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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Arunachal Pradesh

A Theatre of the Absurd

22 Wed Aug 2012

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aksai Chin, Arunachal Pradesh, China, foreign policy, India, Kashmir, media, nuclear, Pakistan, United States

Soman, Appu. Through the Looking Glass. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Publish Green, 2012. 343 pp.

There is no phrase that describes Indian diplomacy better than ‘Theatre of the Absurd,’ a literary genre which posits a pessimistic view of humanity and is typically characterized by plays which have illogical actions, meaningless dialogues and unrealistic plots. Appu Soman’s latest book, Through the Looking Glass: Diplomacy, Indian Style (henceforth TTLG) conveys that view splendidly. The title, an obvious reference to Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, explains with a bewilderment in no way less than Alice’s, India’s relations with Pakistan, China, and the United States since 1998. Given the recent time frame of this project, it does not have the benefit of methodical and tedious work in government archives (though only the US allows that). Unlike his first book, Double-Edged Sword: Nuclear Diplomacy in Unequal Conflicts, The United States and China, 1950-1958 (an excellent read, by the way), Soman intends to engage the layperson on the rotten state of foreign policy practice and commentary in India. The result is a well-documented analysis of media reports and government press releases that Soman weaves together to illustrate the suicidal nature of India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the incompetence of the Fourth Estate.

TTLG is organised by country, India’s relations with Pakistan, China, and the United States. A final chapter looks at the media’s failings in critical reportage of foreign policy and national security. While this is a time-tested model and works well in listing the disasters of the MEA and its fourth estate allies, a chronological narrative might have helped in showing how these different areas interacted with one another. Nonetheless, the thematic approach employed serves to underscore India’s failures on specific fronts rather than present a general picture of gloom and doom.

Pakistan occupies and has occupied the mindspace of most Indians. For better or for worse, the sense that Pakistanis are like an errant sibling rather than an outsider (like China) has preoccupied the Romantic Indian. This point, only hinted at by Soman, might go a long way in explaining the soft stance India has taken on Pakistan, particularly given the recent leadership of Atal Behari Vajpayee (ABV) and Manmohan Singh (MMS) who have strong ties to that north Indian, Islamicate culture. In their negotiations with Pakistan, the Government of India (GoI) has consistently diluted its stance, settled for symbolism and words, and failed to hold Pakistan accountable for its broken promises.  As an example of such behaviour, Soman points to a damning compilation of External Affairs Minister SM Krishna’s declarations just before the 2009 Sharm el-Sheikh summit, holding India’s vacuous policies to sunlight:

  • May 30: Pakistan must demolish the terror infrastructure and punish those guilty of the attack on Mumbai before the dialogue could resume
  • June 5: We will not talk unless they take concrete measures to prevent terror attacks emanating from the soil of Pakistan aimed against India. The release of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed only shows that Pakistan is not serious about terror and all that terror spells out.
  • July 1: India is not afraid of talking, Pakistan should take concrete and visible action against the terrorist group responsible for the Mumbai attacks and ensure that such attacks would not reoccur
  • July 5: We want the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to be brought to justice. That is the only thing India is asking for and we are waiting
  • July 9: The meeting will discuss what Pakistan is doing and can do to prevent terrorism from Pakistan against India and to bring justice to those responisble for these attacks, including the horrendous crime of the attacks in Mumbai
  • July 14: India would like a visible response from Pakistan. I think Pakistan should give us an undertaking that they will not let their soil be used for terrorist activities directed against India

Such dilution is not found only in the MEA – Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Congress Party in power, declared in July 2009, “We support the resumption of the dialogue process with Pakistan, but only after it has demonstrated its seriousness to bring justice to the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks to justice, and to prevent its territory from being used to launch terror attacks on any part of our country.” Yet neither Sonia Gandhi nor Parliament voiced any opposition as dialogue resumed without any action from Pakistan’s side. In November 2009, P. Chidambaram issued a warning to Pakistan: “We have been gaining strength day by day to counter terrorism from across the border. I have been warning Pakistan not to play games with us. (I have told them that) the last game should be Mumbai attacks. Stop it there…. If terrorists and militants from Pakistan try to carry out any attacks in India, they will not only be defeated, but will be retaliated [sic] very strongly.” Two months later, blasts rocked Pune, and the GoI was yet again silent.

Such impotence is defended gallantly by India’s commentariat with the use of poor history (which few Indians know). “Our anti-Pakistan hawks have a single refrain: Pakistan and India are destined to be enemies; no reconciliation is possible between them given the history of three-and-a-half wars, the military’s dominance in Pakistan, and the festering of any number of disputes, ” Praful Bidwai thundered in his columns in The Hindu and Rediff in July 2009. This is a “totally illiterate and a-historical judgment,” he opined, citing the example of harmonious relations between France and Germany. As Soman points out, this is simply asinine – France enjoyed somewhat harmonious relations with Germany only after Germany was obliterated and occupied after World War II and not allowed to have a significant military afterwards by the victorious Allied powers. In fact, France has vigorously opposed German rearmament even within the ambit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Furthermore, Germany never waged in terrorist attacks on France over Alsace-Lorraine.

Another journalist, Siddharth Varadarajan, explained, perhaps unintentionally, the rationale behind New Delhi’s hankering for talks. “If you are talking,” he wrote, “you can always suspend talks. But if you are not talking, there will be enormous political pressure to react in ways that might be counterproductive.” In other words, as Soman explains Varadarajan’s inadvertent truth-byte, the purpose of talks for the GoI is to deflect public demands for accountability for the terror attacks, not to actually further India’s interests. Thus, if talks were scheduled during or soon after an attack, they can be cancelled as a “stern” measure of India’s disapproval, never mind that no other tangible action would be taken against actually preventing the next attack or bringing the perpetrators of previous attacks to justice.

Soman’s criticism of Indian foreign policy on Pakistan is hard to refute. He presents overwhelming evidence to show how India’s political masters have repeatedly bungled their handling of a quasi-rogue state, and how the media has repeatedly served to spin the government’s policies in a manner acceptable to the public. One criticism that might be made of TTLG is that it is easier to be wise after the fact, but this argument is fallacious because the GoI had no dearth of hindsight or experience from 1947 until 2012. However, Soman’s argument would have been more complete if he had also suggested alternatives to GoI policies. The fact is that Pakistan wages asymmetric warfare against India from behind a nuclear shield, and this severely restricts India’s military options. What can New Delhi do differently to bring Islamabad to heel?

