The Sikkim Initiative
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KP Vasudevan Nair
OVER the past six weeks four international conferences were held on issues directly concerning regionalism and sub-regionalism in the contemporary Asian context.
The first, in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, on how the Asian regions should face the challenges posed by globalisation was indeed the most international of all of these, with high-level participation by ministers and congressmen from several Asian countries, scholars from Europe, Asia and Australia and, adding to its weight and glory, even Lord George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury.
The second, at the Chinese heritage city of Dali in Yunnan, deliberated on the prospects of socio-economic cooperation between southwest China and eastern India with special focus on West Bengal and Yunnan. It received wide media attention from within China and even Hong Kong and was followed by a high profile visit of a 30-member delegation headed by the governor of Yunnan to Kolkata to work out details of cooperation in various fields.
The third, a low-profile but meaningful exercise, was held at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, with an India-China Interface in the aftermath of opening Nathu-la for border trade that was to have been inaugurated by Union external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee but he could not attend. Chinese Consul General Mao Siwei was chief guest and there were a number of specialists from Delhi and Canada. A new sub-regional Silk Route from Nathu-la to Namyung was conceived among other things.
The fourth, the immediate reason for this article, concluded on 21 December at Sikkim University, Gangtok. Titled “International Conference on Sub-regionalism Approach to Regional Integration in South Asia”, this was also to have been inaugurated by Pranab Mukherjee but again he could not make it under circumstances understandable to Indians. Sikkim governor BP Singh delivered the presidential address. Pranab Mukherjee’s speech was read out and it contained significant messages to Pakistan on the issue of terrorism, reflecting the prevailing mood.
That his message found prominent place in the regular newscast from Delhi made it clear that it was not meant only for those at “Chintan Bhawan” of the University. The need for a peaceful periphery which Mukherjee often emphasises during his speeches is, it seems, not different from “the need for a rise in harmony” that Chinese leaders also seek in their neighbourhood. That the foreign minister dealt with policy aspects of India’s current relations with almost every country in the region indicates his approval of the concept on which the conference was held, the first of its kind in a North-eastern border state.
A quick look at the concept note prepared by vice-chancellor Mahendra Lama with emphasis on the urgent need for a new sub-regional approach, has enormous logic behind it, for no one can dispute that in effect the regional approach in the shape of Saarc has not brought about the expected gains to the region. Boastful claims made at Saarc summits made the region almost a laughing stock in the eyes of even small Asean countries.
Have we forgotten the assurance our leaders gave at the Colombo meet in 1999 that poverty would be totally eradicated from the region within three years? Leaders of the same countries at the last summit in the same city this year sheepishly admitted over 25 per cent of the region still survived on less than a dollar a day! The major share of the responsibility for this pathetic situation rests with the two larger countries, India and Pakistan. India’s literacy rate is lower than that of most of the countries and so is the human development index. More alarming, there is still no serious attempt to correct the situation. No wonder the smaller members do not find Saarc a sustainable mechanism and are resorting to multilateralism, following, interestingly, India and Pakistan!
In the field of tourism, the recent gains look impressive only because of the low base which it rose from. Small Cambodia, with 12 million population, receives two million tourists a year, and India with a population nearly 100 times larger still has not reached five million!
From an Indian perspective, a new sub-regional approach seems necessary since the existing ones, some of them like Mekong Ganga, have been week-kneed reactions to successful initiatives like the Greater Mekong Sub-regional Cooperation and the gains, if any, have been negligible. New geographical configuration cannot be avoided when a fresh effort is being made and this justifies the Sikkim Initiative’s inclusion of Bhutan and the whole of southwest China, including Tibet, although there is scepticism among some observers about effectively including Bangladesh and Nepal. This view is endorsed by the fact that official representation was absent at the conference from these two countries, unlike Bhutan which sent an official.
As it happened at the Margherita (Assam) conference three years ago, two important officials, one from the Yunnan Development Research Centre and the other from Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, could not attend due to a procedural delay in receiving their visas, but an academic from Sichuan made it to Gangtok, perhaps the first Chinese national to be present at an international conference there.
