India needs to de-hyphenate China to improve ties with neighbours

Time used to be when the Indian strategic community would urge their American counterparts that for bilateral relations to improve, Washington should de-hyphenate the nation’s India-Pakistan equations. Once done, India-US ties have sort of hit the zenith and are still going up. Today, India faces a similar problem in relations with immediate neighbours, vis-à-vis their China ties. However, the very same strategic community in Delhi that advised Americans and other Westerners one day has a different prescription for neighbours on such occasions. In short, they want neighbours not to identify too close to China, especially in ways that make India uncomfortable. Counterparts in those nations use terms ranging from ‘suspicious’ to ‘hegemonic’ to describe relations with India especially in the China context — and such free advice, said and heard condescendingly. India cannot be blamed for developing such suspicions in the past, suspicions that used to border on anxiety and fear, but not anymore. A new generation of Indians, starting with policymakers, have been born, bred and tutored in modern diplomatic and strategic approaches, with the result the ‘Ghost of 62’ war defeat against China does not bother them too much. Of course, it owes also to the intervening changes in the post-Cold War global dynamics and its influence on India’s policy-making. It is more so in the background of economic reforms, which in turn ushered in a new thought-process, increasingly unbridled by the past. But then, the nation’s geo-political and geo-strategic priorities are determined and are addressed in the context of an inherited past, which cannot be ignored either. India has been making the required adjustments to make the grade. There it faces the inevitable dichotomy that every other nation in its place had faced in their time. Inherited history It is thus that the de-hyphenation dogma continues to haunt New Delhi even when it has been freed of the same in relation to Western views viz neighbourhood equations in the subcontinent. It pertains especially to the West’s relations with India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers with legacy issues dating back to seven-plus decades of intertwined history. Under the present Narendra Modi government in India, the inherited ‘past’ may go back by centuries, at times close to a millennia — as much nearer home as elsewhere, both in Pakistan and in Western capitals. From an Indian outlook, first, it was Pakistan, then it was China, then it was Pakistan and China, all in the first few decades of Independence. It is noteworthy that in the last of military adversities between India and Pakistan, Gen Pervez Musharraf flew down to Beijing in the midst of the war, to be told that it was Pakistan’s war, or the general’s war, and China would have none of it. In Washington, where he was summoned, Musharraf got an earful. A decade later, when Nepal’s left-leaning Prime Minister Pushpa Kumar Dahal ‘Prachanda’ visited Beijing after being sworn in on India’s Independence Day in 2008, he was told that his problems with India were his and his nation’s, and they were not that of China’s. That is what Prachanda told his nation publicly on his return to Kathmandu after going to China on his maiden visit as PM, as if to pay obeisance. Today, when Prachanda chose India as his first overseas destination after taking over the PM’s job for the third time — he did a second short stint in 2016-17 — he at least seems to be clear about his and his nation’s priorities. Maybe, like all good small nations, especially in India’s neighbourhood, Nepal too may continue to play India against China. But it is not unique to India or the subcontinent, as is being made out to be. In the larger South Asian context, it used to be India and Pakistan, now it is India and China. The change of contestant in the neighbourhood perceptions has nothing to do with the economic crisis which is currently haunting Pakistan as is the case with most other smaller neighbours of India. You can blame it on the global Covid lockdown and structural deficiencies in individual nations (and the region, too?), or both. India-China comparisons began capturing neighbourhood imagination at least a decade back. This was oiled and fuelled more by the Indian strategic community, through its suspicion-ridden approach to neighbourhood study and policies, inherited from the post-Independence Pakistani adversary. From a purely academic construct, it can even be argued that the hyphenated equation that neighbouring nations hold good in their relations with India and China separately has other potentials too. For instance, without possibly meaning it, constant consideration of the hyphenated equation between India and China that South Asian other nations hold has the potential to bring down China to the regional level, where Beijing wants to confine and consign India alone. In Beijing’s personal perspective they are the only global player from Asia, and they alone should be. But while dealing with South Asian nations in the India context, China tends to bring itself down, without acknowledging it. All-weather friend This does not mean that Nepal as a nation and even Prachanda as Prime Minister is going to dump China as a regional and international partner for good, and in favour of India. But the fact is that little