On China, the GoI’s timbre is different. Rather than diluting its stance every few days as with Pakistan, the modus operandi seems to be to ignore that a problem exists. Since 1949, India has failed to do any systematic defence planning with regard to its frontier with China. This is, despite Jawaharlal Nehru’s deep mistrust of Chinese leaders (something the Indian Right tries to whitewash). After the shock of 1962 died down, New Delhi has sought to resolve the border dispute with China on multiple occasions but Beijing has either rebuffed such initiatives of made excessive demands and effectively scuttled any hope of resolution. The gap between India and China has widened over the years, as China has consistently built up military infrastructure in Tibet opposite Arunachal Pradesh and in Aksai Chin, putting up roads, railroads, helipads, and even missile silos, but the Indian side of the border remained a wilderness. On a few occasions, India even stopped what little work was going on in the border region upon receiving Chinese complaints.

As Soman reminds us, China has not only acted against Indian security interests itself, but it is also largely responsible for propping up Pakistan (while the US looked the other way) as an anti-India force, giving it nuclear assistance, weapons blueprints, missiles, and other military aid. India has rarely raised these issues in its dealings with China, and when it has, the GoI has been satisfied with Beijing’s blatant lies that such reports are all American propaganda. A clear example of such timidity is after India’s overt nuclearisation in 1998, when George Fernandes declared China as India’s “Enemy No. 1.” Beijing took exception to Fernandes’ statement, and New Delhi was quick to remove the minister from the spotlight. The mainstream media, the CPI(M), and the PMO all turned on the minister, calling his remarks provocative and uncalled for. A rare dissenting voice was former Foreign Secretary AP Venkateswaran, who warned, ” The moment that they (the Chinese) feel that you are bending over backwards (to appease them), they will take advantage.” As if to prove Venkateswaran correct, China extracted India’s recognition of Tibet as an integral part of China during ABV’s 2003 visit, while giving no commitment to recognising Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, or Kashmir as a part of India.

Furthermore, just as Pakistan has successfully delinked negotiations over Kashmir and other issues from taking action on terrorism, China has delinked its military assistance to Pakistan – including nuclear and missile technology – from trade or the border dispute. This is a total disaster of Indian foreign policy surpassed perhaps only by the likes of the Greeks at Salamis or the Romans at Cannae or Adrianople. Soman quotes a Times of India article that gushed after ABV’s 2003 visit to Beijing, “It is irrelevant what we take or give on Sikkim and Tibet because old notions about territory are no longer sustainable… [I]n a knowledge economy it makes almost no sense to devote precious time and energy to coveting bits and pieces of land.” Soman writes, “The media’s tendency to sensationalize, coupled with its failure to investigate the reports of incursions and present the correct picture, has hidden from the public what is really happening.” A BJP team that visited the India-China border region reported that China was continuing to “grab land by the inches,” revealing that in all likelihood, India had lost more land to China since that fateful October in 1962. The UPA has been silent on this issue, and the media has taken no interest in the BJP’s report either.

China has hounded India on almost every issue imaginable – border skirmishes, arming Pakistan, transferring nuclear and missiles technology to Islamabad, blocking international loans to development projects in Arunachal Pradesh, cyber warfare of epic proportions against Indian facilities, terrorism (blocked listing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist organisation thrice), the Indo-US nuclear deal, permanent membership to the United Nations Security Council, building dams on the Brahmaputra river, de facto possession of Gilgit-Baltistan, arming rebels in India’s northeastern quadrant, gaining access to Indian markets but restricting access to its own markets to Indian goods by creating tariffs, flooding Africa with knock-offs of Indian brands of consumer goods and medicines…the list is nearly endless. The Indian response to this, under the NDA as much as under the UPA, has only been to look away and fawn obsequiously over bizarre concepts such as “Chindia.”

The third country Soman analyses India’s relations with is the United States. Much of the differences between the United States and India arose due to their clashing world views during the Cold War. While the US criticised India’s supposed non-alignment and the close relations it enjoyed with the Soviet Union, it is difficult for New Delhi not see US actions as anything other than detrimental to Indian security – its arming of Pakistan, the rapprochement with China, and Washington’s pressure on New Delhi to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The end of the Cold War brought a sliver of hope for improving Indo-US relations under the presidency of George HW Bush, or Bush 41. However, not much came out of it, and the Clinton era, despite the hype, was one of unmitigated disaster for India. President Bill Clinton put pressure on India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, reversed the position of Bush 41 on Kashmir (who had accepted Kashmir as a part of India) and re-labelled it a disputed territory, refused to declare Pakistan a terrorist state (and co-birthed with Pakistani strategists the idea that the world could not afford to let Pakistan collapse), put pressure on Russia (in 1993) to renege on the sale of cryogenic engines to India, and continued the policy of turning a blind eye to Sino-Pakistani collusion on nuclear and missile technology. After India’s 1998 nuclear tests, Clinton did his best to “come down on India like a ton of bricks,” vetoing World Bank loans to India (despite explicit provisions in the charter to keep loan decisions non-political) and passed sanctions against Indian defence firms which set back DRDO projects by years. Furthermore, despite not having Afghanistan as an excuse any more, the Clinton administration continued America’s soft policy on terrorism of Pakistani origin, as was evidenced by Washington’s relative lack of concern at the hijacking of IC 813 in 1999. Soman admits, however, that US policies that had a detrimental effect on Indian security were never about India or even Pakistan but about US interests. The GoI simply abdicated its role of putting Indian concerns to the United States government emphatically.

George W Bush’s administration has received a much better reception in India, but Soman suggests that it would behoove Indians to only be cautiously optimistic. Bush 43 no doubt represents a sea change in Indo-US relations. Unfortunately for India, the September 11 attacks raised Pakistan’s value as the US invaded Afghanistan, and India’s terrorism agenda had to take a back seat to US interests. Thus, Bush 43 was forced to soft pedal on terrorism out of necessity, upsetting ABV’s government. For example, the attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001 evoked barely a murmur from the War on Terror team. Nonetheless, the nuclear deal and US assistance to India in obtaining a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was, as Soman admits, something that would have been nearly impossible for India to do on its own.

