Neither the dissenters within the Janata Party like Mr. Madhu Limaye nor its worst detractors outside can object to Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s proposed visit to China on terms which the Minister for External Affairs himself has defined. He is, he has said, going there on an exploratory mission and he does not expect much by way of results from one visit “after so many years and after all that happened between India and China”.
But what does he propose to explore? China’s willingness to settle the border dispute which its previous leadership wilfully aggravated first in 1959 when Mr. Chou En-lai wrote to Mr. Nehru saying his government did not recognise the McMahon Line as the boundary between the two countries and then in 1962 when it launched a massive attack on this country’s thinly manned border posts, both in the eastern and the western sectors in the Himalayas and occupied, in Aksaichin, areas far in excess of even its own earlier claims?
Or does he also propose to explore the depth of the Chinese leadership’s hostility towards the Soviet Union and its commitment to the containment of what it calls “social imperialism”? Its overall foreign policy and how far and whether friendship with India fits into it? Its attitude towards Pakistan with whom it has established a direct road link through the Karakoram highway, which it proposes to duplicate at great expense and to no great economic advantage, because as a trade route it will be wholly uneconomic? Its concern over recent developments in Iran and in countries around the strategically important Horn of Africa? The state of its economy? Its capacity or incapacity to sustain its modernisation drive which is linking it closely with Japan and the West, including the United States?
No Choice
In a sense, Mr. Vajpayee does not have much of a choice. The Chinese leaders, the present ones no less than their predecessors, are, on the face of it at least, the truest, if not the only, followers of the late Mr. John Foster Dulles. Like him, they not only regard the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to their country’s security and peace, but also neatly divide the world into friends and potential friends on the one hand and foes and potential foes on the other. Or, to put it differently, they have a fairly primitive world view which obliges them to try and fit other countries and their policies into it. Witness China’s solicitude for the utterly cruel, despotic and inefficient Mobutu regime in Zaire. Thus, no one visiting Peking has any option in the matter. He or she has to discuss the Chinese leaders’ view of the world situation with them. Mr. Vajpayee’s experience is not likely to be different. Certainly the Chinese do not accept the Indian concept of bilateralism.
But be that as it may, in view of the Prime Minister’s explicit statement that the Chinese have given an assurance that they are willing to settle the border dispute, Mr. Subramaniam Swamy’s categorical statement that they seek nothing more from this country than a commitment of neutrality in the event of a Sino-Soviet war as the price of a border settlement and the friendly noises coming out of Peking, it will be churlish for one to discourage Mr. Vajpayee from going ahead with his exploratory mission. Even so, I, for one, remain persuaded that Mr. Vajpayee will be well-advised to stick to his cautious approach and that the border settlement is going to be a long-drawn-out affair if it is going to be reached at all. The Chinese can, if they choose, resolve such disputes fairly quickly, as they did in the case of Nepal. But their problems with India are much more complicated, as anyone familiar with the correspondence between the two governments between 1959 and 1962 and subsequent developments would testify.
Contrary to the widespread impression, the key issue in India-China relations is not New Delhi’s ties with the Soviet Union but Peking’s with Pakistan. For, as I see it, the Chinese attitude towards a border settlement with this country is not likely to be divorced from its overall policy towards the sub-continent of which its attitude towards Islamabad must be an integral part. This formulation may come as a surprise to some of Mr. Vajpayee’s aides in the External Affairs Ministry who have been weaned on the Western view of the world even if they have favoured the policy of friendship with the Soviet Union in the national interest. But it is incontestable, as I hope to show presently.
Self-Evident
It is self-evident that the Soviet Union’s capacity to wage war against China – the proposition that the Kremlin is planning to go to war with China is absurd but it is necessary to take note of it in view of Peking’s incessant propaganda that this is so – does not and cannot increase as a result of its friendship with, and its military assistance to, India. In view of the harsh geographical fact that India is located on the southern side of the mighty Himalayas and the equally harsh political fact that China is in possession of Tibet, it is equally self-evident that India, too, cannot, by virtue of its friendship with the Soviet Union, acquire the capacity to wage war against China, or even to assist the Soviet Union at war with China.
