jha, wrote an article,  (thewire.in, 13/Sep/2020) , post-Galwan, with the apt title  “The Key Issue Dividing India and China Today is Not the Border” .

“ The two leaders (MOdi and Xi)  had agreed , at Astana in 2017 ,  to meet frequently to discuss strategies and resolve issues,  and had done so  twice already at Wuhan in 2018, and Mahabalipuram in 2019. We can only speculate on the reasons why Modi chose not to do so. But his silence has turned  the gamble he is taking now into a carbon copy of the one Jawaharlal Nehru took when he ordered the  army  to push the Chinese off the Thagla ridge in 1962. This is that if India stands firm and continues to match Chinese troop build-ups in the area with its own, China will withdraw rather than fight India and incur the opprobrium of the world. This is not a gamble that any leader of a country should take.”

Jha continued:

New Cold War in Asia

“ Here is a brief account of how thoroughly he has done so: Exactly a week after  Xi Jinping’s  state Visit to India in September 2014, Modi went to the US to attend the UN General Assembly, but also visited the White House and, apparently without any prior  discussion with the foreign office, completely and unconditionally aligned India with the US in the Asia-Pacific region.  Less than four months later, on January 25, 2015, he and Obama, who had hastened to Delhi to be the chief guest at the Republic day parade, announced a Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean, whose immediate purpose, minus the fluff, was to assert freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

In February 2016, India sent four warships to join a US-Japan task force for three months to assert freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. In the same period,  the US consul general in Calcutta visited Itanagar and declared that, as far as the US was concerned,  Arunachal Pradesh was ‘indisputably’ a part of India. Weeks later, Modi gave permission to not only the  Dalai Lama but also to Richard Verma, the US ambassador to India, to visit Tawang  for the annual Tawang festival. This was a deliberate waving of a red rag before a bull, for China had originally claimed all of Arunachal Pradesh including Tawang, and had only stopped openly doing so after Wen Jiabao’s meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Hua Hin, Thailand, in 2009.

China was, at first, reluctant to let its relationship with India worsen. It, therefore,  reacted with  notable restraint. When the US Consul General made his statement Beijing contented itself with saying : “China and India are wise, and capable, enough to deal with their own issues and safeguard the fundamental and long-term interests of the two peoples. The intervention of any third party will only complicate the issue and is highly irresponsible.”

When Indian ships joined the US-Japanese task force in May, it again refrained from criticising India directly and accused the US, instead, of following a ‘divide and rule’ colonial policy towards the two Asian giants…

It was only after Richard Verma’s visit to Tawang for the monastery’s annual festival that Lu Kang, a foreign office spokesperson, said in Beijing on October 24, 2016 China is “firmly opposed” to the U.S. diplomat’s actions, “which will damage the hard-earned peace and tranquillity of the China-India border region Any responsible third party should respect efforts by China and India to seek peaceful and stable reconciliation, and not the opposite”.

The statement was mild, and carefully avoided using language that could be construed as a warning to India. But Beijing’s use of the phrase “peace and tranquillity” should have rung warning bells in South Block because language is of paramount importance in diplomacy. The use of that precise phrase, the heading of the 1993 agreement, was China’s first reminder that India was flouting solemnly entered agreements with it. If Delhi went any further down that road, the implication was, China would consider the agreement to have been abrogated.

South Block would doubtless have heard them, but Modi either did not listen, or did not care. For between 2016 and 2018, India signed two defence- related agreements with the US – the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) and the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), whose goal is to enable the two countries’ navies to coordinate all their actions whether in disaster relief or in defence. Only one more agreement, the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), remains to be signed to make inter-operability of the two defence forces complete . Had COVID-19 not struck the world, that too would have been done earlier this year.

The above description shows how far Modi has taken India from the solemn commitments it made to China in 1993 and elaborated in 2005. It therefore gives us little reason to expect a lasting peace in the future.

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“ Map or no map, that is our boundary” : Bhasin on Nehru’s attittude

Renowned scholar Noorani extensively wrote on the subject, and a map (See above) is provided. His observations are basically the same as of Bhasin:  “ It is 50 years since the border conflict with China, and the nation must be told the truth in its own interests so that it is prepared for a settlement. The truth about how a boundary problem was, in the first place, allowed to assume the proportions of a dispute and, in the next, how an unnecessary dispute was allowed to trigger an unnecessary war.” (https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2923/stories/20121130292300400.htm)

Did  Modi emulate Nehru indeed? We shall now revert to Bhasin, who in a recent interview to Karan Thapar,  explaining his findings, said :

“The prime minister had taken a simplistic view of the frontiers… Nehru’s insistence that India’s borders were what they were, maps or no maps, was unsustainable and proved disastrous for him and the nation which felt humiliated and demoralised”.