Little ire is spared Indian elites who voiced platitudes of a natural alliance between the oldest and the largest democracies. TTLG reminds them that despite a nice massage to India’s ego, little has transpired between the United States and India in concrete terms, particularly under Barack Obama’s regime. Fancy acronyms such as NSSP (Next Steps in Strategic Partnership) are followed in close succession by other acronyms such as EUMA (End User Monitoring Agreement), CISMOA (Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement), LSA (Logistics Support Agreement), and BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation). Until New Delhi and Washington can come to a mutually satisfactory position on these, US sales of equipment such as the C-130J transport aircraft and the P-8I maritime reconnaissance aircraft are delivered to India with some items withheld from them.

Soman also argues against the concept of dehyphenation that India’s diplomats have seen as a great achievement. In essence, the goal of South Block mandarins was to get the United States to respond to India and Pakistan separately, not trying to balance policies towards one with equivalent policies towards the other. Soman argues that what the US does with Pakistan is bound to have an effect on India and vice versa. Thus, dehyphenating India and Pakistan only allows the US to pursue its goals to the maximum while disregarding India’s objectives.

It is disconcerting to note the abundance of utterly nonsensical pronouncements from think tanks in the United States. Part of this is because of a total failure of a strategic dialogue within India, and the absence of a strategic community that is off the government’s apron strings. Another part is the massive machinery of the Congress government that has taken every opportunity to vilify – to outsiders – any opposition to itself. The success of this is seen in the denial of a visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the problems caused by the allegation of ties between senior Obama aide Sonal Shah and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This makes any counter-narrative to the one woven by US think tanks difficult. One example of intellectual sophistication on South Asian matters Soman cites is Christine Fair’s response to the Bombay attacks in November 2008. Then a Fellow at Rand, Fair said to the New York Times, “This is a domestic issue. This is not India’s 9/11.” Fair blamed India’s failure to correct its economic disparities and address its “rising Muslim problem” publicly. This failure of the Indian state had created a lot of very angry Muslims, according to Fair, though the “Indians will have a strong incentive to link this to al-Qaeda.” She later tried to clarify her position and admitted her error, but such lapses in a crisis situation can have serious repercussions.

The reader should not take Soman’s critique of Indo-US relations as his opposition to the development of a strategic partnership between the two nations or his support of the much-hyped buncombe of strategic autonomy. In fact, Soman states clearly that both

New Delhi and Washington need to do some deep thinking about what they want from each other and learn to communicate their mutual expectations better. Indo-US relations have been carried on the back of sentiments for too long. The times warrant a more substantive relationship, one with a firm foundation based on an appreciation of each other’s strategic interests… A close Indo-US security partnership would have a positive effect on regional and global security.

While the view in India may be that they have been on the receiving end of US slights, Soman explains that it is up to India to “fight for its interests, not ‘understand’ American motivations for pursuing policies that go against vital Indian interests, however meritorious they are.”

One objection to Soman’s understanding of India-US-Pakistan relations is the notion of dehyphenation. Soman argues that such a move only hurts India, but his view is based on the principle that relations between states are necessarily interlinked. In the grand scale of things, this butterfly effect is hard to disregard, but this is not how the architects of dehyphenation explained it to me in a 2009 interview. Ashley Tellis and Philip Zelikow both were of the opinion that dehyphenation meant that the US would not be trapped in a tit-for-tat bargaining between India and Pakistan. If the US sold Pakistan a few F-16s, it would not feel compelled to extend to India something in compensation. Dehyphenation meant that the US would be free to pursue big ticket items with India and not feel the need to balance it with equivalent military or economic aid to Pakistan. One example is the nuclear deal, and another is the anticipated Indo-US cooperation on ballistic missile defence and space exploration.

The final chapter of TTLG is dedicated to the media. Soman reminds us that the fourth estate is the last line of defence against partisan politics or sectional politics derailing a country’s development. The media’s role is to provide the public with credible information and to be a watchdog upon the country’s political masters. Soman argues that the Indian media has failed abjectly in this, quoting Minhaz Merchant that proximity breeds complicity. “The Indian media has itself become one of the most serious threats to national security by allowing itself to be used by the government for what Merchant calls ‘choreographed journalism’ to support flawed policies,” declares Soman. So great is this failure that Soman writes, “Can there be a ‘Through the Looking Glass‘ without Tweedledum and Tweedledee? The Indian Express’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta and its strategic affairs editor and later columnist, C. Raja Mohan, have been doing their best to play those roles.” As Soman points out, Mohan and Gupta have remained preoccupied with India making territorial concessions to Pakistan and China, and argue for India’s role on the world stage, all the while ignoring its problems at home. Tweedledum writes, “innovative approaches to the negotiations on Kashmir with Pakistan and the boundary dispute with China would allow India to go beyond the burdensome territorial imperative and focus on regional peace and security.” Such views have evinced support from other quarters as well. The Telegraph, and the Hindu‘s Varadarajan supported MMS’ delinking of terrorism and talks with Pakistan, claiming that MMS had done far more at Sharm el-Sheikh than ABV had in Lahore. They are right – far more damage.

Lest TTLG be thought of as a partisan attack on the present government of India and the media, it is prudent to point out that Soman is equally critical of the BJP-led NDA. However, it is simply a matter of fact that the Congress Party has led India for 53 of its 65 independent years and should receive proportional credit and blame. Thus, while TTLG excoriates Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi and the heir-apparent Rahul Gandhi for not ever articulating a lucid vision of the country’s foreign and security policy, it is also equally eviscerating of the BJP for having failed to improve on critical conventional defence, defence infrastructure, or pursuing Indian national interests to their logical conclusion. Soman rues,

Except for a few sparkles by Arun Shourie on the nuclear deal and by Arun Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha on some occasions, the BJP has not distinguished itself in the parliament on foreign policy. By frequently disrupting the functioning of the parliament (whatever be the justification), the party has actually shielded the government from the exposure of its many wrong policies. To compound this failure, it has made no attempt to take the issues to the people. It protested the Sharm el-Sheikh sell-out by Manmohan Singh but when he went ahead and implemented what he had agreed to in the joint statement in the next two years, the party kept quiet. It has remained silent of defence issues in the last seven years, despite the revelation of many scandals in these years.

