China humiliates India; India bullies Sri Lanka
H. L. D. Mahindapala
Asian Tribune - June 6, 2007
Just last week India tried to pull wool over Chinese eyes. India attempted in its sneaky way to smuggle one of its bureaucrats from Arunachal Pradesh into China by including him in an official delegation due to visit China. China issued visas to all other members of the delegation except to the official from Arunachal Pradesh.
Why? Though it seemed on the surface that India was seeking a simple visa for one of her officials she was stealthily attempting to gain a huge diplomatic victory by getting China to recognize that the official from Arunachal Pradesh was an Indian citizen. India, in other words, was making an underhand move to trick China into recognizing that Arunachal Pradesh was a part of India.
If China fell for Indiaâs trick and issued a visa to the official from Arunachal Pradesh â the northeastern state claimed by China as her territory -- it would have amounted to China conceding this state to India. Knowing that visas are issued only to foreigners the shrewd Chinese out-manoeuvred the slimy Indians and rejected the application for a visa confirming that Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China â or almost all of it. To be precise China claims 90,000 sq km (34,750 square miles) of Arunachal Pradesh, a mountainous state that shares a 1,030 km (650-mile) border with China.
Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, made no bones about it when he told the media last week: "The whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. ... We are claiming the whole of that."
India which claims to be âa big power of the regionâ, according to M. K. Narayanan, the Advisor to Prime Minister, back-pedalled tamely. All what India could do was to push the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to stand up in parliament and say defensively: "Arunachal Pradesh was an integral part of India".
Indian media reports say that India is backing away from this issue without challenging China. India also accuses China of occupying 8,000 sq km (14,670 square miles) in Kashmir and this âbig power of the regionâ is running away with its tail between he legs without standing up for its claims, right or wrong. India has reasons to be scared and back off because China penetrated deep in Arunachal Pradesh in the border war fought in 1962 and hammered the Indian army to pulp.
Faced with this massive threat from China the Indian reaction is to be defensive, according to the consensus of diplomats in India. The noted ex-Indian diplomat, G. Parthasarathy, known to Sri Lankan circles from the days he tried fix the Sri Lankan crisis with his failed Indo-Sri Lanka agreement, had this to say about the Chinese claims: âWe have just sat back when China makes claims on Arunachal Pradesh and does nothing. We have a tendency to run scared of China, that's one thing we should avoidâ
He added: âWe gave up any card that we had on Tibet, we eroded our position on the district identity of Tibet with the passage of time. Unless you retain those cards, for example can we reciprocate by say agreeing to a ministerial level delegation from Taiwan. Like other ASEAN countries do like Japan does.â
So how big is India in the region? Is it big only when it comes to bullying small nations like Sri Lanka? Or is it just the right size to run backwards, as fast as the Indians can, to avoid confrontation with China? Arunachal Pradesh is not the only part of India that is claimed by China. China occupies Aksai Chin in Ladakh and this so-called âbig powerâ of the region does sweet nothing about it.
Some Indian diplomats say that India should retaliate on Chinese claims over Tibet and Taiwan. For instance, the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, could invite the Taiwanese MPs to tea as he did in the case of Sri Lankan counterparts who are the proxies of the Tamil Tigers. Oh, no! Such invitations are extended only to MPs of small countries in the region which India continues to bully or destabilize. India also allows Tibetan refugees to settle down in Delhi without pressing issues of human rights or violating Chinaâs airspace by dropping parippu (lentils) over the Chinese border as they did to force Sri Lanka to accept Indiaâs disastrous formula for peace which never worked.
While India forces its will down the smaller nation she willingly eats humble pie stuffed down her throat by China. In short, China is giving to India what India is giving to the small nations in the SAARC. Whether it be Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan or Sri Lanka the unwanted poking finger of India is seen everywhere. India even staged a comic saga in the Indian Ocean when it sent some Tamil terrorists to invade Maldives and then posed as the savior by rushing in to rescue the Maldives.
The history of SAARC is a depressing graveyard with scattered monuments to Indiaâs folly. Take the case of Sri Lanka again. When India was aligned to the Soviet bloc it opposed farming out the oil storage tanks in Trincomalee to the Americans. Now that it is aligned to the American bloc she resents Sri Lanka getting closer to China and covertly opposes the opening up of the Hambantota harbour to Chinese developers. India â and America too -- now fear that Sri Lanka is getting too close to China. Whose fault is it? If India is capable of playing her cards astutely and decide unambiguously to tame the Tamil Tiger terrorists (this is their description) Sri Lanka need not go anywhere.
Indiaâs short-sighted policy of trying to play the role of âBig Brotherâ in the region has been counter-productive both to India and SAARC. It is clear as daylight that neither Sri Lanka nor SAARC as a whole will ever get off the ground as long as India plays this obstructive, destructive and prescriptive role in the region. The most constructive alternative for SAARC members is to develop economic, political and defensive mechanisms outside the Indian cage. If, however, the non-Indian members consider it tactful to maintain some working relationships with the India it can do so by continuing to be members of SAARC nominally without tying themselves to the Indian apron strings. The future opportunities of SAARC are not in kow-towing to India as the regional super power but in acting collectively to build another formidable union to the meet the challenges posed by India.