Bhasin said if we are ever going to solve the border dispute with China, the Indian people need to be educated and informed that the stand taken under Nehru, and maintained by successive governments thereafter, was wrong – it was not based on facts and it was unilaterally asserted in defiance of the known historical position. At the same time, people will also have to be educated and told that China was not wrong but, in fact, often in the right.

According to Bhasin, what destroyed India’s position on the western border is that China built a 120-km-long road in Aksai Chin which India did not detect for seven years while it was being built. Zhou Enlai, in fact, taunted the Indian ambassador about this. Worse, in 1957, when India found out and protested, it was only an informal protest…the same note requested Chinese help locating Indian persons who had gone missing on patrol duty.

McMahon Line, “drawn on a map without surveys, was neither delineated nor demarcated”

Bhasin’s readings are as follows:

The erstwhile NEFA (presently Arunachal Pradesh), until 1951 was known by the Tibetan name Tawang, and despite the McMahon Line, it remained under Tibetan occupation since 1914 and they collected the civil revenue as well.

After Independence, the government of India too assured Tibet that it would adjust the border in Tawang in favour of Tibet. Despite this assurance in April 1951 as the negotiations for 17-Point Agreement between China and Tibet started in Beijing, India occupied Tawang ignoring Tibetan protests.

The northern part of India’s bequeathed border with Tibet was haphazardly fixed by Henry McMahon on a map without surveys. Not only was such a border neither delineated nor demarcated, the utterances of its very architect that the same was to be surveyed, delineated and demarcated fell on deaf ears…

The border in the western part of India, between Sinkiang and Ladakh, remained undefined at the time of India’s Independence in 1947. “The need for scientific delineation and demarcation of the borders both in the eastern and western sectors had become necessary, particularly when the prime minister himself had doubts about the McMahon Line in the eastern sector.”

Prime Minister Nehru on 20 November 1951 had declared in Parliament that our maps show that “the McMahon Line is our boundary and that is our boundary, map or no map.” Later Girija Shankar Bajpai, earlier Secretary General in the Ministry of External Affairs had said “since China had never accepted the McMahon Line, the frontier question could be hardly regarded as settled”

 Western sector:  “undefined” borders turned into “defined,” with a new line drawn unilaterally, and made non-negotiable : Bhasin

In the western sector, where the Ladakh border adjoins Aksai Chin, in the Survey of India maps, it was shown as “undefined”. Nehru had said it was “defined chiefly by long usage and custom.” Later, he ordered replacement of old maps with new maps showing this part of the international border as “defined” with a new line drawn unilaterally and made it non-negotiable. The unilateral alteration of the international border and insistence that even if it was not demarcated, it was understood by usage and custom and hence there was no need for any fresh demarcation, has since remained the bane of the India-China territorial problem…

The narrative in the sixties that led to the conflict in 1962 and which the successive governments have followed meticulously was that China had stabbed India in the back. It has, since then, got firmly implanted in the minds of the people of India. Resolution of any dispute requires give and take. Unfortunately, any compromise with the held position now would create a hue and cry in the country, that peace is being bought at the cost of national honour.

Media debates by ill-informed experts on the basis of half backed facts”

“ Open the archives…Truth must prevail”  

The first and foremost requirement is to correct the skewed understanding of our own people and convince them about their flawed understanding of those events, by opening the archives.

The debate that is unleashed today in the media by ill-informed experts on the basis of half backed facts, leaves the TV-driven public more confused than any wiser.

Access to archives would lead to well-informed debate in the country and the public would be ready to accept any solution by give and take. Once this process has been successfully completed, the ground would be prepared for discussions with China to arrive at settlement, by give and take…

Nehru Zhou contrasted :

South Asia Journal, May 23, 2022 reviewed:

In contrast to Bhasin’s dismal portrait of Nehru is his positive image of China’s premier, Zhou Enlai, repeatedly offering to concede the British-drawn McMahon line along the eastern stretch of the border although he regarded it as illegal. Zhou traveled to New Delhi in April 1960 for six days of fruitless border talks with Nehru. Right up to the outbreak of war Zhou was seen in Bhasin’s account as moderate, almost pleading. However, the author hints that the real power behind Zhou’s stance was China’s paramount leader, Mao..