Finally, it has been brought to my attention that some may find Soman’s put-down of India’s politicians and commentariat scathing and harsh. I disagree: while it has certainly been the case that critiques within academia of each other’s works have been becoming more and more polite, it is not rare to find utter decimation of an opposing view (for example, James Hankins in Plato in the Italian Renaissance utterly takes apart the post-modern turn). Besides, I am not sure that what-do-you-want-me-to-tell-them journalism warrants any respect.

TTLG is a dense work with scores of incidents over the past 10-15 years that Soman has analysed. Through them all, he shows a clear pattern that vindicates the two theses of his book: 1. that Indian diplomacy is inconsistent, incoherent, and has a theatre of the absurd/through the looking glass quality to it, and 2. the commentariat – media, intellectuals, think tanks – have done so poor a job that rather than provide careful reflections and expert scrutiny, they have assisted the government in covering up its blunders. Undoubtedly, the book can be further improved by access to government archives and records, but such things are unheard of in any systematic way in India and the events are much too recent for declassification. Appu Soma’s Through the Looking Glass: Diplomacy, Indian Style is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in understanding the making of Indian foreign and security policy.

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Yellow Peril and Yellow Bellies

01 Sun Apr 2012

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Security, South Asia

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

26/11, Aksai Chin, Arjun MBT, Arunachal Pradesh, border dispute, China, Cold Start, DRDO, IGMDP, India, Kargil, Kaveri, LCA, MiG-21, NEFA, network-centric warfare, T-90S, Tejas, Tibet, Trishul

Why does India’s policy towards Tibet and China leave much to be desired? It is not policy but an inculcated systemic weakness – political, intellectual, as well as military – that drives New Delhi’s China policy.

With the 21st century promise of becoming an Asian century, international attention has shifted to the two Asian engines of growth in the coming years – India and China. While India’s rise has been quiet and has caused little apprehension worldwide (except in Islamabad and maybe Beijing), China has raised red flags everywhere from New Delhi and Moscow to Canberra and Washington. Consequently, the last decade has seen shifts in global geopolitics to match these concerns, from a renewed American presence in the Indo-Pacific region (the stationing of US marines in Darwin and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that pointedly excludes China so far), to a significant improvement in Indo-US strategic relations (including the famous civil nuclear agreement, expansion in strategic and high technology trade, Indian membership to international export control bodies, and annual military exercises).

Interestingly, some of the mildest reaction to China’s growing economic and military muscle has come from its neighbour, India, who by all theories of strategic thinking should be the most concerned. While the country’s Ministry of External Affairs, based out of South Block, has touted this as its “non-alignment” (misunderstanding the original meaning of the term) in the new global order, the reality is that the South Asian giant is afraid that the world will notice that it has been caught with its pants down.

The Yellow Peril

China borders 14 countries, more than any other country in the world except Russia, and it has also had border disputes with most of them. Although most of the disputes have been settled, China is known to revive the issue at a later date. In fact, since 1949, China has been in 23 territorial disputes, of which six (seven if you include Tibet) – with Vietnam, India, Bhutan, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan – remain unresolved.

However, the India-China dynamic is rather unique in that while there are severe tensions between the two Asian states, the latter is also the former’s largest trading partner. Thus, while the foundation for a sound relationship has yet to be laid, both countries have chosen to ignore the 3,000-pound fire-breathing dragon in the room. From China’s perspective, the key issue is New Delhi’s alleged support of the Dalai Lama and fomenting rebellion in Tibet, while India accuses Beijing of making claims on Indian territory and extending military support (including missile technology and nuclear weapons) to Pakistan. Furthermore, the India-China War of 1962 has left deep scars in the Indian political psyche and left India with approximately 45,000 square kilometres less land in the Aksai China region of Kashmir. This dispute remains unresolved, and though both sides seem to play down the problem, it is still simmering. For example, in 2009, China attempted to block a $3 billion loan to Arunachal Pradesh (which they claim) from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and on multiple occasions, refused to issue visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh as they were ‘already in China.’ A 2010 report by the Pentagon titled, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, cited an Indian academic who noted that in 2008, “the Indian military had recorded 270 border violations and nearly 2,300 cases of ‘aggressive border patrolling’ by Chinese soldiers.”

A brief history of India’s northeastern borders

The Indian perception of Communist China as a threat is wrong – the problems India faces with China today would have been identical to the ones India would have had to face had Chiang Kai-shek won the civil war. As Jawaharlal Nehru rightly divined, China was a nationalist and expansionist power before it was a communist power. Thus, the question of Tibet and the border dispute (which is really an extension of the Tibet question) could not have been avoided or reasoned away had Sun Yat-sen and his followers been defeated in 1949.

India’s ante bellum border with China was the remnant of British primacy in India and its environs until the second half of the twentieth century. It is usually divided into three sectors, the eastern (Northeast Frontier Agency or NEFA), the middle (the boundary between Tibet and Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh), and the western sector (Ladakh). Of these, the middle sector did not see significant contestation. In the other two sectors, the boundary was not clearly defined; the Raj was more concerned with ensuring that it not abut on Russia, its great rival in Central Asia. To this end, they employed Major General Sir John Ardagh in 1897. Ardagh’s recommendation, based on an 1865 survey by explorer WH Johnson, was deemed too ambitious by the Indian administration and rejected. In 1899, the British ambassador to China, Sir Claude MacDonald, suggested another line that placed most of Aksai Chin within China. While the Chinese refused to commit to the latest suggestion, the British unilaterally imposed the MacDonald line until 1911 when revolution in China made them unsuitable of maintaining the border against the Russians. At this point, the British reverted to the Ardagh line. In the east, the 1914 Simla conference between India, Tibet, and China demarcated the border and was agreed upon, but China later claimed, in an attempt to counter Tibetan autonomy, that Tibet had no right to conclude any such agreement. The McMahon Line, as the border was called in the eastern sector (named after the Indian foreign secretary of the time), was not enforced because China was too weak to pose any threat in Assam. It became an issue only in 1935, when Tibetan authorities detained a British botanist near Tawang. Between 1938 and 1944, the Indian government sought to put its weight behind the McMahon line, but as war clouds gathered over Asia and Europe, Britain was more amenable to discussion and negotiation with China and Tibet, their allies in the war. However, they insisted that the McMahon line was the current valid boundary of India.