Among the participants were some who could not help wondering whether this Sikkim Initiative was anything more than “Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar Plus Two” — the plus two being Bhutan and Nepal. Having been a participant at the last few BCIM meetings, this writer is not too optimistic of the BCIM, at least in the short term. For instance, a Kunming-Kolkata car rally, which was agreed upon at the 2007 Dhaka meeting, has not yet materialised due to problems now linked to Bangladesh.
Even in its eighth year, the BCIM remains non-institutionalised with a poor progress report. Coming from India as it does, the new Sikkim Initiative will have a freshness of its own and could convert Sikkim with its unique location into a new and commonly acceptable economic and cultural hub. Only those who spend some time in Sikkim and closely interact with its people will know how great its attractions are. Participants from “mainland” India were also astonished at the high intellectual level of the young professors and the cool efficiency of the executives of the university which is not even two years old. One major omission noticed at the seminars was the apparent absence of participants with adequate practical experience, especially in the case of trade and tourism. The involvement of the chambers of commerce may be considered in future deliberations.
Detailed presentations on forests and other bioresources by the Sikkim forest department officials brought to light the immense natural wealth waiting to be exploited. From an academic angle, it may not be out of place to suggest that Sikkim University, with its sub-regional aspirations, joins the trilateral academic projects initiated by the New York-based India-China Institute involving New School University, Yunnan University and Calcutta University, the details of which will soon be finalised in Kunming, capital of Yunnan.
(The author is Director, Asia Centre, and Honorary Fellow, Maulana Abul Kalam Institute of Asian Studies. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at kpv@asiacentre.org)
Friday, January 2, 2009
Saturday, November 15, 2008
NATHU LA TRADE THIS SEASON
Gangtok, Nov. 14: Chinese trade through Nathu-la continues to falter compared to business on the Indian side. But it is not the global economic meltdown that has hit the neighbouring country.
Rather, it is the “obsolete” items, which China can export, that have made the trade a one-sided affair.
The volume of trade from May 19 to October 30 stood at nearly Rs 59 lakh as against Rs 34.6 lakh in the same period last year. The Sikkimese traders exported items worth Rs 57.6 lakh, while the imports from China were Rs 1.35 lakh. Edible items topped the list of articles sent to China in 2008, the third year since the reopening of the trade route located at 14,400ft above sealevel.
Official records of the trade through Nathu-la available with the Sikkim commerce and industries department reveal that the businessmen from the state have a monopoly over their counterparts in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) in China. While the Indian exporters can send 29 items, including tea, flour, vegetable oil, cigarettes and liquor, China can sell 15 items permitted by India.
Anil Kumar Gupta, a member of the India-China Traders’ Association, said the Chinese could have done better if silk was permitted to be exported by them. “The list of items that the Chinese can export includes obsolete articles like goat’s hair, yak’s tail, China clay and horses. Our exports could have touched the crore mark had we been allowed to sell Basmati rice.”
Quoting official figures, Gupta said this year, over a thousand traders from Sikkim had visited the Renquingang trade mart in TAR, 16km from the border, while double the number of their Chinese counterparts came to the Sherathang post near Nathu-la.
“If more Indian exporters had gone across the border, the volume of trade would have certainly gone up,” he said.
An official of the Sikkim commerce department said the state government had made several attempts to persuade the Centre to revise the trade list but did not get any response. “We had prepared the list and sent it to the Union commerce ministry,” the official said.
The trade through Nathu-la will close on November 30. The traders from both the countries will meet at Sherathang on that day and review the business conducted through out the year.
Rather, it is the “obsolete” items, which China can export, that have made the trade a one-sided affair.
The volume of trade from May 19 to October 30 stood at nearly Rs 59 lakh as against Rs 34.6 lakh in the same period last year. The Sikkimese traders exported items worth Rs 57.6 lakh, while the imports from China were Rs 1.35 lakh. Edible items topped the list of articles sent to China in 2008, the third year since the reopening of the trade route located at 14,400ft above sealevel.
