It’s India’s land that China occupies

Gilgit-Baltistan is part of Jammu & Kashmir
(The Karakoram Highway linking China and Pakistan)

While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh waxes eloquent on the need to bridge the “trust deficit” in relations between India and Pakistan, infusing fresh enthusiasm among mombattiwallahs on both sides of the border, the Government he heads faces a severe crisis of ‘trust deficit’ of a different kind. The confused response of the Government over the presence of Chinese troops in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir — what Beijing describes as “northern Pakistan” — demonstrates this point. It appears that the Ministry of External Affairs is now virtually out of the loop on crucial matters, starved of vital intelligence input necessary for a coherent response to issues that have a direct bearing on foreign affairs and policy. It is impossible that R&AW, which is well-clued into what’s happening in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir despite depleted ‘assets’, should not have been aware of PLA soldiers being flown into what were earlier known as Northern Areas and since 2009 are referred to by Pakistan as Gilgit-Baltistan after the recent floods caused massive destruction of strategic infrastructure, including the Karakoram Highway.

Yet, the Ministry of External Affairs commented on it only after Selig S Harrison, director of the Asia Programme at the Center for International Policy and a former South Asia bureau chief of The Washington Post, wrote about the “quiet geopolitical crisis ... unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the north-west corner of disputed Kashmir to China” in The New York Times. Even after the article was published, presumably placing in the public domain information that had already been secured and processed by R&AW, all that the Ministry of External Affairs could (or would) say is, “We are seeking an independent verification... If true, it would be a matter of serious concern and we would do all that is necessary to ensure the safety and security of the nation.”

That would have been reassuring had the Ministry, which is part of the national security structure, not been so woefully ill-informed. For, by then there was confirmation of the presence of PLA troops by Pakistani officials who said the Chinese were in Gilgit-Baltistan for “relief work”. Last week, China, while denying the presence of 11,000 of its soldiers in Gilgit-Baltistan, has confirmed that it is ‘helping’ Pakistan with men and material to cope with the disaster. India’s feisty Ambassador to China, Mr S Jaishankar — he should have been sent to Beijing long ago — has subsequently conveyed our ‘concerns’, but whether these have been taken seriously is anybody’s guess.

Two inter-linked facts are now abundantly clear and indisputable. First, China has crafted a Jammu & Kashmir policy that is apparently heavily loaded in favour of its ‘all-weather friend’ Pakistan and is inimical to India’s interests. In reality, it is designed to serve China’s strategic interests more than anything else. The main elements of this policy are: Delegitimise India’s sovereign right over Jammu & Kashmir by treating the State as ‘disputed territory’ (hence the stapled visas for Indians living in that State); legitimise Pakistan’s claim to all of Jammu & Kashmir and thus treat Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (including Gilgit-Baltistan) as Pakistani territory or ‘northern Pakistan’ (visas are stamped on Pakistani passports used by residents of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir); and, thereby seek to convert Pakistan’s patently illegal act of ceding 5,180 sq km of occupied Indian territory, known as ‘Trans-Karakoram Tract’ (virtually all of Gilgit-Baltistan) to China in 1963 into a legal transaction.

A resurgent China, having raced ahead of Japan and secured for itself the status of the world’s second largest economy and tamed the US into playing second fiddle (recall President Barack Hussein Obama paying obeisance in the Chinese court), now feels confident of pushing its strategic frontiers beyond geographical boundaries. This is where the second factor of China’s deftly-crafted Jammu & Kashmir policy comes in: It wants to assert its hold over the Northern Areas and make its presence felt to both Pakistan and India, albeit for different reasons. This precedes the planned expansion of China’s strategic infrastructure through and beyond the ‘Trans-Karakoram Tract’ by building a rail link between Kashgar in Xinjiang province and Havelian near Rawalpindi. With Gwadar Port providing it access to the Persian Gulf and an amplified land route across the Karakoram range in place, China would have vastly secured its strategic interests, trouncing those of India. That’s called pursuing a robust policy of enlightened self-interest which underpins both national security and strategy in the shifting sands of 21st century’s geo-politics.