The Tibet Issue

The Tibet issue is also significant in the border question. While China – both Communist and Nationalist – claimed, disingenuously, that Tibet had always been a part of the Chinese domain, Britain wished to keep the Himalayan state as a buffer between the Raj on one side and China and Russia on the other.1 Therefore, they recognised Chinese suzerainty, not sovereignty, over Tibet. In practice, this meant that the British enjoyed diplomatic relations with Lhasa and stationed troops in the country. With independence, India legally inherited this relationship with Tibet. The Indian ambassador in Nanking, KM Panikkar, observed that India’s primary interest was the McMahon line and drew attention to the fact that the Chinese had accepted the Simla convention but not ratified it. Warning that any government in Peking after the civil war would claim Tibet, he noted that this would revive Chinese claims against Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan and undermine the McMahon line. Contrary to popular belief, Chinese interests and intentions in Tibet were widely known among the Indian leadership.

As expected, China invaded, occupied, and annexed Tibet in 1950, immediately after its civil war and the defeat of Nationalist forces. India then did not seek to provoke China but did not give up her rights in Tibet either. Aware of India’s fragile economy and weak military, Nehru was not prepared to give voice to his concerns on China in public. For the time being, watching the developments in Europe, he was convinced that an invasion of India by China would lead to a world war and thus assured of India’s physical safety. But, as Nehru observed, “the real protection we should seek is some kind of understanding with China.”

Nehru ordered the construction of checkposts along India’s border with its new neighbour to prevent any incursion or infiltration. He also commanded that the regional infrastructure be built up but not too visibly as he did not wish Indian actions to spark off a reaction from the Chinese just then. While Nehru was certain of India’s legal position on the border in the east, he was not so sure in Aksai Chin. Following the recommendations of the Himmatsinhji Committee’s recommendations in 1951, the Indian government tried to extend administrative cover and economic welfare measures in the disputed regions. This would strengthen Indian claims to the land. Beyond the road-building and setting up of checkposts, the report also suggested that India decide on its claims in the region and approach Beijing to settle them. Until then, India should not surrender her rights over Tibet. Over the next two or three years, Beijing refused to discuss the border issue, stating that Chinese maps were outdated and they had to be updated before any talks could take place. KPS Menon, then the Indian foreign secretary, noted that irredentism has always played a part in the policy of the Chinese government, whether imperial, Kuomintang, or Communist. He recalled a map he had seen on the walls of a military academy in Chengdu a few years back that showed large portions of Kashmir as well as areas south of the McMahon line as Chinese territory. That, surmised Menon, was why the Chinese were hesitant to talk to India about the border, and he advised that any border negotiation must take place in the context of a general agreement on Tibet. While hinting that the McMahon line was a scar left by British imperialism, Beijing nevertheless accepted the line as its border with Burma. New Delhi assumed that the recognition applied to the entire line and considered the border question, at least in the NEFA, settled.

For their part, New Delhi did not push an explicit discussion of the border issue. As Panikkar had advised, the Chinese were unlikely to accept the Simla convention as every Chinese government since had repudiated it. Furthermore, if the issue were raised, China might insist on a position unfavourable to India. In such circumstances, it would behoove India to remain quiet and use the time to make its position effective in the frontier areas, where its administrative hold was weak and its political position fledgling. In hindsight, this may seem an obtuse policy, but in 1952-53, this was an attractive proposal. No doubt, Nehru had heard the whispers of Chinese designs on Indian territory, and he thought that India should be on the lookout for Chinese infiltration. Unfortunately, not all of Nehru’s directives were met with alacrity – in a 1953 tour of Uttar Pradesh, Nehru was aghast to find that financial and bureaucratic bottlenecks had effectively slowed his border reinforcement orders to a trickle and as GB Pant put it, there had been “no visible progress.” The message was echoed by Joint Secretary TN Kaul from NEFA. It should not be surprising, therefore, that Nehru was hesitant in pushing the boundary question to the fore. India was far from consolidating her influence in the border regions and ill-prepared to counter any measures by China to take possession of these parts. If the issue became hotly contested, India would be unable to defend her claims. Nonetheless, to appear firm to the Chinese, Nehru published new maps of the area, showing Aksai Chin as a part of India. As RK Nehru later recalled, Indian legal experts had warned Nehru that his claim to Aksai Chin was weak at best and relied too heavily on a nebulous arrangement in an 1842 treaty with Tibet over grazing rights. However, the prime minister had seemed amenable to adjustments in Aksai Chin as part of an overall settlement.

The Panchsheel Agreement in April 1954, to Nehru’s mind, further solidified the boundaries between India and China, and as part of the agreement, India gave up its rights in Tibet and recognised the region as an autonomous part of China. This, RK Nehru told the British, was really “a concession only to realism.” But contrary to many in India’s new Right, Nehru was not naive. “In the final analysis,” he said, “no country has any deep faith in the policies of another country, most especially in regard to a country which tends to expand.” On his return from China, Kaul wrote urgently to Nehru, predicting that India and China would come to blows within five years. This heightened Nehru’s anxiety, particularly given what he knew about the progress of establishing military infrastructure in the frontier areas. Recent Chinese maps also showed parts of Uttar Pradesh and Assam, along with NEFA and Aksai Chin as part of China. As a result, Nehru urged the building of checkposts in disputed territories to thwart any Chinese adventure; as the saying went, occupation was 90% of the law. Over the next five years, the debate continued within this framework. The discovery of the Xinjiang-Tibet road by Parliament in 1957, which Nehru had known about, caused a stir. It must be remembered that Nehru was willing to concede Aksai Chin and therefore disregarded the development. However, in the hands of a less charitable parliament, the issue quickly became a hot potato. That same year, an Indian patrol was disarmed and turned around by the Chinese near Bara Hoti. Nehru had never insisted that Aksai Chin belonged to India, but increasing pressure from a jingoistic parliament and the brazen rudeness the Chinese had taken to showing on the border question piqued Nehru.