Bhasin writes of Nehru, despite his diplomatic posture of non-alignment and reduced to humiliation, pleading with U.S. President John F. Kennedy to send India fighter planes and bombers crewed by Americans to join the war with China. That never happened, of course, although the United States and United Kingdon sent huge amounts of military supplies to bolster Indian forces.

“China was willing to settle its border with India” but…

“ According to Bhasin, China was willing to settle its border with India by agreeing to recognize the MacMahon Line that the British drew as a border with Tibet. In return, Zhou wanted India to negotiate the border with a desolate, resource-less but disputed 16,000-foot high, 15,000 square-mile region known as Aksai Chin northeast of Kashmir. Nehru several times noted that not a blade of grass grew there and that, in fact, India had no access to the mountainous region. But Aksai Chin had strategic value for China because it connected western Tibet and Xinjing province.

In the 1950s, the Chinese build a 750-mile connector road that the Indians, for all their claim to rule the area, didn’t notice while under construction for seven years until it was completed in 1957, a circumstance Bhasin labels “a mystery”.

“To untangle the Gordian knot that India-China relations have become the people of India need to know what actually went wrong,” he writes, adding in his final sentence:

     “Nothing would be lost that already has been lost by the opening of the archives. Truth must prevail. Can the government accept the challenge and bite the bullet?”

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“China has not captured any Indian territory or crossed the borders” : PM Modi

June 15 Galwan clash in which 20 Indian soldiers died, the first fatalities along China border in 45 years, was made into a turning point, in drumming up jingoism. Any objective analysis is made difficult, but is essential for restoring status quo ante, as insisted by India.  PM Modi said in the All Party Meet (APM) on June 19,2020, focused mainly on June 15 clash:

Neither is anyone sitting inside our borders nor is any post been captured. The entire country is hurt and angered by what China did at the LAC (Line of Actual Control),” PM Modi said, categorically rejecting suggestions that the Chinese had intruded and were sitting on Indian territory.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/our-posts-have-not-been-occupied-pm-modi-at-all-party-meet-on-ladakh-clash-2249159

Jingoists including Rahul Gandhi blamed Modi the politician, like Nehru was blamed by the then opposition including Jan Sangh, alleging he was hiding reality. What was the view held by militry leaders?

General VK Singh, former Chief of Army Staff (COAS -in office until May 2012), during UPA-2, from March 2010-May2012, later became a Minister in NDA, categorically said: “There are no intrusions. They are not on our territory. There are transgressions, not intrusions. The LAC is not marked on the ground, there is no agreement on it” . He is a competent and authentic voice of the Indian State. He was connected with both UPA and now NDA, has continuity, is well-informed, with first hand info, handling Border Roads etc.

He said:

“In the dark of the (June 15) night… you are among 600 people carrying weapons, you don’t know where your people are. What happens if somebody fires breaking the agreement? These agreements have been there and both sides are adhering to it, if one side breaks it then the other side will also break it.

So far, we haven’t had any problems. That is why this pushing and jostling took place, otherwise firing would’ve taken place… As a military man, I can say, I don’t think the military wanted it and I don’t think the military was even consulted on it.

(Interview to Hindustan Times, Jun 21, 2020, i.e., after the deadly clash and after the All Party Meet.)

From Nehru To Modi, thus all the PMs had faced the same situation: “It is an LAC…an un-demarcated and undefined border.”

It has been a  BJP Vs Congress war of words on China that tops headlines, reflecting the hypocritical, mutual blame game to deceive people and incite jingoism, targeting China. There is persistent jingoistic propaganda in Indian media, painting as if China is a notorious aggressor. The reality

“ China has borders with 14 nations, and except for India, it has resolved its disputes with all, including Russia. India has borders with six countries, and excluding Bhutan, it has disputes with all five.”

– Subramanian Swamy, Sinologist, Ex-Union Minister, and  BJP MP (Frontline 2000 Sep 2: Sino-Indian Relations Through the Tibet Prism). That was more than 20 years ago.

What was the situation vis-a-vis India in the last 20 years?