Besides, there is no likelihood of Indo-China rivalry, with all its intractable border disputes, easing in the foreseeable future. Sensing this India is strengthening its ties with the American-led coalition designed to contain China. Despite protestations to the contrary, America, Japan, Australia â and now India â are linking hands, with a series of treaties, to put a ring round China. They see China as the next big threat to their economic and political interests. India is merrily going along with the rest in the West and the new Indian policy is to view anyone getting closer to China as a threat to Indian interests.
In other words, SAARC nations are asked to dance to Indiaâs tune. Those who argue that we must accept regional realities fail to recognize that in the emerging scenario, where the center of power is shifting from the West to the East, China is destined to play a dominant role, perhaps bigger than the role played by America today. Nearness to India does not preclude possibilities of developing closer ties with China. The growth of China as the next dominant global power should make India realize that it needs Sri Lanka and the other SAARC nations more than Sri Lanka and others needing India. Smaller countries have a better chance of survival and growth if they follow the lead of Cuba than being subservient to India,
Of course, this is a projection into the future. Currently, as things stand, Indiaâs role is critical collectively for SAARC and individually for nations. It is this role that casts suspicions about Indo-American alliance. Narayanan has announced that he is due to visit Richard Boucher to discuss Sri Lanka. His visit is obviously to tie the hands of Sri Lanka advancing into Tiger territory. This is a repetition of the failed Indian policy when the Sri Lankan forces were advancing via Vaddmarachchi in Jaffna India intervened and unilaterally dropped parippu under the pretext of protecting the Tamils of Jaffna. But that pretence was dropped when the IPKF stepped in and gang raped Tamil women, murdered Tamil civilians and brutalized Jaffna society with impunity.
Indiaâs wavering policies on Sri Lanka, depending on her domestic agenda, smack of hypocrisy. It is not going to make India look pretty in the region. Narayananâs statement that Sri Lanka must obey India because it is the big power of the region has not gone down well either in Sri Lanka or in the region. Pakistan has promptly blasted India, virtually saying that no one can dictate to her, whether big or small.
However, knowing that India cannot impose its will unilaterally in the region her minions are running to her new master, America. Narayanan told media that he was due to visit to Boucher. Why? Political circles believe that there is a hidden agenda in this latest move. This is seen as a prelude to build a joint Indo-American offensive against the Sri Lankan forces advancing slowly but surely to defang the Tigers. Both America and India should know by now that there can never be peace until and unless the Tigers are tamed. Since neither America nor India is willing to do it their policy objective should be to let Sri Lankan forces complete the job they began at Mavil Aru.
Of course, there is the serious issue of violating human rights in Sri Lanka. Human rights violations increase or decrease on a ratio proportionate to the violence unleashed by the terrorist groups. In fact, a well-known tactic of terrorist groups is to provoke governments to retaliate violently, leading to human rights violations. The terrorists then use these violations as a key propaganda weapon against government. With a sharp eye on capitalizing on this issue the Tamil Tigers, and their NGO agents, are focusing on human rights at every given opportunity. Therefore, it is only fair to treat this aspect with the same quantum of interest shown by the American, Australian and NATO forces battling terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. It should be neither less nor more.
Hopefully Narayanan will drive this point home to Boucher. This is only fair given the bloody history on which big powers built their nations battling internal and external enemies. America, for instance, has a colourful history â mostly written in blood â in dealing with civil unrest within its own borders. The history of Americans proves that they never intended to win the Civil War (650,000 dead) or the West, glorified on the silver screen with brutal decimation of the native Indians, by waving the rights that were later enshrined in the UN Charter.
Nor did they drop the first atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to protect the human rights of the Japanese who were only months away from surrendering. Historians have established that the war with Japan could have been ended without dropping those apocalyptic bombs. But that did not deter America from dropping the bombs to gain a lead over the advancing Russians, heading towards Japan.
The short history of post-independent India is no better. For instance, when Goa decided to separate under Portuguese promptings, Nehru sent his forces into that tiny state not to indoctrinate them with Gadhian principles. It was to enforce the principle that Indiaâs territorial integrity and sovereignty was indivisible. Her unwanted interventions in the region have been to serve her self-interests. What it has done to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka needs volumes to document.
In short, the so-called big powers who had wiped out minorities from their lands or waged bloody wars to safeguard their sovereignty, territorial integrity should learn from their own history not to go down the failed path of do-as-I-say-and-not-do-as-I-do. They must collectively allow Sri Lanka to find her own solution, more so because the imported Indian and Norwegian mantrams have failed to restore peace and stability over the last three decades. Besides, India, with its self-serving misadventures, has bloodied Sri Lanka enough to drown the Island without flooding it with the waters of the Indian Ocean.
So is it too much to ask India to mind its own bloody business and let Sri Lanka tackle the violence unleashed by India to destabilize her friendly neighbor in the south?
- Asian Tribune -
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that is the basic problem 