 
 Figure 1: India’s disputed boundaries

To add to an already tense situation, a rebellion broke out in Tibet in 1959. Beijing immediately accused New Delhi of assisting the rebels with material support and encouraging anti-China feelings in them. The documentary evidence shows that this is an outright fabrication – some Khampas who had fled to India to escape Chinese atrocities had clearly told the Indian political officer in Sikkim, Apa Pant, “we are not asking you for arms or ammunition…we want [Nehru] to help us morally.” However, CIA assistance to the Tibetan rebels since 1958, internal differences within China’s Communist Party, and a developing schism with a post-Stalinist Soviet Union led by Nikita Khrushchev ratcheted up the pressure on Mao Zedong and India was the easiest place for a show of force. As China moved troops into Tibet to quell the rebellion, they met Indian forces busy establishing checkposts and bunkers. Naturally, clashes flared up along the border, deteriorating the situation even further. Upon the strong urging of Parliament, Nehru had released a White Paper on the Chinese question in 1959. Although hoping that it would set the record of the negotiations in the clear and assist towards a resolution, unfortunately, the releases now restricted Nehru’s options. Given China’s increasing hostility along the border, the Indian prime minister found it difficult to back down from a firm stance himself and was forced to actions that resonated with an emotionally aroused parliament and public rather than those that made sense.

A series of events transpired that hardened Nehru’s stance on the border question. First, there were two serious clashes at Longju in 1958 and at Kongka La in 1959 that left Indian soldiers dead. Then, in 1960, the Chinese government released new maps that claimed even more territory than their 1956 maps did. Unflappably, Zhou Enlai declared that there was no discrepancy in the two sets of maps. Despite never trusting the Chinese, Nehru lost what little faith he may have had in Mao’s and Zhou’s pretensions to peaceful resolution of the boundary dispute. His own parliament and public urged him to take a tougher stance all the while. During Zhou’s visit to India in New Delhi, both sides agreed to set up a legal-historical commission on the border. The report from the body gave India an unassailable case in the dispute, even in Aksai Chin. Reinforced by these findings, Nehru was yet cautious and rightly so, as events would prove: China rejected the findings that had gone against their claims. Nehru was even more convinced of the Chinese leadership’s duplicity by this point, but conceding to the facts on the ground, the Indians came up with a proposal: Aksai Chin will, de jure, remain a part of India, but recognising the importance of the Xingjiang-Tibet Highway to China, India would allow the communist power to maintain a de facto possession of the area. In conversation with their British counterparts, the Indian officials admitted that this was the best face-saving option available given a preponderance of Chinese power (the Chinese eventually fielded 80,000 soldiers against India’s 12,000). For reasons other than India, Beijing rejected the proposal.

In October 1962, Chinese troops swarmed across the border and thumped the Indian forces. Post bellum analyses have largely argued that the army was not sufficiently trained, nor was it sufficiently equipped; it was not even sufficiently manned to meet the threat. As must be, the ultimate responsibility for this lay with the prime minister. However, it was not a failure of policy but of resources, imagination, and implementation, for none of which Nehru was personally responsible. Certainly, books like The Guilty Men of 1962 (DR Mankekar), Himalayan Blunder (John Dalvi), and India’s China War (Neville Maxwell) have served more to vent frustration with the Indian government than shed light on the reasons for the conflict. This is partly due to a lack of access to government documents but also because it is easier to pour scorn upon one’s favourite whipping boy – Nehru, Menon, Kaul – than do genuine scholarship.

Yellow Bellies

In 2008, the Olympics were held in Beijing. Across the world, Tibetans took to the streets to protest against the Chinese government’s brutal oppression of their homeland. These demonstrators were given free reign as long as they didn’t create a public disturbance. Demonstrations broke out across Tibet as well as Vienna, Paris, Munich, Budapest, Reykjavik, Rome, Vilnius, the Hague, Zurich, London, San Francisco, Ottawa, Sydney, Tokyo, New Delhi, and other cities. In places were the demonstrations became boisterous, local authorities dispersed the crowds, all the while acknowledging the right of the demonstrators to peaceful protest. New Delhi was the only democracy that went one step further and banned Tibetans from protesting despite saying it would not do so. In March 2012, the Chinese premier Hu Jintao visited India for the fourth BRICS summit in New Delhi. Again, Tibetan protestors took the opportunity to draw attention to the plight of Tibetans in China and came onto the streets. In a well-choreographed response, New Delhi cracked down on the Tibetans again – many were arrested, while police took to ‘watching’ dormitories and residences of Tibetans. Pitifully, it was difficult to distinguish the statement from China’s Department of Asian Affairs from one that would be expected from the Indian MEA – Director General Luo Zhaohui thanked New Delhi for not allowing the “so-called pro-freedom Tibetan activists pushing extreme radical views” to derail the BRICS summit.

Indian observers have lamented their country’s kowtowing to Beijing on Tibet. First, South Block accepted Tibet as a part of China without receiving a reciprocal recognition of India’s position in Kashmir. Second, they gave up their trading and diplomatic rights in Lhasa. Third, India has made it quite clear that while the Dalai Lama is a welcome guest in the country, the MEA will not tolerate any anti-China activity from him or his supporters. Fourth, India has always submitted to pressure from China and suppressed any political activity by Tibetans on India soil, and let us be clear on this point – we are talking about the Dalai Lama (whom Beijing accused of “Nazi policies“(!)) and his supporters, not Hafeez Mohammad Saeed (Lashkar-e-Taiba) or Masood Azhar (Jaish-e-Muhammad). And yet, “India and Tibet are like two branches of the same Bodhi tree”, the late Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai once said in a letter to the Dalai Lama. In turn, Tibetans also consider India the Gyaghar Phagpai Yul, or Arya Bhumi. It is also quite clear the esteem in which Tibetans hold the Chinese – on a stone pillar in front of the Jokhang pillar in Lhasa is carved parts of the Sino-Tibetan Peace Treaty of 821: “Tibetans shall be happy in Tibet and Chinese shall be happy in China.”

