Now that it is anything but secret that the destroyer in chief of the old normal sprang from the wet market of Wuhan or from a lab therein, the indignation of the world is all over China. Be that as it may, what do we Indians do? Join the party, spoil the party or for a change use the famed Indian brain?
Even while I write this a bunch of us would have uninstalled Chinese Apps and retweeted “Boycott China”. Believe me that would be water off the ducks back for China. First of all, India has a unique geo-political standing with China as against the world. While a distant country can cancel flights and do eyeball to eyeball confrontation with China and play the waiting game, India hath not an easy option for the maker did not give us a choice of neighborhood.
Let’s wink a while and bend a little to understand a little bit more about this chalk and cheese combination of Asia. To begin with India, China and history are incomplete without one another. We share not only a 1700 km long border with China but also a minimum of 2500 years of history.
Many official communications from China refer to Indian aspects as Yìn dù jiào. It’s no coincidence that the phonetic is loaded with the character of the land and if that hits the raw nerves of communists and secular worrywarts, I would tell them “verily ask thy master, why did you make us sing knowing it was farce”
In all those thousands of years not a sword crossed between the two countries while Europe kept burning year after year, remember Winter War, Ottaman wars, et el.
Indo-Chinese relations on the other hand had become so deific that we had started exchanging Gods and Godmen. Few of my Tamil chums would know that a certain Boyang from China is a household seer held in high esteem. Or was I expecting a little too much from my fellow domiciles?? Anyway, I am not giving away the suspense here. You know where to reach!!
Beginning 1959, tensions between the two countries kept escalating and culminated in the rather gruesome 1962 war over a disputed Himalayan border, inter alia. Shock and Awe? No. Certainly not in the fact that the Chinese are cold blooded, inscrutable and expansionist. The designs were in plain sight. Not for the then PM and Defense Minister, V.K Krishna Menon.
The incredible foreign policy in vogue said peaceful co-existence and non-intervention with affairs of other countries. Trusting that the neighbors would translate this into Urdu, Chinese, Burmese, Russian etc and proclaim the same. Travesty of politics also known as Panchsheel.
The calamity didn’t stop there either. A foreign policy as catastrophic as this led to a defense policy of disarmament and many ordnance factories converting into cottage industries.
The Shanti Parva in Mahabharata has that King Yudhistra proclaimed the same foreign policy but sent the strongest of his brothers Bhima and Arjuna to safeguard the borders as his defense policy after his coronation. Difference between a PM, Indian by birth and foreign by thought vs a king who was Indian in sum and substance
By the time the writing became clear on the wall, the then PM went on AIR bidding goodbye to his brethren in Assam and started writing letters to USA, USSR and “to whomsoever it may concern”
Now these are lessons on how not to deal with China. The Chinese are masters in treachery and our fait accompli next door. Their supremacy in this region is going to stand for time to come, unfettered, unaltered and without a rival.
Anybody with dreams of the USA pulling back from China can go back to sleep. While investing in China, the USA had grand plans of making an ingress into accessing the cheap labor there but did not plan an egress on need and squarely failed in it.
Much of the US economy runs on the semi processed goods that gets further processed and completed in China before being shipped back. If the “much” lacked the punch, here it is, $560 billion worth of goods as of 2018. That’s a whooping 21% of all imports. How on earth is the US going to replace this and with which country?
For all that I wish, the bravado of substituting with India is not realism given the inferior infrastructure and a bureaucracy as unpalatable as it can get.
Howsoever baffling the quagmire might look, it is not without a solution.
To begin with, India must match China missile for missile, arsenal for arsenal and submarine for submarine in her weaponry. National Security can reckon no compromise and only the mighty are called for the negotiation table, others become menu on the same table.
The foreign policy can be turned to assuage China that India would not side with an adversary of China and partake in an attack on her soil unless there arises a need to protect the sovereign interests of India. In other words, we care a damn what you do with Taiwan and you stay off our borders but yes in whereby thereby diplomatic language.
This will more or less keep China away from Pakistan and if required the Vietnam card can always be played against them saying, if you can groom a bunch of hooligans to hurt us imagine what damage can we cause turning the Vietnamese against you. Surreal it may sound, but possible all the same, if we straighten our backbones and get the ilk of Panchsheel out of our minds.
Transparency, firmness and a neutral posture during their adversity will tame this dragon!!