Of course, duplicity laces this policy which is often articulated with a forked tongue. “As a neighbour and friend of both countries, China believes that the (Kashmir) issue should be left to the two countries so that it could be properly handled through dialogue and consultation,” Ms Jiang Yu, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told mediapersons in Beijing last week, insisting that China “has no intention to interfere in the Kashmir issue” which “we believe is an issue left over from history between India and Pakistan”. Such pious declarations of China’s ‘non-interference’, however, fly in the face of Beijing’s actions. Asked whether China would review the policy of issuing stapled visas to Indian passport holders of Jammu & Kashmir, Ms Jiang Yu said, “Our visa policy towards inhabitants in the Indian-controlled Kashmir region is consistent and stays unchanged”.

It would be easy to attribute such deliberately un-nuanced — some would say belligerent — articulation of how Beijing views New Delhi’s concerns to a rising China’s arrogance. But the belligerence of those with whom India does business, literally and metaphorically, is not entirely divorced from Indian realities. We cannot escape from the twin facts that our own Jammu & Kashmir policy is stuck in a grey zone of self-doubt, self-pity, self-flagellation and self-recrimination, and our political class is deeply divided on how to deal with an ever recalcitrant minority (that’s what the separatists in Kashmir Valley represent) in a State we insist is inseparable from the Union of India. The all-party resolution that was adopted by Parliament to stop then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao from persisting with his “anything short of azadi” approach at the behest of a certain Robin Raphel (who now oversees American aid to Pakistan), restating India’s sovereign right over all of Jammu & Kashmir, including Pakistan-occupied Kashmir of which Gilgit-Baltistan is an integral part, is now a forgotten document. If only successive Governments since then had premised their foreign policy on that resolution and aggressively sought to reclaim India’s territory from Pakistani — and de facto Chinese — occupation, we would have been spared the humiliation that is being heaped on us today.
[This appeared as my column Coffee Break in The Pioneer.]

Whimpering India, assertive China

While New Delhi has floundered for 63 years on Jammu & Kashmir, Beijing has deftly made Tibet an integral part of China

On August 11, His Holiness the Dalai Lama met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ostensibly to thank him for “the good care India has taken of him and his followers living in exile for the past 50 years”. The Dalai Lama’s meeting with Mr Singh followed Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao’s visit to Dharamsala last month where she met the Tibetan spiritual leader and his senior aides. What transpired at that meeting is not known, but we can presume it was a routine discussion between the senior-most official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and India’s guests who would rather describe themselves as members of the ‘Tibetan Government-in-Exile’ which is based in Dharamsala. The Dalai Lama’s representative in New Delhi, Kalon Tempa Tsering, says too much should not be read into who called on whom where and when: “What’s so unusual about the meeting? It is part of the Dalai Lama’s regular interaction with Indian leaders … He keeps meeting Indian leaders… He met Vice-President Hamid Ansari a year ago.”

Mr Ansari no doubt holds an exalted office; if the President’s job were to fall vacant due to unforeseeable circumstances before Ms Pratibha Patil’s tenure comes to an end, he would become the head of state, if only as a stop-gap measure. That apart, as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, he is not really important enough for the Government of the world’s second largest economy to get into a lather over his meeting with the “splittist” Dalai Lama. New Delhi’s pecking order is as well-known in the Gymkhana as in Washington, DC or Beijing: The Prime Minister matters, the Vice-President doesn’t.

So, it’s not surprising that China should have taken offence, and made it clear that it feels offended, when the Prime Minister agreed to meet the Dalai Lama. Beijing views this as granting legitimacy to the Dalai Lama’s claimed status as the undisputed leader of all Tibetans, whether living in exile or in their homeland, vested with both spiritual and temporal authority by “his people” of “his Tibet”. Beijing’s position is clear, unambiguous and asserted without any sense of either self-doubt or hint of apology: Tibet belongs to China, the people belong to both Tibet and China, and the Dalai Lama has no business to poke his nose into temporal affairs — for all practical purposes he is a persona non grata and the “splittist clique” he heads comprises anti-national elements.

We need not agree with that position. Indeed, history can be cited to contest China’s claim on Tibet. But if we are to take a moral position, if we are to contest China’s version of history, then we should have the courage and the wherewithal to stand by our conviction and be prepared to face the consequences. The Chinese have responded predictably by upping the ante on Jammu & Kashmir and denying a visa to Lt Gen BS Jaswal who heads the Northern Command. Whether the Chinese tit followed the Indian tat or it was the other way round is not quite clear because the visa is believed to have been denied in July while the Prime Minister met the Dalai Lama in August. But irrespective of the sequence, it is abundantly clear that Beijing has considerably lowered its threshold of tolerance and New Delhi has not exactly planned for a showdown.