Why has New Delhi acted in such a craven manner on this issue? While the rhetoric against Pakistan is quite bombastic, Indian governments have generally been as mild as milk with Beijing. There are two reasons for this. First, while there are other strategic concerns with Beijing such as its support of Islamabad, the border dispute, of which two generations of Indians have grown up thinking as the Great Betrayal, is really not that much of an issue if the claims on Arunachal Pradesh are dropped (and there have been hints that Beijing is willing to play ball in this regard). There may be a few minor kinks in the border which could be straightened out through negotiations, but the Indian government is forced by public pressure to claim land on which, by India’s own legal scholars, New Delhi has tenuous claims at best. Nor is it possible to – at least, it would be political suicide – to confess before the Indian public to half a century of deceit. Secondly, despite massive increases in the defence budget (around $40 billion in 2012), India remains woefully weak and if China were to take offence and act on firm rhetoric from India, the nation may not be able to defend herself. It is this hollowed-out image of Indian military power that politicians want to hide.

The Indian Military Speaks (Groans)

Outgoing Army Chief General VK Singh wrote in a recently leaked letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the Indian Army is not ready to fight a war.

The army’s tanks have run out of ammunition, the air defense is…97% obsolete and the infantry is short of critical weapons,” while the “elite Special Forces are woefully short of essential weapons.

As the General’s detractors have rushed to point out, the highest army officer of the land does have a score to settle after his stand-off with the government over his retirement. Furthermore, given the military’s recent acquisitions – MMRCA, surface naval vessels, submarines, helicopters, transport aircraft, missile systems – the claims seem far-fetched. However, as India scholar Sumit Ganguly noted, where there is smoke, there is fire. India’s weapons acquisitions process is indeed dilatory, cumbersome and plodding, and several recent press reports support the General’s assertions.

If the General were alone in such claims, perhaps a fickle public might forget and move on to the next episode of Indian Idol of a Bollywood blockbuster. Singh’s companion in his claims is none other than the Navy Chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, who stated in 2009 that the military gap between India and China was too wide to bridge and that the giant communist state would be India’s primary security threat in the coming years. Speaking plainly the Admiral pointed out,

The gap between the two is just too wide to bridge (and getting wider by the day). In military terms, both conventional and non-conventional, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China force for force. These are indeed sobering thoughts and therefore our strategy to deal with China would need to be in consonance with these realities.

To any discerning observer, there is no need of exposés from the military top brass on the reality of Indian military preparedness –  the press is awash with stories of the death-grip bureaucracy has on everything in India, including defence.

In 1950, when China invaded Tibet, India had barely won her independence and was still recovering from 190 years of British rule. The Indian army had just been deployed in Junagadh, Kashmir, Hyderabad, and was still in Bengal. Partition had necessitated the need for a massive reorganisation of the armed forces – initially, the situation was so bad that British officers had to be seconded from Her Majesty’s Government to hold together the former colonial army. In 1962, India had  had only 15 years to build up a credible military when the Chinese attacked. The disparity between the two countries was so great that there was nothing Nehru could have done to win that war. In the Lok Sabha, when a frantic member of parliament claimed that the Indian army could raise ten million men overnight if Nehru just gave the call, the prime minister calmly asked the MP how he intended to clothe the new recruits, train them, and arm them. Weakness necessitated India’s soft-spoken policy.

There are no such compunctions in 2012. While the military and economic disparity between India and China is still overwhelming, it is somewhat of India’s own making this time. Although it is true that economic liberalisation has created wealth in the country only in the past 20 years, India’s defence establishment is riddled – hollow – with inefficiency, bureaucracy, and apathy. It ought to be embarrassing that the nation cannot even provide boots for its soldiers. But there are more serious…gaffes – in the Indian Air Force (IAF), for example, fighter jets are frequently flown past their prime, the MiG-21 being the star example. Admittedly, these have been refurbished (twice), but the basic capabilities of an air frame only deteriorate over time, not increase. First inducted in 1964, the obsolete plane (despite its technological upgrades) is still the most numerous in the IAF and has been plagued with frequent crashes. As an American analyst commented, the IAF holds the world record of over 500 plane crashes in the past 20 years.

Poor industrial maintenance is part of the problem – Rakesh Sharma, an IAF test pilot, said that fighter planes he had sent back to the laboratories for having defective parts defective parts were not repaired, but the laboratories fitted the reported defective parts in other fighter planes. Training is another a problem – HAL’s (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) trainer platforms have been found to be woefully inadequate. Due to the shortage of even these inadequate trainer aircraft, the IAF has cut down flying time for new pilots to one-third of the usual rate (25 flight hours of basic training instead of the usual 75). By comparison, the U.S. Air Force offers more than 100 flight hours of basic training to its cadets.

The sanctioned strength of the IAF is 45 squadrons, each squadron consisting of 18 planes. Due to crashes, hiring issues, and other problems, India has never fielded beyond 39.5 squadrons. In 2008, India was forced to announce a tender for the purchase of up to 240 Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) because of the delays in the production of India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), the Tejas. Although an LCA will be no match for an advanced MMCRA, it can help temporarily plug in the gaps and provide reasonable support in the air and to ground troops.

The rot does not stop with the IAF – at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), two things that are not regular are research and development. It was recently admitted that India’s much-vaunted indigenously-built LCA, though budgeted at Rs. 560 crores in 1983, has ended up costing Rs. 17269 crores(!) And oh…after all that, the LCA is not even indigenously manufactured – the engine is imported from the United States. Similarly, the Kaveri engine was found to be too heavy and didn’t give enough thrust after spending Rs. 2,839 crores. Other DRDO projects such as the naval version of the LCA, an LR-SAM system, and the AEW-&C – an Indian AWACS – suffer from similar cost overruns. In comparison, China has conducted the test flight of its fifth generation J-20 fighter aircraft. Although there undoubtedly are kinks in the Chinese process as well – reverse engineering stolen technology instead of original development, for starters – the fact remains that the communist power can manufacture a jet far superior to the LCA.

In 2006, the Indian Navy purchased the Israeli-made Barak missiles because India’s highly touted Integrated Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) had failed to produce results. The Navy, waiting for the Trishul missile, eventually chose to purchase missiles from abroad because despite twenty-plus years in the making and declared successful by the DRDO, it did not evoke confidence among senior Navy officials. First test firing of the Trishul took place in 1991, and the manufacturer declared test firings completed by 1998. The armed forces, however, rejected the missile, as not ready for service. So development continued, until 2003, when the project was cancelled. But the project, which has cost nearly $200 million so far, had political friends. Development was allowed to continue, even though neither the army nor the navy wanted it (the project was finally shelved in 2008). Trishul’s range is approximately nine kilometres, and missile has suffered from reliability problems, particularly with its guidance system. Overall, the IGMDP has overshot its budget by at least Rs. 1,400 crores and scheduled to run from 1983 to 1995, was active due to delays until 2008.

