It is good that India-China relations have turned over a new leaf. The agreement signed by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao is certainly a new beginning - the much-wanted thaw after 30 years of glacial silence.
It is good that India-China relations have turned over a new leaf. The agreement signed by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao is certainly a new beginning - the much-wanted thaw after 30 years of glacial silence.
The details of the agreement, which were released after Vajpayee met President Hu Jintao of China, mentions, apart from the steps for trade and other things, that the two countries will "explore, from the political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship, the framework of a boundary settlement".
From the Chinese side Dai Bingguo and from the Indian side Brajesh Mishra, will undertake this exercise. But this new beginning also brings in its wake old questions and doubts. After he had had some sittings with China on the border issue last time, I asked a senior foreign office hand about the progress. His comment was: "If it were left to the Government of India, our territory would shrink to Palam airport!"
The official has retired since. But his words often come back to me. They are uppermost in my mind these days in connection with Vajpayee's China visit. Nobody is opposed to a settlement of borders with China, our strong neighbour. Yet I have often wondered whether it would be at the expense of the land which is ours from the hoary past.
Someone high up once told me that the territory lost in war is seldom recovered in peace. I am sure that some day parliament will be brought into the picture. Will the new agreement measure up to the unanimous resolution of the two houses that India must get back every inch of territory it lost to the Chinese in the 1962 war?
After defeat, there is defiance. Some note of chauvinism would have come in our response. We probably overstated our case when China stopped firing unilaterally, having chased our troops down the hills, almost to the outskirts of Tezpur, Assam. But we then sheepishly accepted the ceasefire because there was no will to fight.
Even then, there was never any doubt that some of the territory where the Chinese frontier guards stood was India's. The Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China is not like the Line of Control with Pakistan in Kashmir. The first one is dictated by Beijing. The second is the positioning of Indian and Pakistani troops where the UN effected a ceasefire on January 1, 1949.
My case is not that the McMahon Line is sacrosanct and that it has to be preserved as the northeastern boundary. China probably did not accept it when Sir Henry McMahon announced it in 1914 on behalf of the British. Still, the LAC is not the traditional or customary line. Some of our territory lies on the other side of the line. The status quo only accepts the fruits of aggression.
If Beijing accepts Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh as parts of India after having claimed them all these years, it is not making up for the Indian territory it has occupied. Claims do not supplant reality. Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh were never part of China. The LAC can never be a new border. It is imposed by Beijing. The middle and eastern sectors of the LAC will have to undergo changes.
And what about Aksai Chin in the north of Ladakh, where China forcibly built a road to connect Sinkiang with Tibet? True, without that road China had no way of reaching Sinkiang.
But India was at one time willing to accept Beijing's suzerainty over the area where it had built the road. Maybe, our concession on Aksai Chin can be exchanged with China's concession in the eastern sector. This is nothing new. New Delhi has hinted at it in the past.
Nearly five years before hostilities between the two countries, the support to this idea came from the least expected quarter. Then I was Information Officer with Home Minister Govind Ballabh Pant. The Polish ambassador at that time conveyed to Pant his suggestion through me.
At the very beginning of the conversation, he said that the opinion he would express was the view of his and other communist countries and he specifically mentioned Russia. His proposal was that India should accept a package political deal, getting "recognition for the McMahon Line" in exchange for giving over control of some areas in Ladakh.
He said whatever the odds, China would never part with control of the road it had built because that was the lifeline between Sinkiang and other parts of China.
I think that the matter could have been sorted out peacefully at that time. Jawaharlal Nehru, in fact, tried his best to accommodate China to the farthest limit.
Even after Trade Representative Lakshman Singh informed the government in 1954 about the building of the Aksai Chin road, the Ministry of External Affairs under Nehru refused to entertain "information" about China's inroads into Indian territory. Nehru would get enraged even at the mention of the border dispute.
Still China attacked India in October 1962. Was it territory or something else? Beijing drowned the age-old slogan of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai in the war cries. If Prime Minister Chou-en Lai could go to the extent of letting down his old friend Nehru, who introduced him to the non-aligned powers at Bandung, the new leadership in China can do anything because it does not carry any emotional baggage of the past.
Vajpayee had earlier met the new Chinese President, Hu Jintao, at St. Petersburg. Both had looked forward to the Beijing meeting and both had expressed warm sentiments. Officials on both sides are already studying the border maps of each other's country.
But even if there is a settlement on borders, China will have to do something to repair the bruised feelings of Indians. The 1962 war has gone deep into Indian psyche. They will remain suspicious of China because they once depended on it blindly.
Beijing's attack - presuming New Delhi provoked China - will need to be analysed and explained to the people in the country. Why should a friendly country be attacked, whatever the provocation?
Nehru once wrote to the state chief ministers to explain the reasons: it is a little naïve to think that the trouble with China was essentially due to a dispute over some territory. It had deeper reasons. Two of the largest countries in Asia confronted each other over a vast border. They differed in many ways. And the test was as to whether one of them would have a more dominating position than the other on the border and in Asia itself.
Still there is no reason why the two countries cannot live in peace and harmony. Whatever the irritations, both should resolve them peacefully. So should be the attitude of give and take on the boundary problem.
The 21st century can be the Asian century as Vajpayee and Hu have said, provided China realises that violence cannot possibly lead today to a solution of any major problem, because violence has become much too terrible and destructive.
If the society we aim at cannot be brought about by big-scale violence, will small-scale violence help? I don't think it will - partly because that itself may lead to big-scale violence and partly because it produces an atmosphere of conflict and of disruption. China should realise this.
The writer, a former Indian High Commissioner to the UK and a Rajya Sabha MP. He can be
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