To merely insist that “Jammu & Kashmir concerns our sovereignty and is as sensitive to us as Tibet is to them” is neither here nor there. That we are still reluctant to call a spade-a-spade, which China does without bothering about bruised egos — the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman said Lt Gen Jaswal could not visit China for a scheduled defence-related programme “due to certain reasons” although those reasons are no secret — is indicative of our inherent weakness. Diplomacy in the 21st century is not about maudlin sentiments and polite niceties; it’s about aggressively, unapologetically promoting, and securing, self-interest. China does that with great élan; we talk about “sensitivity to each other’s concerns”, a principle we tend to follow in the breach.

Since the Government of India has chosen to compare Jammu & Kashmir with Tibet — a needless comparison really because accession and annexation aren’t one and the same — it would be in order to elaborate upon the comparison. What New Delhi has failed to achieve in 63 years, Beijing has achieved in 50 years. Jammu & Kashmir, more so the Valley, remains a running sore for India, threatening to turn septic every now and then, a cesspit teeming with avaricious politicians and corrupt officials where hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees in ‘development aid’ have disappeared over the decades with little or nothing to show by way of either development or securing India’s strategic interests. In sharp contrast, as I witnessed during my visit to Lhasa earlier this month, Beijing has converted Tibet truly into an integral part of China. The Chinese Central Government has spent more than 100 billion yuan on just developing Tibet’s infrastructure over the past five decades and every yuan has been well spent. It’s not just roads and houses and hospitals and schools, or for that matter the Beijing-Lhasa rail link which is an engineering marvel, but the assertion of Chinese sovereignty over the Tibetan Autonomous Region which is at once impressive and instructive, especially for us in India.

Sixty-three years after Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession, we are still debating the constitutional status of Jammu & Kashmir. A succession of Prime Ministers, despairing at Kashmiri separatism, have offered ‘autonomy’ ranging from “anything short of azadi” to “azadi short of separation”. Article 370 stands as a psychological and legal barrier between India and a State the Government of India claims to integral to India. China dealt with the issue of autonomy for Tibet by restricting it to protecting Tibetan culture (for instance, polyandry is allowed but not encouraged; the one-child norm is relaxed but there are incentives for those who shun the relaxation; lamas are left alone but monasteries are guarded by the PLA) and allowing participation in what we call the political process “under the leadership of the Central Government”.

Most important of all, China does not restrict Chinese from settling in China’s Tibet, unlike India restricting Indians from settling in India’s Jammu & Kashmir. No, the Hans have not flooded Tibet, as is often alleged by the “splittist clique”, but they are free to seek jobs, set up businesses, acquire and develop property, and invest in Tibet’s economy, adding to the region’s prosperity. While New Delhi has squandered time and opportunity talking about ‘Kashmiriyat’ and ‘Insaniyat’ and other such bunkum, Beijing has firmly established its supremacy over Tibet: Every signboard in Lhasa is in Tibetan, but superscribed in Mandarin. Every address ends with China. And nobody shouts — alright, make that nobody dares shout — “Go China, go back!”

[This appeared as my Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer on August 29, 2010.)

