India has to play along with China

BREAKFAST in Delhi, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul, anyone? Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s much-vaunted slogan about dissolving boundaries between the peoples of South Asia is alive and well — except it is being implemented by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

This is what happened earlier this week. As India grappled with the controversy over the revised voter lists in Bihar as well as the “stolen votes” accusation made by Opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the Chinese leader visited Delhi for another round of boundary talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Wang also invited PM Modi to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, China, later this month — the PM has agreed.

Then Wang Yi flew to Kabul to meet the Taliban and participate in a trilateral with his Pakistani and Afghan counterparts. From there he flew to Pakistan to reiterate China’s strategic partnership with its “time-tested iron brothers” in the Islamic republic. All in a day’s work — a leaf out of Manmohan Singh’s book, so what if some of the itinerary was reversed.

Wang Yi’s visit allowed the Pakistan interior minister to say that his country has video footage of Indian planes being downed by the Pakistani air force during Operation Sindoor.

Is this an outright lie by the Pakistanis? Indians certainly hope so. The Indian Air Force Chief, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, has told us that the IAF downed five Pakistani jets during the operation. Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan had earlier admitted that India had experienced some losses in the air, but didn’t say how many. There is silence on the subject till today, more than three months down the line. It would certainly be nice to know.

But back to Emperor Wang Yi’s South Asian diplomacy. In Kabul, he made it crystal clear to the Taliban that China would not invest if the Afghans did not stop terror raids into Pakistan. In Islamabad, as the red carpet was rolled out, he “commended Pakistan’s tireless efforts in combatting terrorism.”

Earlier in July, the Chinese air chief had praised the Pakistani air force’s action against India as a “textbook example” of modern warfare.

Make no mistake, India is up against a formidable foreign policy challenge — the deepening and intensification of the China-Pakistan relationship — across its northern and western frontiers.

Then there is the growing bonhomie between Pakistan and the US — as India battles serious US tariffs of 50 per cent, Pakistan has been slapped with only 19 per cent tariffs. Trump’s manifest pique at India’s refusal to admit that he — the US — played a role in brokering the India-Pakistan May conflict has sent senior US officials to accuse India, and Indian companies, of “profiteering” from its purchase of Russian oil.

The darkening of the sky has sent External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Russia, and although Russia may have proposed a further cut in the cost of its oil to India, the good news is that a rebalancing is taking place in the heart of New Delhi.

For too long, over the past decade, India’s outreach in favour of the US has been made at the cost of its other, serious relationships. Such an accusation is not new — India’s elite has long wined and dined at the best restaurants in New York and Washington DC and its children studied at its Ivy League universities; the Modi years have hardly been very different.

What has been different is the consequent absence of care and respect, an ignoring of other key powers on the international high table. India’s extraordinary interest in the US had led New Delhi to look at its other relationships via the American prism. In a world that moves at the speed of light, where the warmest ties grow cold by dinner-time, that was becoming counter-productive to the national interest.

Make no mistake, the US remains India’s most important foreign policy relationship. But there are other stars in the sky too — in a sense the long overdue penny has dropped with Trump’s recent bad behaviour.

PM Modi has certainly put a halt to the obsequiousness in the heart of New Delhi by refusing to cater to Trump’s grandiose self-obsession, that he is the arbiter of the world’s several conflicts.

But that is just one part of the shift. Another is that Delhi has to bite its tongue and play the game with its toughest opponents — China. That is why the conversation with the Chinese Foreign Minister earlier this week, and why the PM will go to China later this month. Modi understands that as the weaker nation with fewer cards, he must bide his time — that the wheel will turn again.

A fascinating part of this rejig is that India will continue to reach out to the US. America is far too powerful a nation to deny and a deadly enemy to oppose; you certainly want the Americans on your side, as Field Marshal Asim Munir knows. (The Pakistanis have found a powerful lobbyist in the US, including a former bodyguard for Trump who later served in the White House.) And as the galaxy of European leaders found when they showed up at Trump’s table to shore up the Ukrainian President — flattery for the US President was the order of the morning.

That is why Modi is looking to meet Trump when he goes to New York next month to participate in the UN General Assembly. And why India has suspended an 11 per cent import duty on American cotton — on the eve of his trip, hoping to assuage US anger on its refusal to further open up its agricultural market.