It can acquire, indeed it has acquired, the ability to defend itself in the Himalayas. But the Soviet contribution in that regard has been fairly limited. Soviet assistance to India has been pertinent and valuable in the context of New Delhi’s need to match the Pakistani buildup with Western, Chinese and Arab help. This has been the case in the past and this remains so today. Indeed, it is not an accident that India went in for the treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in 1971 when it felt threatened as a result of the massive influx of refugees from what is now Bangladesh, and not in the ’sixties in the wake of the Chinese attack in 1962. To be candid, the treaty was also intended to ensure that China did not intervene in the conflict which appeared unavoidable in the summer of 1971. But that was a defensive approach.
The effectiveness of China-Pakistan ties is not similarly circumscribed. Peking’s military assistance and assurance of support, which it is in a position to make good, clearly increases Islamabad’s capacity to make war on India. Indeed, it is open to question whether President Ayub Khan would have risked an armed conflict with this country in 1965 if he had not been confident that, in the event of a serious reverse, he could bank on China. He in fact did suffer a reverse; he did send his Foreign Minister, Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, to Peking to ask for help and Peking did serve the famous ultimatum to New Delhi which did cause considerable concern to Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri. It may also be pertinent to recall that it was with the greatest hesitation that India withdrew a certain number of troops from the Pakistan border in 1962 when it was facing the possibility of trouble from the Chinese because it was rightly afraid that the Pakistanis might seize the opportunity to attack not only Jammu and Kashmir but also Punjab. President Ayub Khan did not do so. But he could have, and that is what is relevant.
Certain
It is reasonably certain that Mr. Nehru recognised the possibility of India being involved in a two-front conflict as soon as the Chinese moved into Tibet and that this fear greatly influenced his decision to come to terms with Peking on Tibet. The Chinese and the Pakistanis too, recognised the possibility of effectively making common cause against India, though both were rather slow to send signals to each other. But when, finally, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Mohammad Ali Bogra, met Mr. Chou En-lai at Bandung in April 1955, he had no difficulty in convincing the latter that Pakistan had not concluded the mutual security pact with the United States and had not joined the Baghdad Pact in an anti-China spirit. And if Mr. Rushbrook Williams, who enjoyed the confidence of the Pakistani ruling elite in the ’fifties, is to be believed, the Chinese sent a secret envoy to Karachi later the same year to let it be known that their relations with India were not as good as they appeared on the surface and that there was scope for China-Pakistan cooperation. It followed that they would not accept the Indian stand on. Kashmir and they never did, not even at the height of “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai”.
It can legitimately be argued that all this has become irrelevant with the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 because the Chinese know as well as anyone else that Pakistan can neither achieve military parity with India nor seriously threaten India’s position in Jammu and Kashmir. And this argument can be said to have been greatly strengthened since the overthrow of Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in July 1977 because General Zia-ul Haq has so mismanaged Pakistan’s affairs as to expose himself and the country to ridicule. But it should not be particularly difficult to appreciate that this argument can cut both ways. The weaker Pakistan’s own position and the greater India’s ability to establish itself as the preeminent power in South Asia, the greater can be the Chinese anxiety to shore up the former and embarrass and weaken the latter.
According to some western experts, the Chinese interest in the frontier regions of Jammu and Kashmir is related to their feeling of insecurity in Sinkiang and Tibet. They see the Karakoram highway in this context and not just in the context of China’s friendly relations with Pakistan and the desire to strengthen them. They cite the fact that when in 1973 and 1974 Mr. Bhutto was trying to play down the Kashmir issue, the Chinese kept talking of the “right of self-determination” for the people of Kashmir. Consequently these experts take the view that it is unlikely that the Chinese leaders will ever accept the Indian stand on Kashmir.
(To be concluded…)