Official records of the trade through Nathu-la available with the Sikkim commerce and industries department reveal that the businessmen from the state have a monopoly over their counterparts in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) in China. While the Indian exporters can send 29 items, including tea, flour, vegetable oil, cigarettes and liquor, China can sell 15 items permitted by India.
Anil Kumar Gupta, a member of the India-China Traders’ Association, said the Chinese could have done better if silk was permitted to be exported by them. “The list of items that the Chinese can export includes obsolete articles like goat’s hair, yak’s tail, China clay and horses. Our exports could have touched the crore mark had we been allowed to sell Basmati rice.”
Quoting official figures, Gupta said this year, over a thousand traders from Sikkim had visited the Renquingang trade mart in TAR, 16km from the border, while double the number of their Chinese counterparts came to the Sherathang post near Nathu-la.
“If more Indian exporters had gone across the border, the volume of trade would have certainly gone up,” he said.
An official of the Sikkim commerce department said the state government had made several attempts to persuade the Centre to revise the trade list but did not get any response. “We had prepared the list and sent it to the Union commerce ministry,” the official said.
The trade through Nathu-la will close on November 30. The traders from both the countries will meet at Sherathang on that day and review the business conducted through out the year.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Chinese delegation in New Delhi
CHINESE BUSINESS DELEGATION MEETS JAIRAM RAMESH
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New Delhi DT 11 OCT 2008
15:30 IST
Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Commerce, has stated that China is India’s biggest trading partner and India is 10th biggest trade partner for China, and added that India is taking all necessary steps for diversifying its trade basket. During the interaction with the Chinese business delegation which was led by the Chinese Vice Minister, Mr. Gao Hucheng, here today, Shri Ramesh said that India and China should look ahead to explore the possibility of commencing discussions on a mutually beneficial RTA that meets the common aspirations of both countries. The meeting was attended by senior officials from both the countries.
As regards market access for Indian agricultural products into China, especially fruits & vegetables, Shri Ramesh noted that the Chinese side has allowed entry for only 3 items – mangoes, grapes and bitter-gourd – out of 17 and hoped that the rest of the pending fruits and vegetables would be grouped into two groups for a simultaneous finalization of SPS protocols.
Both sides noted that there is a need to increase bilateral investments between the two countries, particularly in sectors like petrochemicals, steel, healthcare, IT automobiles, biotechnology, advanced materials, renewable energy and low carbon technologies.
During the year 2007-08, India’s major exports to China are: iron ore, raw cotton, ores & minerals, plastic & linoleum and machinery & instruments. India’s major imports from China are: electronic goods, machinery, iron & steel, organic chemicals and other commodities.
Source: PIB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Delhi DT 11 OCT 2008
15:30 IST
Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Commerce, has stated that China is India’s biggest trading partner and India is 10th biggest trade partner for China, and added that India is taking all necessary steps for diversifying its trade basket. During the interaction with the Chinese business delegation which was led by the Chinese Vice Minister, Mr. Gao Hucheng, here today, Shri Ramesh said that India and China should look ahead to explore the possibility of commencing discussions on a mutually beneficial RTA that meets the common aspirations of both countries. The meeting was attended by senior officials from both the countries.
As regards market access for Indian agricultural products into China, especially fruits & vegetables, Shri Ramesh noted that the Chinese side has allowed entry for only 3 items – mangoes, grapes and bitter-gourd – out of 17 and hoped that the rest of the pending fruits and vegetables would be grouped into two groups for a simultaneous finalization of SPS protocols.
Both sides noted that there is a need to increase bilateral investments between the two countries, particularly in sectors like petrochemicals, steel, healthcare, IT automobiles, biotechnology, advanced materials, renewable energy and low carbon technologies.
During the year 2007-08, India’s major exports to China are: iron ore, raw cotton, ores & minerals, plastic & linoleum and machinery & instruments. India’s major imports from China are: electronic goods, machinery, iron & steel, organic chemicals and other commodities.
