Retreat from folly

All three criteria are met in full measure in India’s China policy for the past fifty years. The watershed years are probably 1962 and 1982 — marking first a military setback and then an economic one — but the policies that made these possible cast long shadows backward and forward.

When Jawaharlal Nehru announced in Chennai that he had ‘‘ordered the Army to throw them (the Chinese) out’’ it was clear that he was living in a fool’s paradise. His government had done nothing to prevent the conquest of Tibet — even waiving some rights inherited from British days — thus bringing the Chinese army to the borders of India rather than several hundred miles away. (Meeting Tuchman’s first criterion, there is a letter from Sardar Patel warning Nehru of the consequences of this folly; but the Sardar would pass away within weeks of writing that note, his admonitions ignored until it was too late.) Worse, the Indian Army had been starved for a decade, one of the world’s best armies reduced to the second rank. Finally, India’s foreign policy had been totally mishandled, exposing the then prime minister as a pompous popinjay. (Having spent a decade abusing the United States, India would go, begging-bowl in hand, to Washington for a few arms.)

Twenty years later, India would again be caught on the wrong side of history. China’s leaders would begin the process of opening up the economy a decade before India would be forced to do so. ‘‘What does it matter,’’ Deng would demand rhetorically, ‘‘if a cat is white or black as long as it catches mice?’’ One decade later Narasimha Rao, that supposed architect of liberalisation, would be singing the praises of the ‘‘middle way’’. (If I remember correctly, the Congress is still officially sworn to socialism!)

In fact, Indian governments seemed to take a perverse pleasure in doing themselves down. Indira Gandhi repeatedly denied visas to American scholars by making a bogeyman of the CIA without offering any proof. Many universities then transferred funds earmarked for India to our northern neighbour. There was, of course, a long-term consequence; as scholarly attention turned elsewhere, India would slowly be ignored by the think-tanks, an important facet of life in Washington.

It has taken a long time to restore some degree of sanity to Sino-Indian relations. As late as 1998, immediately after Pokharan-II, India cited the Chinese threat as a major incentive in having tested nuclear weapons. This supposedly secret letter to President Clinton was leaked to The New York Times with predictable consequences in Beijing. It goes to the Vajpayee government’s credit that it has repaired the damage, and even taken the relationship some way forward.

I am not sure if Indians at large have lost their fear of the Chinese. But how many realise that the Chinese have at least much cause to suspect our intentions? If we claim that China illegally occupies about 35,000 sq km of Indian territory then China believes that India possesses more than 85,000 sq km of its land. And the truth is that the boundary between the two has never been mapped properly. (Look at maps of nineteenth century India and you will see that what is now Arunachal Pradesh was definitely not part of the country!)

Arguably, the biggest folly of Indian foreign policy in the decades immediately past was to oppose both the most powerful nation on earth and our mightiest neighbour simultaneously. There is an old saying that it pays to keep the zamindar on your side if you want to fight with your neighbour, and vice versa. India tried to combat both. (In 1971 this metaphorical battle came to the verge of actual war; even as the U.S.S. Enterprise sailed into the Bay of Bengal, the Nixon White House considered asking China to step in if India went all out against West Pakistan.)

I am not, to be honest, terribly sanguine about the future of Indo-Chinese relations. There are so many potential pitfalls that it will take some deft eye- and leg-work to avoid tripping. We are, for instance, almost certain to have trade-related disputes no matter how quiet the borders may be. But India had to make at least some attempt to break the logjam.

Finally, while this column has never exactly gone overboard in praising the Congress, one must give Sonia Gandhi her due. She and her party have been quite positive in their reactions to the prime minister’s visit to China, another healthy — and refreshing — break with the past.