“As someone who has seen this situation developing over the past 50-60 years,” former national security advisor (NSA) of India, M.K. Narayanan, who had held discussions with his Chinese counterparts, said at an online seminar May 29,2020, on COVID-19 & India-China Global Dynamics: the key problem with the India-China border is that it is un-demarcated and undefined….It happens that we have our perception and China has their own… he said.

“I was there in 1959, 60, 61, 62 — the two sides try to play chess at the border …As someone who has seen this situation developing over the past 50-60 years, we should see issue firmly and coolly,” said Narayanan, who had also served as the chief of the Intelligence Bureau and Joint Intelligence Committee.

The former Northern Army Commander, Lt. Gen. (retd) D.S. Hooda, said reports suggesting China had over the recent years “nibbled away” at parts of Indian territory were incorrect“In the past 15-20 years, there has been no real change in what we felt was the alignment of the LAC. ”

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, as if corroborating the above, said on June 02, 2020:there were differing perceptions on the alignment of the LAC due to which both sides patrolled across the LAC till their lines of perception. (The Hindu, June 03, 2020)

China has not CAPTURED any Indian territory!

That is the assertive title of an unambiguous article by Retd. Col S. Dinny, who took voluntary retirement from Indian Army recently in October 2019, and who had worked for long along LAC including as a Commanding Officer in the present hot-spot area of Pangong Tso, apart from JK and North-east. He wrote on June 15, 2020, RediffNews:

“ There has been an attempt by some to project a narrative that China has captured Indian territory…both sides have locked horns along LAC…both have taken close positions opposite each other, but within their own area of LAC …Satellites don’t lie…Indian Army has a time-tested reporting system…There has not been a single image showing any ingress or capture of Indian territory in these areas…Reports that China captured the heights along LAC…this is also far from reality…

US pokes its nose.

Even after PM Modi and Military Chief clarified that “There are no intrusions. They (Chinese) are not on our territory…,” American official Pompeo drags the June 15 incidents (that were localized, exceptional that occurred after almost 50 years) into the Indo-Pacific Strategy, and seeks to add a ideological dimension of democracy Vs Communism (CCP). See his remarks:

Speaking in virtual conference of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit earlier on June 19 Friday, he made loaded statements referring to the CCP and its military(PLA) :

“But the CCP isn’t just a rogue actor in its own neighborhood…The PLA has escalated border tensions – we see it today in India, the world’s most popular – populous democracy.,. And we watch as it militarizes the South China Sea and illegally claims more territory there, threatening vital sea lanes, a promise they broke again”

It is “ no longer enough to listen to what the CCP is saying. We can see their actions. I ticked through a few of them: Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, what they’re doing in India, what they’ve done in the economic zones along the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia and Vietnam, the coercion on Australia…”  (hindustantimes.com, June 20, 2020)

It is worse than the devil quoting the scriptures for a US that bombed countries, Presidential Palaces, murdered Presidents, that killed millions of civilians, including lakhs of children and women, across the world in recent past, to advise China to honor the rule of law and honor freedom and respect for sovereignty.

In such a context, some forces in India, more so an opportunist Congress, make jingoist statements, call it PM’s surrender to China; much of the Big Media, known to be manufacturing news and Consent for imperialism, keeps harping on it, with double-tongued ruling classes, including BJP and Delhi, prodding it all.

Is Congress serving India, or serving US imperialism as a junior partner, like they were doing it for decades? Knowingly or unknowingly, some others also, are doing the same; and the same applies to them.

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Tibet card and Taiwan gamble

dalai lama

Photo: Dalai Lama’s links with USA. When the Dalai Lama left the White House,after meeting Obama, Feb 19, 2010, he was ushered out of the back door, “ where a mound of trash awaited him”, reported Christian Science Monior. That sums up how, despite his announcements of retirement from politics, he was always used by hegemonists, through back-door methods.

There are Establishment ‘experts’ and ‘advisors,’ like Brahma Chellany  and Sheshadri Chari (former editor of ORGANIZER, RSS mouth-piece, who advocate to play what they call Tibet card. They blame Nehru for his allegedly stupid and misplaced trust in China. They however conceal the fact that Tibet itself did not accept independent India’s claims:

Bhasin says: The simple answer is, Tibet has no role to play in Sino-Indian relations generally or in the settlement of the boundary question. Tibet today has ceased to be a factor in India-China relations and India can no longer leverage its past relationship with Tibet for resolution of the present problem with China.