Indian armour is no more fortunate than the navy or Air Force. The Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT) project was launched in 1974 to replace the aging T-54s imported from the Soviet Union. Typically, after significant cost overruns and delays, the first Arjun MBT rolled off the factory lines in May 2009 (like the LCA, 58% of the cost of this ‘indigenous’ product is for foreign components). Since geopolitics does not coordinate its moves with the DRDO’s schedule, the Army was forced to order the Russian T-90S in 2001. Following and initial purchase of 310 units, another 1,000 tanks were to be built at the Heavy Vehicle Factory (HVF) in Avadi, outside Madras, with Russian transfers of technology. A decade later, HVF has built just 150 T-90S tanks, hamstrung by Moscow’s obstruction in transferring technology and the Russia-built assemblies needed even for the India-built tanks. It was only after placing an order for 347 more ready-made pieces in 2006 that Russia began to transfer critical technology such as the T-90S’s gun turret and armour to India. Finally deployed, severe problems were encountered in service, from issues with heat-related malfunctions of the fire-control system’s key Thales Catherine thermal imaging (TI) camera, lack of cooling systems leading to uninhabitable temperatures over 60C degrees inside the tank, and reports that at least one armored regiment had an in-service rate of just 25% for its T-90S tanks. In the midst of this discontent with Russia, the Arjun outperformed the the T-90S in every crucial parameter. Yet the Army has ordered only 248 Arjun tanks so far (doubling the original order for 124 tanks after the trials), preferring to upgrade the old T-72s instead. Part of the reason is that the unconventionally heavy Arjun (60 tonnes) is difficult to integrate as support equipment such as pontoon bridges are designed to support regularly weighted tanks of 40-50 tonnes. HVF has made this decision easier on the Army with its minuscule production capacity of 50 tanks per year, though the DRDO insists that a 500-vehicle order will give it the volume needed to iron out all production difficulties and provide a platform for future development.

In terms of manpower too, India’s armed forces are hampered. Currently, there is a shortage of around 11,500 commissioned officers in the military. While one reason for this is that the post-1991 economy has made private sector pay and opportunities far more attractive than a career in uniform, another is the outdated procedures and restrictions followed by the military in pay, promotions, service, and work environment.

Beyond newspapers and statistics, Kargil showed that the Army and Navy Chiefs are indeed correct in their assessment of India’s defence preparedness. The 1999 conflict with Pakistan was closer than is generally realised. It was Israeli assistance, which remains secret to this day, that turned the war around in India’s favour. Lack of equipment or poor quality equipment due to corruption has cost lives in Kargil as well as in Bombay on 26/11 (investigation showed that the bullet-proof vests of officers Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte, and Vijay Salaskar were of an inferior quality). Even infrastructurally, while China has improved its hold in Tibet with helipads, roads and railways, Nehru’s orders to adequately secure the frontier areas remains unfulfilled by subsequent Indian governments. Even at a tactical level, India is found severely lacking: the 26/11 stand-off in Bombay revealed the poor state of even India’s Special Forces. They were slow to deploy and took a significant amount of time to displace the terrorists holed in the Taj Hotel and other sites around the city. Ultimate success was due more to numerical superiority and their own courage than training or superior tactics of their commanding officers. Kandahar is another sad notch in India’s beleaguered history of security operations. The ultimate reality is that the fault lies more after 1962 than before. At all levels – training, equipment, and policy – India has settled into an institutional malaise that Nehru struggled against and today’s leaders are a part of.

Hope Springs Eternal

With total failure on all fronts, it is no wonder New Delhi hesitates to stand up to Beijing in even the smallest matters. India’s political masters understand that decades of neglect, corruption, and poor planning have left India barely capable of thwarting an invasion by Major Chip Hazard. Worse, any serious altercation on the border with China might bring this to light (the Chinese probably already know all this but the Indian public seems blissfully unaware and commensurately jingoistic). While there is little hope, as the Navy Chief admitted, in matching China force-for-force, India needs to develop new strategies to counter superior force. Network-centric warfare, aided by the confounding geography of the Himalayas could still give the advantage to India, if her military planners and political masters showed the vision to take appropriate action. This requires research, development, and planning at the strategic level and training and equipment at the tactical level. While traditional methods of war-fighting cannot be abandoned entirely just yet, Indian military strategists have shown their ability to innovate, if allowed, with doctrines such as Cold Start.

Unlike in the past when long lead times were available for mobilisation and preparation for war, the same luxury would not be available in future wars. The crucial deciding factor would be a vigilant state of defence preparedness both by up-gradation of military equipment and modernization Success in war in future would not necessarily go to nations larger in size, population resources and potential, but to the one prepared militarily at the outbreak of hostilities. It is one thing to be unprepared and another to be unwilling. But India’s defense strategy so far has been marked by large dollops of both.


1: China’s claims on Tibet are absolutely bogus. The essence of their claim is that Mongolia was always a part of China, and in 1206, Genghis Khan united the the tribes under a centralised Khanate. In 1271, the Yuan dynasty was formed and it ruled over a united China. In the process, the Mongols ‘peacefully’ incorporated Tibet in 1247 after defeating the Western Xia (1227) and the Jin (1234). China claims that the Mongols (or the Manchus in 1644) were never considered outsiders as China is a multinational state.

There are three problems with this argument: 1. the historical records are quite clear that the Mongols and Manchus were considered foreigners, or mánzi. The Mongols ruled over China and Tibet, but never on behalf of the Chinese; 2. while it is true that Tibet was once under strong Chinese influence (under the sixth Dalai Lama, 1683-1706), the official documents are again clear that Tibet and China were independent nations. In fact, except for this brief period, Tibet has always been far closer to India; and 3. if one were to accept the logic that Tibet belongs to China because the Mongols conquered and held both Tibet and China simultaneously, one can also claim that Canada and Australia belong to India!

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