Rebuff and Reminder

Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has done well by rebuffing Beijing over its opposition to the Dalai Lama’s planned visit to Arunachal Pradesh while also declaring that he and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao have agreed to maintain ‘‘peace and tranquillity’’ along the disputed border in that State. On Sunday, in his first public comment since China came out strongly against the Tibetan spiritual leader’s November trip to Tawang, which along with the rest of the State China claims as its own, the Prime Minister described the Dalai Lama as a ‘‘religious leader’’ and India’s ‘‘honoured guest’’. At the end of his two-day visit to Thailand for India-ASEAN summit, Dr Singh said that he had ‘‘explained to Premier Wen that the Dalai Lama is our honoured guest. He is a religious leader’’. This is a timely reminder to China about India’s position on Arunachal Pradesh and the Dalai Lama while at the same time ‘‘reaffirming the need to maintain peace and tranquillity on the border pending the resolution of the boundary question’’. Now that Dr Singh and Jiabao have ‘‘agreed that the existing mechanism for bilateral cooperation should be used to resolve all issues amicably in the spirit of strategic and cooperative partnership’’, can one hope for some quietude in India-China relationship?

Resolution of India-China border dispute is basically a function of Beijing’s attitude and acceptance of the ground reality. Its preposterous claims over the entire State of Arunachal Pradesh, which has no China linkage whatsoever, must first stop. Beijing would do well to realize that India is a democratic state and, therefore, engagement with the neighbour cannot be in a framework informed by an authoritarian mindset. It ultimately boils down to attitude then, unlike how an editorial commentary by The People’s Daily (October 14) — the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China — interpreted India: that its is a ‘‘hegemony’’ inherited from its colonial past. It is now time that New Delhi also told Beijing that if there is something that India is proud of having inherited from its past it is the inspiration of a unique civilization that motivates us to resist and fight all kinds of imperialism as well as jingoistic nationalism that tends to be expansionist. What China should realize is that it is not India that has provoked any of the wars it has fought with its neighbours, and that a Pakistan dimension to India-China relationship will be interpreted by India as a calculated mischief. It is time India made China realize that fact of life. New Delhi’s message should be loud and clear: that a responsible handling of border issues does not mean weakness, but evolved diplomacy, and that India has always sought peace and tranquillity in the region but it cannot be forced to remain quiet despite provocation of the highest order. The Prime Minister has set the right tone, and now it is for the Ministry of External Affairs to formulate a tangible China policy in consultation with strategic affairs think tanks, not by invoking the stereotypical bureaucrats alone. Let New Dehi’s voice be more assertive in the days to come. THE SENTINEL