“ One of the book’s most interesting revelations is Mr Bhasin’s account of the Tibetan government’s backtracking on the frontier agreed to in the Simla Convention.  Far from accepting the McMahon Line as the India-Tibet border, Lhasa wrote to New Delhi on October 16, 1947, asking for the return of extensive tracts of territory that “had been gradually included in India in the past.” Lhasa wanted the return of “Sikkim, Bhutan, Darjeeling, Ladakh and others ‘on this side of the River Ganges… up to the boundary of Yarkhim’.” Nehru told Zhou Enlai in 1959 that if India were to concede to Tibet’s demands (by now, Tibet had become a part of China) the India-Tibet border would literally be on the River Ganga. In March 1948, Tibet repeated its demand for the return of territories by India.”

 (Communists were yet to capture power, it should be noted.) 

That is how it was put by Colonel Ajai Shukla (Retired), an expert  who covers regional security issues in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific, military technology,  and India’s defence economy. He writes  also for The New York Times, Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera and South China Morning Post.

Despite proclamations by the PM and various authentic voices, jingoism did not abate. There were some shifts. Tibet and Taiwan have been dragged in.

The reason is pressures from USA and its lobbies in India.

Indian Hawks Join Hands With US Vultures Against China, was an article written just before June 15 night Galwan clash, and published  June 16, 2020. It was a marker of the shifts. In fact it was a part of a series on the subject by this writer.

The following, all within a short period,  were pointed out in that article :

–Bill to recognize TAR (Tibet) as an ‘independent country’ introduced in US House of Representatives on May 19, 2020.

–“There has been pressure on India by USA …to come down heavily on China… US pressure regarding Taiwan, Tibet…ThePrint, 13 May, 2020.

–World should give recognition to Taiwan and Tibet – Comment in wionews.com, May 20, 2020.

— “Join anti-China global platform… Revise ‘One China’ policy” –Seshadri Chari, former editor, Organizer, RSS voice, June 12.

— PM Modi “maintained India’s appeasement policy towards China,” alleged Brahma Chellany in an article June 10, 2020.

The above are some of the headlines in recent weeks, which are a pointer to what is working in the hawkish minds of Indian Establishment, as part of a campaign against China by US vultures. This alliance would only benefit merchants of death, the war industry.The above views were consolidated in a webinar on June 12, as reported briefly…

https://countercurrents.org/2020/06/indian-hawks-join-hands-with-us-vultures-against-china/

Tibet, Dalai Lama, Arunachal and Taiwan : Anti-china games at US behests

Arunachal Pradesh, a Union Territory given the status of an Indian State as late as 20 February 1987 is one of the areas disputed by China, and Indians complain about it.

Dalai Lama did not recognize India’s sovereignty there for 50 years after he was given asylum and sheltered by India. As late as 2003, Dalai Lama was telling it is “ actually part of Tibet”. Only on 2008 June 4, reported Times of India, he “for the first time” said that Tawang, claimed by China, is part of India, and that by saying McMahon Line was recognized by Tibet and Britain in 1914.

Taiwan also does not recognize McMahon Line and thus Arunachal as part of India, even today. Notable is the fact that Taiwan – very much in the news nowadays – itself is not recognized by almost any UN member country, even by the USA and Europe. After LAC clashes, two BJP MPs were specially assigned to greet new President of Taiwan,which India does not recognize officially, the first time ever.

India, at behests of US, has been playing the ‘Tibet and the Dalai Lama card’to create hatred towards China. Now it is seeking to play Taiwan card also against China. Arunachal Pradesh is often projected for this purpose.

Instead of resolving the dispute with China, India is allowing USA to fish in troubled waters of Arunachal. In many interior parts of Northeast, Indian citizens are required to carry a permit card for a visit there. But USA in the name of NGOs is allowed to carry on activities in scores of villages there. Now US envoy said his visit to Arunachal marks US backing for India’s sovereignty claims there, and provoked China. Thus India is faculitating American interference in the dispute.

Congress vies with BJP to please US bosses in this regard. It is more to impress US bosses about their greater commitment to them, as displayed by UPA-1 and 2. Congress has been playing a more rabid hawk currently. Even while Galwan became a hotspot, Congress party in July 2020, raked up the Dalai Lama issue: “We waited for Hon’ble @PMOIndia to lead the nation in wishing HE the Dalai Lama a very Happy Birthday. Modi ji may have had his compulsions for not doing so. On behalf of the entire Nation, we wish HE @DalaiLama a long/ and healthy life. We are privileged for your blessings,” Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala had tweeted.