Source: PIB
india china trade at $ 37.8 billion in 2007-08
New Delhi, Oct 11, IRNA: India's Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Kamal Nath, has informed that India-China trade in 2007-08 reached $ 37.8 billion, an increase of 47 per cent over 2006-07.
Interacting with the visiting Chinese Vice Minister, Gao Hucheng, here Friday, Kamal Nath informed that there are enormous opportunities for both India and China in expanding trade in services particularly in construction and engineering, education, entertainment, financial services, IT & IT-enabled services, transport, tourism and health.
Both sides discussed about holding the 8th Joint Economic Group (JEG) at a mutually convenient date.
The 7th JEG meeting was held in March 2006.
After the opening of the third border trade point between India and China, the Chinese side has been looking for expanding the scope of trade through Nathu La.
In July 2007, the Indian side proposed an addition of 24 more commodities tradable through Nathu La, mainly food items.
In turn, the Chinese side proposed 36 commodities including machinery, motor cycles and electrical appliances.
China ranks 64th and the cumulative FDI inflows stood at $ 4.7 million.
The top sectors attracting FDI inflows (January 2000 to March 2008) from China are trading, industrial machinery, mining, hotel and tourism and drugs and pharmaceuticals.
The top sectors attracting technology from China are metallurgical industries, chemicals (other than fertilizers), electrical equipment, industrial machinery and drugs & pharmaceuticals.
Earlier today, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on India-China Trade Remedy Cooperation Mechanism, was signed by G.K. Pillai, Commerce Secretary from Indian side and from Chinese side by Gao Hucheng, Vice Minister
Interacting with the visiting Chinese Vice Minister, Gao Hucheng, here Friday, Kamal Nath informed that there are enormous opportunities for both India and China in expanding trade in services particularly in construction and engineering, education, entertainment, financial services, IT & IT-enabled services, transport, tourism and health.
Both sides discussed about holding the 8th Joint Economic Group (JEG) at a mutually convenient date.
The 7th JEG meeting was held in March 2006.
After the opening of the third border trade point between India and China, the Chinese side has been looking for expanding the scope of trade through Nathu La.
In July 2007, the Indian side proposed an addition of 24 more commodities tradable through Nathu La, mainly food items.
In turn, the Chinese side proposed 36 commodities including machinery, motor cycles and electrical appliances.
China ranks 64th and the cumulative FDI inflows stood at $ 4.7 million.
The top sectors attracting FDI inflows (January 2000 to March 2008) from China are trading, industrial machinery, mining, hotel and tourism and drugs and pharmaceuticals.
The top sectors attracting technology from China are metallurgical industries, chemicals (other than fertilizers), electrical equipment, industrial machinery and drugs & pharmaceuticals.
Earlier today, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on India-China Trade Remedy Cooperation Mechanism, was signed by G.K. Pillai, Commerce Secretary from Indian side and from Chinese side by Gao Hucheng, Vice Minister
FRESH FRUITS & VEGETABLES TO CHINA
China may allow 14 items for trade
New Delhi: India is hopeful that China would allow entry of 14 items in the category of fruits and vegetables under a bilateral trade agreement, Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here on Saturday.
Under the India-China bilateral WTO accession agreement of February 2000, both sides have signed a sanitary and phyto-sanitary protocol to facilitate exports of fresh fruits and vegetable to China.
Mr. Ramesh said Chinese side had allowed entry of only three of the 17 items. — PTI
New Delhi: India is hopeful that China would allow entry of 14 items in the category of fruits and vegetables under a bilateral trade agreement, Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here on Saturday.
Under the India-China bilateral WTO accession agreement of February 2000, both sides have signed a sanitary and phyto-sanitary protocol to facilitate exports of fresh fruits and vegetable to China.
Mr. Ramesh said Chinese side had allowed entry of only three of the 17 items. — PTI
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
BUSINESS AT NATHU LA IMPORVES
Indian traders do good business at Nathu La
Gangtok (PTI): 22 Sept 2008: Indian traders recorded a turnover of Rs 10 lakh in August at Nathu La to take the total business to Rs 26 lakh since the annual trade on Sino-India border was re-opened on May 19.
