Opinion Gilgit-Baltistan: India must speak up

The question at the moment is not whether Islamabad will deliver on its promises to the long-oppressed people of Gilgit-Baltistan. It has been compelled to act amidst the growing unrest in the Northern Areas that has legal,political,ethnic,sectarian and geopolitical dimensions.

India,one would have thought,is obliged,by its claim for the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir,to affirm its locus standi with Gilgit-Baltistan at this important moment in its political evolution.

Unlike China which never misses even the most minor and seemingly trivial occasion to declare its territorial claims with all countries,India’s interest in the vital regions of J&K under the control of Pakistan seems episodic.

The question is not whether a particular territorial claim can be enforced at the moment. Beijing knows quite well that it is not in a position to forcibly take the Tawang tract in Arunachal Pradesh away from India. In relentlessly affirming its claims,Beijing keeps the issue alive,makes it an important part of the bilateral,regional and global agenda,and develops diplomatic leverages. India must do the same with the parts of Jammu and Kashmir that are now under Pakistan’s control.

Gilgit-Baltistan is not just one minor part of India’s prolonged struggle with Pakistan over Kashmir. The region,along with Ladakh,underlines the often forgotten fact that China is very much part of the Kashmir problem.

China’s control over the Aksai Chin plateau in the eastern side of Jammu and Kashmir is part of the territorial dispute between Beijing and Delhi. India has also contested the Pakistani decision to transfer a strip of the Northern Areas — called Shaksgam valley — to China in 1963. Even more important,as China’s economic profile has risen rapidly in Northern Areas in the last few years. As on all its expansive frontiers throughout Asia,China has poured money and men into developing transport links and undertaking major projects in Gilgit-Baltistan. It is a matter of time that Northern Areas will get integrated into Western China’s economic dynamism.

During the last few years,India has spoken up rarely for the political aspirations of the people of Gilgit and Baltistan. The time has come for Delhi for a more active engagement with a region that forms a fabulous crown for India’s imagined territoriality and has long been at the centre of inner Asia’s geopolitical knot.

(C. Raja Mohan is currently the Henry A. Kissinger Chair on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress,Washington DC).