It is not that official greetings at the level of PM etc are not conveyed. It is said they are being concealed. Instead Union Minister Kiren Rijiju, hailing from Arunachal, disputed by China, conveyed the greetings, thus rubbing the point.

US may greet or thank Dalai Lama for its own hegemonic politics. Dalai Lama may thank India for the asylum it provided. But curiously it is US that thanks India!  US Ambassador Kenneth I. Juster greeted Dalai Lama 85 formally on behalf of his Government. “We thank India for hosting His Holiness and Tibetans in freedom since 1959”  the US State Department’s South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA) bureau tweeted on July 6.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi also conveyed her greetings…She noted that the US Congress on a bipartisan basis has long spoken with one voice. She mentioned America’s Tibet Policy and Support Act, then in the making. The Senate must pass this bipartisan legislation and support the bond of friendship that has existed between the US States, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people for decades,” Ms Pelosi said. She also mentioned Hong Kong, Uyghurs etc …( Washington PTI, ndtv.com, July 07, 2020).

Instead of  resolving bilaterally, India is allowing USA to fish in troubled waters of  its border and other disputes with China even while it says it does not seek or allow third party interference.

This was how Tibet and Dalai lama were allowed to vitiate India China ties eversince later 1950s. The same continues till date as seen above.

***                       ***

 Bilateral trade peaks : Jingoism may get some votes but wont fetch dollars

India China trade surged despite Galwan and despite calls by Delhi to Boycott China goods. Last one year marked a peak in bilateral trade of 125 billion dollars, reported PTI. India’s imports, ie.,  China’s exports, grew by 46.2 % and India’s exports grew by 34.2%. It was $ 31 billion in Q1 of 2022. Jingoism may get some votes but wont fetch dollars, except to merchants of death. This surge was not accidental: It was a result of  efforts and agreements made earlier.  

Till three days before the Modi-Xi summit in October 2019, the shrill anti-China campaign, linked with its stance on Kashmir and Pakistan, was going on in the media. The results of the Summit were not anticipated: No statements would be released, claimed the media. It was however, a Summit that was under-pinned by economics, not much highlighted except in a section of the media.

www.indiatoday.in reported October 11, 2019 :

Ahead of the summit,  129 Memorandum of understanding (MoUs) were signed between the Indian and Chinese companies for sectors like – agri-related products, minerals, textiles, food-processing, yarns, minerals etc.

Chinese and Indian investments in each other’s countries have grown many folds in the past few decades with the Chinese players like Xiaomi, Oppo becoming household names in India.

Speaking at the India-China Business Meeting and Signing Ceremony, organised by the FICCI, China’s envoy ZHU Xiaohong said, “With a combined market of over 2.7 billion people and GDP of 20 per cent of the world’s total, China and India enjoy huge potential and broad prospects for economic and trade cooperation.”

ZHU Xiaohong added that from the current $75 billion trade, both the countries are looking at moving towards trade worth $100 billion.

Chinese enterprises have responded positively to the strategy of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ and their investment in India has exceeded $8 billion.

“In the next 15 years, China will import $30 trillion of goods and $100 billion of services from the world. As the only two major developing countries with a population of more than 1 billion in the world, China and India are focusing on development,” LIU Changyu said.

What more can be good news for the Indian Big Business in crisis, and for a regime down with falling growth rates? Jingoism after all does not bring in dollars, except to merchants of death, but not  for India.

Chinese and Indian investments in each other’s countries have grown many folds in the past few decades with the Chinese players like Xiaomi, Oppo becoming household names in India.

Speaking at the India-China Business Meeting and Signing Ceremony, organised by the FICCI, China’s envoy ZHU Xiaohong said, “With a combined market of over 2.7 billion people and GDP of 20 per cent of the world’s total, China and India enjoy huge potential and broad prospects for economic and trade cooperation.”

ZHU Xiaohong added that from the current $75 billion trade, both the countries are looking at moving towards trade worth $100 billion.

Chinese enterprises have responded positively to the strategy of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ and their investment in India has exceeded $8 billion.

“In the next 15 years, China will import $30 trillion of goods and $100 billion of services from the world. As the only two major developing countries with a population of more than 1 billion in the world, China and India are focusing on development,” LIU Changyu said.

