India remains volatile despite the ‘improved’ India-China bilateral, owing to the ‘convergence’ of cash, commerce and communication. Underneath grows the simmering border, a sample of which we see today in Ladakh, the border where India, Xizang (Tibet) and Xinjiang meet.
Abhijit Bhattacharyya
Commentator and Author
A porous border and recurring foreign invasions have always haunted every ruling class of Indian history, barring rare exceptions like that of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1799-1839) during whose life and times, neither the British dared cross the Sutlej from the south, nor Ahmad Shah Abdali’s descendants or the disparate Afghan sirdars tried to go after the capital of the Lion of Lahore and beyond to Ladakh.
Thus, from Alexander in 326 BC to the Chinese Communist Party in 2020 AD, the Indian territory — like Aksai Chin axis of Ladakh— continues to be a foreigner’s target. Let’s, therefore, accept our perennial failure to protect ourselves and try resolve the present Chinese incursion with resolute focus, at a time of health and economic issues confronting the world and India.
It all started in October 1947 in Kashmir. It’s been a recurring trend ever since. Sixty years ago, when the Lutyens’landscape, unlike today, was the relaxed capital of Nehru’s India who had his own unchallenged, inimitable style and indelible stamp on the domestic and diplomatic arenas. The Indian PM’s imprint was in the world arena. The Army and the remnant of British-recruited administrators too felt his magic wand. Nehru ‘couldn’t go wrong’ was the inference, if not the perception.
But, this was too good to last as an unexpected, military disaster caused by Mao-led Chinese invasion of October-November 1962 led to an irreversible fall for the political patriarch, permanently shattering India’s hallucination of the Himalayas. The high northern borders of India-Tibet, overshadowed by the remote Communist Party of China from Beijing, were not the same again.
It’s still not the same again, because the Himalayas are now causing more harm than creating harmony. The hills keep India on the tenterhooks — simmering, boiling, heating — an unpredictable frontier, as the border remains unresolved, and there simply isn’t anything to show that it will ever change any time soon. Today’s India-China border is a General’s nightmare, constituting the reality of Napoleon and Hitler’s war on two fronts. But, it’s also the CPC’s delight, being insoluble, irresolvable, irreversible. It’s an issue — ‘divergence’ extraordinary — which can always be a readymade ‘cause of action’, especially for the Beijing CPC.
In a way, China destroyed in the 1960s, the Indian PM and political stability. Today, China threatens the present dispensation, too, as India has never been the same again. It remains volatile upfront despite the so-called ‘improved’ India-China bilateral, owing to the ‘convergence’ of cash, commerce, communication. Underneath goes and grows the simmering, burning, boiling border, a sample we all are seeing today in Ladakh, the border where India, Xizang (Tibet) and Xinjiang meet and overlap.
It’s the legacy of imperialism, says the Beijing CPC. That’s it. No resolve to settle. Instead, the futile meetings and statements, for public consumption. Underneath, it’s shifting stands, changing dates and fabricated maps, contradictory and confusing communication. An exasperated PM Nehru asked: “How far back are we to go,” for border demarcation? No answer. Instead, a volley of vituperative semantics by the Communist state-controlled print media: “Nehru is the running dog of US imperialism.”
Below the changing posture stood the then as now, stand. “China won’t give up an inch of territory,” thundered the state-controlled print media on June 6, the day a senior three-star Indian and a junior two-star China’s General met, trying to make sense, through dialogue. “Restore April 2020 status along the LAC,” said India, publicly conceding that the border status quo had been violated by a unilateral aggression of the CPC Army. India’s border, even if perceived, has shrunk as China expands with its muscles flexed.
This, despite an avowed understanding and summits between the Indian and Chinese leaders, wherein both claimed that ‘difference’ shouldn’t turn into ‘dispute’, lest China loses its humongous one-way annual cash profit of more than $50 billion bilateral trade.
Surprisingly, a chunk of the Indian traders is ignorant of the loss to the exchequer and the resultant damage being inflicted to industry owing to factory closure and unemployment multiplication. The lure for profit through cheap import and healthy domestic sale through hiked prices is irresistible. Hence, the desperation of the hinterland actors — who have never seen the border — to avoid business loss, even if there’s border loss. This is an irony.
Thus, whereas the Chinese read the Indian psyche well, it isn’t vice versa. China shares a border with 14 countries, India with seven. Strangely, China has major border disputes only in the Himalayas — with India, Nepal, Bhutan — and minor issues with North Korea (Paektu and Jiandao) and Russia. India, on the other hand, has issues with Pakistan and China, and now suddenly with Nepal, notwithstanding that Delhi-Kathmandu is an open border and that more than one crore Nepalis are in India.
Coming back to Ladakh, where does one go now? Is resolution possible? Not in long but short term. Because, the Chinese view reigns supreme. Territory is non-negotiable with Delhi’s democracy. Why give up when ‘we hold the upper hand, through commerce, trade, industry and banking?’ Just look at India’s history of border management. Indians need to recall causes leading to the US-China trade-technology dispute. China doesn’t believe in mutually accepted law. US discovered it rather late.
Recall the 1914 Simla Convention wherein the British, Chinese and the Tibetans signed the McMahon Line. China signed and then repudiated. Thus, the future does look difficult because to the Chinese, frontiers constitute political-cum-ideological, rather than legitimate matter. Frontier is a horizon of influence and cannot be legally stable and permanent. Not with India in the Himalayas, at least!