According to data released by the Sikkim Commerce and Industries Department here, utensils including copper bowls fetched a revenue of Rs 9 lakh for Indian traders during four months of trade at the Renquinggang mart.
Other products like black tea, textiles, woollen shawls, canned food, vegetable oils and cigarettes were in demand from importers.
About 60 importers visited the mart daily to buy Indian goods, officials said.
Gangtok (PTI): 22 Sept 2008: Indian traders recorded a turnover of Rs 10 lakh in August at Nathu La to take the total business to Rs 26 lakh since the annual trade on Sino-India border was re-opened on May 19.
According to data released by the Sikkim Commerce and Industries Department here, utensils including copper bowls fetched a revenue of Rs 9 lakh for Indian traders during four months of trade at the Renquinggang mart.
Other products like black tea, textiles, woollen shawls, canned food, vegetable oils and cigarettes were in demand from importers.
About 60 importers visited the mart daily to buy Indian goods, officials said.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
TIBET-THE LOST FRONTIER
TIBET-THE LOST FRONTIER
Himmat Singh Gill
Tibet: The Lost Frontier
by Claude Arpi.
Lancer Publishers, New Delhi.
Pages 338. Rs 795.
Tibet was indeed a lost frontier during the 19th and first quarter of the 20th centuries. It was known only to a few intrepid explorers who ventured out to this landlocked Himalayan kingdom of the lamas and their cavernous monasteries, perched precariously high on the snowy mountaintops. Today, with all the diplomatic chess boarding and armed military turbulence that has overtaken this once peaceful and religiously oriented land, it would not be wrong to say that a frontier has been lost, but this time to a powerful Communist giant that has merrily trampled all over it without mercy or any regret.
Arpi, who was born in France and is an avid student of Tibet, tells the story of the takeover of this once autonomous land, now a part of China, and the ‘masterly inactivity’ of an Indian leadership under Jawaharlal Nehru, assisted by his blue-eyed diplomat K. M. Panikkar, our man in Beijing.
Arpi traces the winding paths of the three ancient civilisations of Tibet, China and India, which over time developed their own characteristics, and the pacifist and non-violent signature of a Dalai Lama-ruled Tibet, which ironically added impetus to its own dismemberment at the hands of Mao and his party when they took power in China after overthrowing the KMT government of Chiang-Kai-Shek A nuclear-armed Communist China eager to stretch out its reach and boundaries in Asia clearly saw the importance of Tibet in the furtherance of its strategic ascendancy. The author points out very clearly this prophetic assessment when he writes that, “The key to conflict or peace in Asia lies on the Tibetan plateau”.
With the occupation of Tibet in 1950,China sent out an unambiguous message to a newly independent India and the ruling elite in the neighbouring Soviet Union that it harboured political and military designs of a serious kind in this part of the world. The October 1912 the Government of Tibet’s letter to the Viceroy asking for a British representative to be posted to Lhasa and its directions to China to withdraw all its officials and troops from inside Tibet was followed by the Simla Convention of April 1914, where Tibet and the British government agreed to their mutual boundary being along the McMahon Line. With the Chinese representative only initialing and not signing this pact, a vacuum was left wide open for subsequent disputes which in fact came to a head with the attack on India in 1962.The 13th Dali Lama’s prediction that “large insects are eating and secretly injuring small insects” was true in every respect.
Besides the change in fortune that the British had left India and a ‘karma’ that was none too benign to the people of Tibet, it was their added misfortune that an idealist Nehru, sold over Non-Alignment and notions of bringing peace to Asia and the world at large, remained oblivious till the end to the trampling of a buffer neighbour state.