What more can be good news for the Indian Big Business in crisis, and for a regime down with falling growth rates? Jingoism after all does not bring in dollars.

     “Nothing would be lost that already has been lost by the opening of the archives. Truth must prevail. Can the government accept the challenge and bite the bullet?”

***                     ***

POST SCRIPT

This is the latest report by timesofindia.indiatimes.com, Dec 1, 2022:

India-US drill violates spirit of pacts for border peace, says China

China has objected to the India-US military exercise near the LAC in Uttarakhand saying it violates the spirit of bilateral agreements for border peace. The 18th edition of the India-US joint military exercise Yudh Abhyas is currently under way in Uttarakhand, about 100 km from the LAC.

“The joint military exercise held by India and the US near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) violated the spirit of relevant agreements signed by China and India in 1993 and 1996, and does not help build bilateral trust. China has expressed concerns to the Indian side over the military exercise,” said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing.

The MEA, however, had responded by saying that it did not understand the reference to “third party” and it’s China that needed to stick to bilateral agreements in the context of the standoff in eastern Ladakh.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-us-drill-violates-spirit-of-pacts-for-border-peace-says-china/articleshow/95894870.cms

No third party interference? See this:

Divergence between CDS and MEA on ‘Chinese village in Arunachal’

India never accepted China’s “illegal occupation” of its territories: ME

thehindu.com reported recently, November 11, 2021, with the above title: A

Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat on Nov 10 Thursday contradicted the official position of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding Chinese construction activities in the eastern sector in Arunachal Pradesh.

India never accepted China’s “illegal occupation” of its territories, MEA’s official spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said at a weekly press briefing

But, soon after this, speaking at a TV channel event, Gen. Rawat stated that the Chinese constructions were “well within their side of the LAC [Line of Actual Control] ”.

“They are building this infrastructure and these so-called villages are well within their side of the LAC. They have not transgressed anywhere on our perception of the LAC. There are different perceptions…

“As far as we are concerned, there is no such village development that has taken place on our side of the LAC.”

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/neither-accepted-chinas-illegal-occupation-of-our-territory-nor-any-unjustified-chinese-claims-india/article37441036.ece

At a time when there is so much confusion and trouble along the LAC, why invite or allow USA there ? Is it not a third party meddling there?

US meddling is the same today, allowed by Modi regime, as it was then by Nehru.

MEA in a statement of Sep 9 said: “..both sides mutually agreed to take the talks forward and resolve the remaining issues along LAC and restore peace and tranquility in India-China border areas.” There was some progress subsequently also.

Earlier on  August 30, Foreign Minister Jaishankar said much of Asia’s future depends on how the ties between the two countries develop in the foreseeable future, and for the ties to return to a positive trajectory, they must be based on mutual sensitivity, mutual respect and mutual interest.”  

Whither India?

Is this the way Modi begins India’s leadership of G-20?

***                        ***

( The author is a mediaprson and a political observer, who contributed to countercurrents.org.)

There have been series of articles on India-China relations by the author, published in contercurrents.org, particualrly before and after the Galwan clash in mid-2020. They include :

A New World Order can’t be built by serving imperialism, US in particular, and by anti-China, anti-Pak Jingoism, May 16, 2020    

https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/a-new-world-order-cant-be-built-by-serving-imperialism-us-in-particular-and-by-anti-china-anti-pak-jingoism/

India- China Border Tensions: A New Forward Policy?,  June 9, 2020.

https://countercurrents.org/2020/06/india-china-border-tensions-a-new-forward-policy/

Indian Hawks Join Hands With US Vultures Against China,  June 16, 2020

https://countercurrents.org/2020/06/indian-hawks-join-hands-with-us-vultures-against-china/

 

Blaming PM Modi Now for “Surrender to China” is Nothing but Competing in Jingoism,

June 27, 2020

https://countercurrents.org/2020/06/blaming-pm-modi-now-for-surrender-to-china-is-nothing-but-competing-in-jingoism/

Oppose US Moves To Drag India-China Conflict Into Its Indo-Pacific Strategy, July 17, 2020

https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/oppose-us-moves-to-drag-india-china-conflict-into-its-indo-pacific-strategy/

There were a few articles on the Dalai Lama’s role in India China relations, which include:

India, Dalai Lama, US And Their Buddhist Diplomacy As Against China, July 25, 2020

https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/india-dalai-lama-us-and-their-buddhist-diplomacy-as-against-china/

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