Nepal too has been able to de-hyphenate its ties with India and China, forming borders on either side of the land-locked Himalayan nation. Looking around, Bhutan, India’s one and only all-weather friend in the region too has started making independent assessments of the nation’s China relations without intending to adversely impact the age-old political, economic and cultural ties with India. The recent revival of Sino-Bhutan talks to resolve bilateral border disputes without continuing to hinge it on to the larger India-China border issues have to be understood in this context. In a way, both Nepal and Bhutan have learnt to de-hyphenate their respective bilateral relations with India and China. It occurred in the case of Sri Lanka a decade and more ago but once again the Indian strategic community and at times, the policymakers misread it and misunderstood it. The same cannot be said of another Ocean neighbour in Maldives, where the domestic dynamics and a greater perception of hurt caused purportedly by India’s alleged interference in internal matters carry a greater weight than anywhere else in the neighbourhood. To a greater extent, Bangladesh seems to have beautifully designed a foreign policy which does not compromise on the nation’s sovereignty to choose its global partners even while continuing to be a trusted friend of India. Here again, as elsewhere in the neighbourhood, especially on the Ocean front, India’s comfort-level owes more to the personality and politics of the leader that the local people elect than at the institutional levels. There is thus a danger of slip-ups, derailment and re-alignment in the future, near and/or distant. Mural row and more It is not as if China is the only irritant in bilateral relations between India and its neighbours. In the case of Nepal for instance there are trade issues and more so political problems, which are influenced by domestic politics. It is like anywhere else in the neighbourhood. India has a larger-than-life presence and predominance in domestic political perceptions in these countries, often for no fault of India’s. Yes, there are some missteps that India too tends to take on occasions that tend to mar the atmosphere for a longer time. Some of it, for want of application of timely correctives, blows out of proportions, to embarrass India. The latest in a series in the larger neighbourhood context is the ‘Akhand Bharat’ mural displayed on the inner walls of the new Parliament Building which Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated, the other day. It may or may not have made so much news in Nepal for two reasons. One, PM Prachanda was in New Delhi, talking to Modi and his team, and also signed a host of bilateral MoUs – all going to indicate that the two nations and possibly the leaderships too have become warming up to each other once again. Not to miss a chance to target Prachanda nearer home, his domestic adversaries have blown it out of proportion. This is what often happens in individual neighbourhood nations. If individual ruling party and leader are seen as being favourable to India, then their domestic politico-electoral rivals package it as a crime, sin and anti-nationalism of the highest order. If the government in any of those countries is perceived as being unfriendly to India, then the latter tends to be sympathetic to the political Opposition there. With every election in each of those countries, India’s stakes go higher and higher, at times to a point of no return. The dynamics is daunting but it remains. Managing this dynamics is a full time job for the government in India (whoever, whenever). Though India has had the best of the diplomatic representation in each of these countries, increasingly since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, and more so post-Cold War, New Delhi is more tuned to the West than the neighbourhood, which is at the top of the Global South in New Delhi’s larger world view. Going back to the mural issue, domestic politics and the ruling dispensation’s political and foreign policy ideologies in India too has a nasty habit of visiting on neighbourhood relations in obtuse ways. Though the ruling BJP has stopped making constant references to ‘Akhand Bharat’, with particular reference to post-Partition Pakistan than even breakaway Bangladesh, the past imagery still remains. When it suits them, critics of the domestic government in countries such as Nepal have no problem picking it up and throwing it up at the government of the day, and more so India, without considering the possible consequences over the medium and long terms. What may have embarrassed the guest even more is the way New Delhi reacted to it all, as if in a casual fashion. India’s spokesman said that it was possibly a cultural representation of a distant past, and not contemporary. That is precisely the point from the Nepalese view. Neighbouring nations do not want such ‘cultural references’, that too at a time when the ruling BJP is seeking a ‘cultural unification’ of the Indian nation in the place of the existing ‘constitutional unification’. For them, such expressions are only a reminder of what may be in store for them, in the future, where someone in Delhi would go back and declare that culturally, Nepal too used to be a part of ancient India, and should be ‘culturally re-united’ with Bharat. The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.