Crises of India’s own making

Rajesh Ramachandran

There has been a humiliating rupture in India’s ties with its eastern neighbours, China and Nepal. This would have been just another episode of politico-military bungling, which India is used to, had it not been for the loss of lives of 20 soldiers, including the Commanding Officer of 16 Bihar Regiment, and the capture of four officers and six others on June 15. India has retrieved the captives and the bodies, but not its prestige. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, in his telephone conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, categorically stated that the violence and casualties were the result of a premeditated and planned action by the Chinese troops and that this action proves the neighbour’s intent to alter the status quo.

Why would the Chinese unleash a premeditated attack to capture the heights of the Galwan valley? Well, to answer the question, we need to first accept the fact that India has lost territory to Chinese aggressive designs in the Galwan valley to occupy the vantage point overlooking the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulet Beg Oldie road, much like the Pakistani infiltration in Kargil intended to cut off the Leh-Srinagar road in 1999. Once this planned action and its intent are understood, it is easier to analyse why the Chinese did what they did. Late last summer, on August 6, 2019, while abrogating Article 370 of the Constitution to create the two union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, Home Minister Amit Shah had stated that Pak-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Aksai Chin are integral parts of India and he would give up his life to keep it so.

This was an aggressive and provocative statement about territory held by a nuclear-armed neighbour — something that necessitated an immediate diplomatic intervention. Within a week of Shah’s statement, Jaishankar visited Beijing to calm Chinese nerves. But the deceptively calm Chinese waited for the next summer to respond to the statement. The Chinese seem to have expected India to act according to its stated intent, that too articulated at the highest level, for that is what nations normally do. But unfortunately, Indian politicians have a habit of using extremely volatile foreign policy issues to score domestic brownie points. The ‘chest-thumping government’, as The Economist magazine calls it, did not realise that the inimical neighbour would take the theatrics seriously. So, instead of India crossing the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to put up posts in Aksai Chin, the Chinese made the aggressive move.

A part of the self-delusional bravado of our leadership lies in its belief in the omnipotent ‘Indian market’. Little do they realise that the $56 billion trade surplus China has over India does not make much of a difference to its economy; India is only its 12th largest trading partner. So, what Indians assume to be bountiful munificence is just small change for China; worse, India has become so completely dependent on Chinese imports in almost all spheres of life that it will soon have to reinvent the wheel to show a national spine. And that will not happen in a hurry because even while the tension on the LAC was spiralling out of control, the Union Government and its departments and Public Sector Units were busy awarding contracts to Chinese companies. One of these was offered as late as June 12, to dig a tunnel close to the Hindon Air Force base near Delhi.

The Nepal fiasco is also another instance of domestic electoral politics influencing foreign policy. If the thunderous statements on PoK and Aksai Chin were meant for the domestic audience, the Nepal strategy was shaped by the Hindutva agenda. The demeaning economic blockade of 2015 and the attempt to use Madhesis as a vote bank to manipulate Nepali politics backfired to such an extent that the Indian influence in Nepal diminished drastically. Now, the dormant anti-India sentiment has got institutionalised with a law amending the Constitution, which empowers the government to redraw the country’s map with Indian territories Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipulekh as part of Nepal, violating all previous agreements and international norms.

After the Covid lockdown breaking the back of the economy and reducing poor workers to destitution, the worst that could have happened was a war-like situation. China might have wanted to inflict pain not just for our claims on Aksai Chin, but also for our perceived proximity with the US. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad military alliance with the US, Japan and Australia could have provoked China, yet a planned aggression in Ladakh leading to a large number of fatalities has to be accepted as China’s projection of power. And there are lessons to learn.

Indian leaders should no longer superimpose domestic political sloganeering on to foreign policy objectives. Border disputes cannot be used to score brownie points in Parliament. Indo-Pak wars have been derisively described as ‘communal riots with tanks’; but war is serious business that deserves to be handled by professionals, not pliant military leaders who talk loosely about a two-front war to merely bolster their masters’ identity politics. Hindutva cannot replace diplomacy, either as a manipulating tool in the case of Nepal or as an identity project against Pakistan. If India has to capture PoK, Gilgit-Baltistan and Aksai Chin, India must, but with a clearly laid-down visionary doctrine that understands the gain, pain and cost. But it cannot be used as a slogan to fight the next municipal elections.

It will be tragically counter-productive to use toxic TV anchors as force-multipliers. All that they are capable of is to whip up a national frenzy which can consume common sense, caution and considered responses. India deserves better.

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