In the meanwhile, Ambassador Panikkar continued to send glowing reports about the growth of Indo-Chinese friendship and Zhou-EnLai’s warmth in relations, and all this suited Nehru to the tick until of course he suddenly learnt in 1951-52 that the Chinese were feverishly constructing the Aksai Chin road, linking Ladakh to Tibet. In Parliament, Prof Ranga lashed out at Panikkar for “professing the friendship not only to China’s people, not only to the Chinese government but to China’s sovereignty over Tibet. This beats anybody and everybody”.
The attention of readers is drawn to the fact that it was in Panikkar’s time that in official government-to-government correspondence, the fact of an Indian acceptance of a Chinese ‘suzerainty’ over Tibet was changed to that of their having ‘sovereignty’ over the Himalayan kingdom, leading to an entirely bigger concession being inadvertently made to the Communists. Rightly does Arpi say that “Nehru did not want (to) take a clear stand” on the question of Tibet as a buffer state.
Arpi even brings out the startling fact that after the occupation of Tibet, there was no food to feed the Chinese troops, and for quite some time on Chinese request Indian rice was sent through the Chumbi Valley trade route on orders of Nehru, with our foreign office being instructed to keep the matter under the wraps.
It was again in October1951, when Secretary-General in the External Affairs Ministry Bajpai cautioned Nehru about the distinct possibility of Chinese “small forces dribbling in” through the many passes on the border and “make(ing) trouble for India”, that the Prime Minister outrightly rejected such a contingency. The author says, “Nehru also felt that large expenditures on the Army would starve the development of the country and its social progress.” Much the same attitude sadly prevails even today in our babudom and political masters, when they are dealing with the Indian Army of today.
Nehru visited China in 1954 and his grandson Rajiv Gandhi in 1988. In between we had the 1967 Nathu-La clash and another one at Wangdung in Arunachal in 1986. Narasimha Rao in 1993, A.B. Vajpayee in 2003 and now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008, have all visited China, and yet the vexed border question in the northeast along the McMahon Line remains unresolved to this day. It should be clear to any Indian as to why China is keeping this dispute unresolved and open to dispute. And while the Dalai Lama resides in India, a previously independent and autonomous state has been erased from the world map.
Claude Arpi’s well researched and illuminating account of the failure of India’s diplomacy in its very backyard is a tribute to not only the author’s painstaking efforts at getting to the truth (which few Indian writers can be credited with as regards to writing on Tibet), but also marks a plus for the publishers who thought of bringing out this very instructive account. This study vividly points out that the peace-loving people like the Tibetans can no longer hope to remain in a Shangri-la of their own cut off from the prying eyes and their adventurous designs, and that to exist as an independent nation one must fine-tune not only its diplomacy but also be militarily strong enough to send out the right message.
( SOURCE-tHE TRIBUNE)
Himmat Singh Gill
Tibet: The Lost Frontier
by Claude Arpi.
Lancer Publishers, New Delhi.
Pages 338. Rs 795.
Tibet was indeed a lost frontier during the 19th and first quarter of the 20th centuries. It was known only to a few intrepid explorers who ventured out to this landlocked Himalayan kingdom of the lamas and their cavernous monasteries, perched precariously high on the snowy mountaintops. Today, with all the diplomatic chess boarding and armed military turbulence that has overtaken this once peaceful and religiously oriented land, it would not be wrong to say that a frontier has been lost, but this time to a powerful Communist giant that has merrily trampled all over it without mercy or any regret.
Arpi, who was born in France and is an avid student of Tibet, tells the story of the takeover of this once autonomous land, now a part of China, and the ‘masterly inactivity’ of an Indian leadership under Jawaharlal Nehru, assisted by his blue-eyed diplomat K. M. Panikkar, our man in Beijing.
Arpi traces the winding paths of the three ancient civilisations of Tibet, China and India, which over time developed their own characteristics, and the pacifist and non-violent signature of a Dalai Lama-ruled Tibet, which ironically added impetus to its own dismemberment at the hands of Mao and his party when they took power in China after overthrowing the KMT government of Chiang-Kai-Shek A nuclear-armed Communist China eager to stretch out its reach and boundaries in Asia clearly saw the importance of Tibet in the furtherance of its strategic ascendancy. The author points out very clearly this prophetic assessment when he writes that, “The key to conflict or peace in Asia lies on the Tibetan plateau”.
