Abhijit Bhattacharyya | Don’t fall for China ploys; take lessons from Trump

The vociferous campaign waged by America’s incoming President Donald Trump to keep illegal foreigners out of the United States, which contributed to his decisive victory in the presidential election earlier this month, should find a lot of resonance in India, which has been having trouble in keeping its land and sovereign territory free from being overrun by outsiders.

The agreement reached last month between New Delhi and Beijing, which led to a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Russia’s Kazan, and the subsequent disengagement between troops of both countries in Ladakh’s Demchok and Depsang Plains, had one remarkable aspect. Soldiers of Indian Army were “kindly permitted” by the Chinese side to patrol their own territory that was forcibly occupied by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for over four and a half years, ever since the clashes in Galwan and elsewhere in Ladakh May-June 2020. The PLA, which is an arm of the Communist Party of China (CPC), had simply walked in and asserted control over India’s sovereign land and territory while Indian Army personnel were not physically present, and then prevented their entry for over four years.

Under last month’s agreement, however, this has now become “shared territory”, which implies divided sovereignty. But sovereignty being indivisible and not divided, how could New Delhi agree to any right to patrol India’s land by both Indian and Chinese soldiers? Do Indian soldiers also get the right to patrol Chinese territory “jointly” with the PLA?

Historically, the political rulers of geographical India invariably had a poor track record in border management or protection of territory due to their ignorance, negligence or supreme arrogance, that alienated their own people. Therefore, invasion and aggression have been recurring means by which foreigners have overrun the indigenous rulers of Bharat, and the tradition goes on. Independent India too hasn't been immune to foreign aggression and violation of its sovereignty in the past 77 years. Successive rulers, with the honourable exception of Indira Gandhi, haven’t succeeded in dealing with hostile and intruding foreigners who dented, damaged and are still violating India’s sovereignty.

External affairs minister S. Jaishankar claimed late last month that even after the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai, there was no effective response by the Indian government. But was 26/11 the only such tragedy in India’s history? Weren’t there bigger, if not more serious incidents in India before and after, to be seen in the broader perspective of collective failure of successive rulers of Hindustan?

From the 986-987 AD invasion of Sabuktigin, fast forward over a thousand years to Kargil 1999 and Galwan 2020, there have been more than 100 major invasions/wars on Indian soil, all by foreigners from Central Asia, the Middle East, Arabia, Turkey to the French, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch and British, followed by Pakistanis and the Han Chinese, under a Communist dictator. How many times have India’s rulers succeeded in protecting their borders from outsiders, or even their internal space? How many times have Pakistan and China brazenly encroached upon India’s land and succeeded in mauling India’s sovereignty?

Strangely, except for Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1799-1839), no other major Indian ruler could ever stop or check the conquest of foreign powers. Except Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, no Indian also dared “invade” India to liberate it from the clutches of a foreign power, that too the mighty British, who then ruled a vast empire across Asia and Africa in the 1940s.

Today, however, some Indians are celebrating because our Army has been able to resume patrolling in Depsang Plains and Demchok after 2020. The India-Tibet border, however, spans 3,500 km and there are live issues in other sectors even today owing to the endless mischief of non-Tibetans from Hwang Ho valley. So why the jumping and dancing with joy? Is it the prospect of trade, commerce, business and profit for a few at the expense of vast majority of Indians?

After being relentlessly humbled by Beijing’s CPC for over seven decades, can’t Indians read the Chinese mind even now? Today, however, it is Beijing that is on the defensive to protect its own interests. The agreement reached on the Brics summit sidelines in October has more to do with the Chinese being on the backfoot in their commercial and financial dealings with the United States, European Union and the West in general. Donald Trump’s return to the White House will only make things worse, not better. The entire West is now aggressive and determined to curtail Chinese exports, investments and its Belt and Road juggernaut. High tariffs and trade barriers loom large to make things difficult for China’s over-production and dumping of cheap goods across Europe, the Americas, India and Australia.

What is China’s way out? The large Indian market is a magnet for Beijing’s rulers, with the help of India’s profiteering traders, gullible consumers and monopolistic industry bosses who can’t live without cheap Chinese goods. No wonder that as soon as the Line of Actual Control disengagement was announced, China’s ambassador to India Xu Feihong, speaking at a “business” event in Kolkata, tried to nudge New Delhi to “lift trade curbs on the export of Chinese goods, relax visa norms for Chinese nationals and resume direct flights between India and China”. The ambassador’s plea resembles 17th century pleas by servants of the East India Company to the Mughal emperor in Delhi to allow foreign traders to have unrestricted access to the Indian market to make money, even if at the expense of India’s vast populace. While making no real commitments, he promises more Chinese market access to Indians and tries to lure Indian businessmen by saying 130 million Chinese are likely to travel abroad in 2024 and India shouldn’t miss the tourism bus. All these are just to further Chinese economic interests, and will only increase the widening trade deficit, where India is already at an unbridgeable disadvantage.

It's time, therefore, for India to take a lesson or two from Mr Trump’s utterances on China as successive Indian rulers since 1999 have failed to make any headway to reverse the adverse India-China bilateral trade, and the prospect looks dimmer now. The Dragon’s charm offensive through a Han-created hallucinatory LAC agreement is to weaken India as if some epoch-making treaty has been signed between the two nations. The Chinese dictator will devise myriad tricks to deceive India, as his predecessors did to the United States since the days of Henry Kissinger. New Delhi must not allow its sovereign interests to be overrun to further Beijing’s agenda.