India and China split by wall of suspicion

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh breached the Great Wall of China on a cold and crisp Sunday morning to hear Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao tell him that the Mughal emperor Shahjahan's efforts at preserving harmony among his diverse subjects - and conversely, Aur-angzeb's austere strictures that divided the people - had had a big impact on his own politics.

Question is though, is the Chinese leadership speaking with a forked tongue? Wen's soothing strains complimented the multi-layered Indian effort at seeking harmony amid enormous diversity over the centuries.

On the other hand, the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi reminded his Indian counter part Pranab Mukherjee at a meeting last year that China retained its historic claim to India's eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The truth is that both Chinese messages are true. Not that Beijing has not or cannot make up its mind on India. Beijing has also realised that India, while not as economically strong and powerful as itself, is hardly a pushover.

The critical strain was apparent in the Chinese media's criticism of the Indo-US nuclear deal some months ago, when it seem-ed as if the deal was all but done and Delhi would soon rise like a pirouetting peacock from the ashes of anonymity.

But when domestic Indian politics went into a spin, when the government's allied Left parties sought to restrain the government from going ahead with this pact with the US, the Chinese told visiting Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon that it would only "note'' India's keenness to enter into such a deal.

China would neither reject nor support the agreement at the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

What a disagreeable four-letter word that was! To "note'' India's rising anticipation at becoming part of the international high table was to be both capable of rejecting it with a flourish Marie Antoinette would be proud of, as well as understand it, but with a hint of patriarchy.

But "note'' also indicated that Beijing had moved considerable distance from its old antipathy against India to acknowledge India's newly found regional power status.

It is this middle-of-the-road attitude to India, sometimes patronising and distant, sometimes warm and friendly, that encapsulates the Beijing-Delhi relationship. Perhaps it reeks of pragmatism, straddling both worlds with the ease of a rising superpower.

At once friendly and fearful - of India's increasingly warm ties with the US - the Chinese responses tend to cancel each other out in the end to arrive at an odourless, tasteless middle. The sights and sounds of the India-China relationship are still wedded to strange disputes left over from history.

Major dispute

The major dispute of course relates to territory, to the Chinese claim of India's eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, some 90,000 square km, and of India's claim to Aksai Chin, a barren wasteland in the north-east that borders the sensitive prov-inces of Tibet and Xinjiang.

While India retains full control over Arunachal, Beijing wants to integrate the border district of Tawang because it was in the Tawang monastery some 500 years ago that a powerful incarnation of the present Dalai Lama was born.

Beijing believes that by relinquishing control over Tawang, and thereby over the monastery, the all-but-vanquished struggle for Tibetan independence might get a shot in the arm.

It is this border dispute, Arunachal Pradesh versus Aksai China, that is at the heart of the present distrust. The nuclear and Tibetan overlays are precisely that.

On the other hand, perhaps all these differences are only a manifestation of the struggle for influence between the two Asian giants, both with ancient civilisations.

It is significant that the Indian Prime Minister's visit to China comes at a time when the Indian team is preparing to go to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna for a final third round of talks that is a precondition to the resolution of the nuclear deal.

If India and the IAEA manage to clear this round, China's support of the deal subsequently at the Nuclear Suppliers Group will be crucial for the deal to pass.

However, it seems now as if it may never come to that. Even if the IAEA arrives at an Indian agreement, the Left parties in India seem determined not to let this agreement travel to the second round, that is to the NSG.

With so many ifs and buts being bandied around, the current political landscape in India is charged with a special anticipation that is reminiscent of life before a thunderstorm.

Meanwhile, Manmohan Singh must satisfy himself with promoting the economic relationship with China. His dream of resolving the 45-year-old bilateral border dispute and writing his name in the history books, must be shelved - at least for the time being.

Jyoti Malhotra is the Diplomatic Editor of The Telegraph newspaper, India.