With the occupation of Tibet in 1950,China sent out an unambiguous message to a newly independent India and the ruling elite in the neighbouring Soviet Union that it harboured political and military designs of a serious kind in this part of the world. The October 1912 the Government of Tibet’s letter to the Viceroy asking for a British representative to be posted to Lhasa and its directions to China to withdraw all its officials and troops from inside Tibet was followed by the Simla Convention of April 1914, where Tibet and the British government agreed to their mutual boundary being along the McMahon Line. With the Chinese representative only initialing and not signing this pact, a vacuum was left wide open for subsequent disputes which in fact came to a head with the attack on India in 1962.The 13th Dali Lama’s prediction that “large insects are eating and secretly injuring small insects” was true in every respect.
Besides the change in fortune that the British had left India and a ‘karma’ that was none too benign to the people of Tibet, it was their added misfortune that an idealist Nehru, sold over Non-Alignment and notions of bringing peace to Asia and the world at large, remained oblivious till the end to the trampling of a buffer neighbour state.
In the meanwhile, Ambassador Panikkar continued to send glowing reports about the growth of Indo-Chinese friendship and Zhou-EnLai’s warmth in relations, and all this suited Nehru to the tick until of course he suddenly learnt in 1951-52 that the Chinese were feverishly constructing the Aksai Chin road, linking Ladakh to Tibet. In Parliament, Prof Ranga lashed out at Panikkar for “professing the friendship not only to China’s people, not only to the Chinese government but to China’s sovereignty over Tibet. This beats anybody and everybody”.
The attention of readers is drawn to the fact that it was in Panikkar’s time that in official government-to-government correspondence, the fact of an Indian acceptance of a Chinese ‘suzerainty’ over Tibet was changed to that of their having ‘sovereignty’ over the Himalayan kingdom, leading to an entirely bigger concession being inadvertently made to the Communists. Rightly does Arpi say that “Nehru did not want (to) take a clear stand” on the question of Tibet as a buffer state.
Arpi even brings out the startling fact that after the occupation of Tibet, there was no food to feed the Chinese troops, and for quite some time on Chinese request Indian rice was sent through the Chumbi Valley trade route on orders of Nehru, with our foreign office being instructed to keep the matter under the wraps.
It was again in October1951, when Secretary-General in the External Affairs Ministry Bajpai cautioned Nehru about the distinct possibility of Chinese “small forces dribbling in” through the many passes on the border and “make(ing) trouble for India”, that the Prime Minister outrightly rejected such a contingency. The author says, “Nehru also felt that large expenditures on the Army would starve the development of the country and its social progress.” Much the same attitude sadly prevails even today in our babudom and political masters, when they are dealing with the Indian Army of today.
Nehru visited China in 1954 and his grandson Rajiv Gandhi in 1988. In between we had the 1967 Nathu-La clash and another one at Wangdung in Arunachal in 1986. Narasimha Rao in 1993, A.B. Vajpayee in 2003 and now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008, have all visited China, and yet the vexed border question in the northeast along the McMahon Line remains unresolved to this day. It should be clear to any Indian as to why China is keeping this dispute unresolved and open to dispute. And while the Dalai Lama resides in India, a previously independent and autonomous state has been erased from the world map.
Claude Arpi’s well researched and illuminating account of the failure of India’s diplomacy in its very backyard is a tribute to not only the author’s painstaking efforts at getting to the truth (which few Indian writers can be credited with as regards to writing on Tibet), but also marks a plus for the publishers who thought of bringing out this very instructive account. This study vividly points out that the peace-loving people like the Tibetans can no longer hope to remain in a Shangri-la of their own cut off from the prying eyes and their adventurous designs, and that to exist as an independent nation one must fine-tune not only its diplomacy but also be militarily strong enough to send out the right message.
( SOURCE-tHE TRIBUNE)
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