India crawls before China

Torch relay was a pathetic farce
Early last week the popular news portal, rediff.com, carried a delightful story about how China’s men in blue, who are accompanying the Olympic torch on its journey from Oympia to Beijing, threw Indian journalists out of IOC president Suresh Kalmadi’s office. A connected apocryphal story doing the rounds is that Mr Kalmadi did not so much as express a whimper of protest at this obnoxious behaviour by members of China’s elite People’s Armed Police whose primary job is to ‘control riots’ and ‘maintain domestic stability’. Seventy of these tough cops have been selected to form the ‘Flame Protection Squad’ and travel to 21 countries while their comrades patrol the streets of Lhasa ‘controlling riots’ and ‘maintaining domestic stability’ using means that have understandably met the approval of Gen Pervez Musharraf.
The chairman of the 2012 London Olympics organising committee, Mr Sebastian Coe, has described these men in blue tracksuits with snarling faces as “thugs” while Mr David Douillet, a French Olympic official, has lashed out at them for “not knowing how to handle protests and acting as robots or watchdogs”. Mr Douillet should have known better: There are no protests in China and at the slightest hint of dissent, authorities unleash retribution which is so brutal that not only the dissenters but the rest of the world is also shocked and awed. The men in blue, or whatever, were raring to have a go at protesters in Delhi. Thankfully, by barricading central Delhi, making it a no-entry zone, and deploying 21,000 security personnel, including NSG commandos who are trained to take on hijackers and terrorists, the organisers of Thursday’s tamasha made sure there was no contact between protesters and the ‘Flame Protection Squad’. So severe were the restrictions that the stalls were empty and the torch-bearers ran the 2.3-km distance between Vijay Chowk and India Gate with only a handful of children and officials cheering them.
There were far more people — and many of them Indians — at the protest rallies elsewhere than at the venue of the torch relay. Everybody else steered clear of Lutyens’ Delhi or stayed at home and watched a movie. On Tuesday, the Home Ministry issued a circular, virtually shutting down all offices in the vicinity, including the Prime Minister’s Office, on Thursday. “All windows and doors of all buildings opening towards Rajpath must be closed between 1 pm and 6 pm,” the circular said. Strangely, the directive added, “It must be ensured that no smoke is allowed to emanate from these buildings.” Incinerators installed on the roofs of North Block and South Block, used for destroying old files, had to be shut down. Members of Parliament could not attend the ongoing session. The actual schedule of the relay was kept a top secret even from ‘VIP guests’ who, barring a handful, did not turn up for the event. Mr Kalmadi, of course, looked important and busy, and later held up traffic to Indira Gandhi International Airport — he even managed to delay 20 flights, including many to foreign destinations. Mr Kalmadi is no doubt pleased as Punch and thinks the relay has been a grand success, as do those in Government who cravenly made a mockery of India’s democratic credentials to keep China in good humour.
On Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement, appreciating the “great efforts” by the Government of India for the smooth torch run. “China expresses its thanks for the warm support and participation of the Indian people and the great efforts by the Indian side,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s office told PTI. Participation of the Indian people? The state-run Chinese media, hailed the ‘smooth’ relay, and Global Times, a publication of People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, claimed “Tibetan separatist forces were frustrated”. No they weren’t; the Rajghat to Jantar Mantar protest march bears evidence to this fact. The China Daily reported the Olympic torch was welcomed in Delhi with “traditional pomp and pageantry”. Presumably by 21,000 security personnel! Along with its cock-and-bull report, the China Daily carried on its front page a photograph of Aamir Khan running with the torch.
We don’t know whether Aamir Khan, while trotting with the Olympic torch and posing for camerapersons, had a prayer in his heart for Tibet, but he surely had Coca-Cola on his mind. The stretch between Vijay Chowk and India Gate was carved up among corporate sponsors, including Coke and Lenovo, many of whom are also sponsoring the Beijing Olympics. In a BusinessWeek article headlined ‘Tibet could sap Coke’s Olympic zing’, Chi-Chu Tschang writes, “Coke, along with Chinese computer company Lenovo and South Korean electronics giant Samsung, has spent millions of dollars (the companies won’t disclose the exact amounts) to sponsor the relay. Lenovo designed the torch and provided free laptops to Olympic officials.”
But let’s get back to Aamir Khan and Coca-Cola. If you think he ran with the torch to uphold the ancient Grecian spirit of the Olympic Games, as his publicists, apologists of China in the Government of India and assorted friends of China would have us believe, you are absolutely wrong. The Hindustan Times has quoted Mr Venkatesh Kini, vice-president, marketing, Coca-Cola India, as saying, “Aamir Khan is our brand ambassador; people associate our brand with his face.” Similarly, Lenovo fielded Saif Ali Khan. Mr Prasanna Savnoor, general manager, marketing, Lenovo India, has been quoted as saying, “Saif Ali Khan has been associated with Lenovo for a long time. He represents the suave, intelligent, modern Indian man.” So, it wasn’t about promoting the spirit of the games after all; it was about getting paid for promoting Coca-Cola and Lenovo. They and their ilk are truly ‘modern Indian men’ — their lack of scruples is more than made up by their love for lucre.
The Olympic Games have not only been politicised but also commercialised. China will cynically use the Beijing games to make a larger political statement of Chinese power while sponsors will use it to promote consumer products. Where does the ‘Olympic spirit’ fit into such crass display of political might and financial clout?

Coffee Break / The Pioneer / April 20, 2008