Hunting with hounds, running with hare: China can’t have India ties, both ways

If someone in Beijing still thought that they could continue with the habit of hunting with the hound and running with the hare in matters of bilateral relations with India, New Delhi has reiterated that it cannot continue anymore. India has reportedly declined the Chinese request to resume passenger flights, halted after the Galwan incident four years ago, until peace and tranquillity returned to the border.

It does not stop with the India-China border alone. During Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s recent visit to China, Beijing reportedly acknowledged Islamabad’s known position on J&K, earlier a full-fledged state in the Indian Union, now a Union Territory under the direct administration of the Centre, as ordained through a resolution passed by the federal Parliament.

A joint statement issued at the end of Sharif’s meeting with President Xi Jinping said that Islamabad briefed the Chinese side on the latest developments of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. “The Chinese side reiterated that the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is left over from history, and should be properly and peacefully resolved in accordance with the UN Charter, relevant UN Security Council resolutions, and bilateral agreements,” it said further.

In New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has promptly rejected the joint statement as ‘unwarranted’. As an MEA statement pointed out, ‘The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the Union Territory of Ladakh have been, are, and will always remain integral and inalienable parts of India. No other country has the locus standi to comment on the same.’

Twin-tracks, but…

There are twin tracks in all these. On the one hand, through the Galwan episode, China under Xi has created a ‘new normal’ for India to deal with while undertaking future negotiations for a border settlement. It is an old trick nations have played, but it is not working for China vis-à-vis India. It did not work in the past either, hence the 1962 war, which India faced without adequate military preparations.

Then there is the standard Chinese style of wanting to hoodwink India before hitting. In recent times, it has occurred in the form of Wuhan and Mahabalipuram informal summits between President Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They were interspersed by Doklam and Galwan, thus showing up the Chinese Dragon for what it is.

Hence, for China to expect a revival of normalcy, beginning with passenger flights, was too simplistic to assume. An economically stronger India with well-wired links to all other nations and blocs of the world has no reason to compromise, let alone go on its feet. Resuming broken ties without setting the Galwan issue to mutual satisfaction (read: India’s satisfaction) is just not going to happen. Even the resumption of the larger border talks, which anyway may not be on the top of India’s agenda, will have to wait.

Misleading Pakistanis…

Likewise, mischief was all written over the China-Pakistan joint statement referring to Jammu and Kashmir. Successive governments have reiterated that the whole of J&K, including PoK and the areas that Pakistan gave away to China, are all an integral part of the Union. This position was formally presented to the world through a unanimous resolution of the Indian Parliament in the early nineties, when P V Narasimha Rao was prime minister. Successive governments and prime ministers have endorsed the same. They have had no choice, either.

The mischief in the joint statement is in parts. The reference to UNSC resolutions et al is without context, hence incomplete. While ordering a plebiscite, the UNSC very long ago—when it commanded international moral authority in the post-War era, unlike now—had resolved that Pakistan should vacate the PoK to begin with. The 1948 resolution also implied that the administrative control of the whole of J&K should rest in India.

By not acknowledging the last two parts of the UNSC resolution, Pakistan has been feeding chicken-feed to its population. Successive governments in Islamabad and the military headquarters in Rawalpindi seemed to have conspired together on this one point—to keep their own population ignorant and misled through the past seven decades.

Bilateral, not trilateral 

As the MEA statement indicated, though in a slightly different context, India has for long treated the external aspects of the ‘Kashmir issue’ as a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan. Through the Shimla Agreement signed by Prime Minister Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto in 1972, Pakistan agreed in writing to keep it bilateral. That was after the severe drubbing in the ‘Bangladesh War’ only months earlier in 1971. Bhutto needed to sign on dotted lines if he had to obtain the release of the 92,000 Pakistani PoWs—the highest since the two World Wars—and avert an impending street challenge to his leadership back home.

Successive governments in New Delhi have remained steadfast in this approach. Even when some Western countries, starting with the US, began wanting to get involved, especially after the India-Pakistan nuclear weapons tests in 1998, if only to free the region of bilateral tensions, New Delhi stuck to the stand. It was so before it, and it has been so afterwards, too.

True, the Sino-Pak joint statement does not indicate that Beijing wants to get involved. But the very fact that China allowed itself to be led by a client state like Pakistan to dictate terms to Beijing, for them to include what should have remained a private discussion, even if taken up, does not speak well of the nation’s intention for reviving bilateral ties with India, beginning with passenger flights, for instance.

Sadly mistaken

Yet, more mischief is written all over the joint statement, for reasons that are not far to seek. In the early sixties, Pakistan handed over the Shaksgam tract to China for good, claiming ownership over the whole of the occupied region and hence seeking to assert such ‘ownership’ through a bilateral transaction with a third country.

China wants to show that New Delhi would have to engage with both Islamabad and Beijing, as the latter too is in possession of land that formed a part of the PoK. The indication was that only a trilateral arrangement would work.

Leave aside the known Indian position on bilateral and trilateral approaches to problem-solving, there is also no great hurry for India to rush things up. Given the economic reality of our times, Pakistan is in no position to fight yet another war with India, either directly or through stealth. If PM Sharif thought that by kicking up new dust over Kashmir, once a perennial issue, he could divert his people’s attention away from the economic crisis and resultant restlessness nearer home, he may be sadly mistaken.

According to local media reports and admissions by some of Pakistan’s own politicians, the people are in no mood for political gimmicks of the past. If anything, there seems to be overwhelming admiration for India, which is larger in size and hence has problems in every way. Yet it has become the fifth largest economy in the world and is marching forward even faster.

Even anti-India nationalist Pakistanis seem to feel so when the comparison is between their economies and the resultant social development indices. It is not unlikely they too may protest if a dummy in Islamabad or a general in Rawalpindi wanted to fire at India from the shoulders of China. If nothing else, such a line of thinking is possible among Pakistanis, going by the unwarranted and misplaced reference to Kashmir in the joint statement.

Of course, the question remains. No one is talking about it yet, but what if a plebiscite were to be held in PoK? The greater chances are that the people would want to integrate with their Kashmiri brethren, and that too under the Indian Union!

The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.