There’s a saying: A good thief doesn’t just work out a heist plan. He, more often than not, has a post-heist plan too. What he will do after committing the crime is what distinguishes a good thief from a bad one. This principle applies equally to the field of diplomacy, especially when one of the nations involved is China.
As India and China complete disengagement at the two friction points of Depsang and Demchok, after participating in 21 rounds of Corp Commander-level talks, New Delhi needs a concrete post-disengagement plan. For, disengagement doesn’t mean that all issues with China have been settled or that Delhi and Beijing are friends now.
Given China’s track record, India must be cautiously optimistic about the entire disengagement exercise. It’s good to see the two Asian rivals reaching an agreement to avoid a flashpoint, but more important is the path ahead. How India and China take this forward is critical, especially given the communist philosophy of two steps forward and one step back.
The Chinese invariably come back to check if the opponent has fallen prey to the communist subterfuge or is still awake guarding its borders and national interest. It’s, therefore, important to see how the Narendra Modi government reacts to the development at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
History suggests that communist China is a tough bargainer. Any attempt by the other side to show generosity and eagerness for a deal is perceived as a sign of weakness. The Chinese dispensation uses this moment to push for further concessions. The Modi government can learn from the Nehruvian blunders of the 1950s and ’60s, resulting in the debacle of 1962.
There can be at least half-a-dozen instances when Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, went backward to appease the Chinese, hoping the “friendship will endure and grow”, as he had expected on September 7, 1946, but it all resulted in emboldening Mao to seek more from India. The hurried Indian recognition of the communist regime in China is a classic case of how not to deal with the Dragon.
Soon after Independence, Nehru appointed KM Panikkar as India’s Ambassador to China. Panikkar recalls in his memoirs, In Two China, how soon after the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament in New Delhi, Nehru asked him “very casually to go for a motor drive with him”. During the drive, he told Panikkar to take up an ambassador’s post. “It was characteristic of Nehru that he did not even say where I was to be posted. The next day, Girija Shankar Bajpai, who was then Secretary-General of the Ministry of External Affairs, told me that the Prime Minister’s intention was to post me to China,” Panikkar writes.
In September 1948, Panikkar informed the Indian government of the imminent collapse of the Chiang Kai-shek government. In the event of the communist win, Nehru told him to establish early contacts with Mao and his men. He even decided not to withdraw India’s ambassador in the wake of the collapse of the Nationalist government and was eager to recognise the new communist dispensation. Nehru thought, with a sense of idealistic naiveté, that this move would help India secure Mao’s goodwill, needed for the smooth resolution of the border dispute with China.
According to Panikkar, while there was no difference of opinion in the political class about recognising communist China, there were differences in its timing. “The more conservative members of the Congress leadership, including C Rajagopalachari, who was then the Governor-General, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, wanted us to go slow on the matter. They were supported in this attitude by a powerful section of the Civil Service, including, I suspect, some of the senior officials of the Foreign Office. My own view to which I gave free expression was that we should recognise the new regime when the Kuomintang authority on the mainland of China ceased to function,” he writes in his memoirs.
Nehru, former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale writes in The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India, saw this as “a historic opportunity to stand, as it were, on the right side of history with regards to the Chinese Revolution”. Also, Nehru’s haste was, in part, influenced by — as Patel would tell the American Ambassador — his desire to pre-empt the US and the UK, which he thought were waiting for the right time to recognise Mao’s China. Nehru seemed to have taken to heart the predominant Maoist charge against him, accusing the Indian Prime Minister of being “a lackey of Western capitalism and imperialism”! He didn’t want to be seen to be following the Americans and the British.
A foreign policy decision of this scale, writes Gokhale, on Nehru’s undue haste in recognising Mao’s China, “ought to have been the outcome of a more deliberative process within the government. More so because substantive issues, including the northern boundary, were involved.” Sadly, the discussion on the issue was confined to the close coterie of the Prime Minister, a clique that was always in favour of bending backward to appease China.
India’s recognition was a major boost for communist China, which was no better than a pariah state then. Nehru’s decision to legitimise Mao’s regime provided a new global opening for China. For, that was the era when Nehru enjoyed unprecedented global stature, and the United States was under the spell of “Asia’s greatest statesman”, as Life magazine (August 22, 1949) hailed India’s first Prime Minister. In September of that year, The Economist reported the increased American commentary about “India as a bulwark against Asiatic Communism”.
Ironically, while India used its global standing to bail China out, Mao, far from acknowledging Nehru’s efforts, laid down new “red lines” for New Delhi on the issue of diplomatic relations. The fresh guidelines from communist China wanted India, if it was sincere about mending diplomatic ties with Beijing, to completely break all ties with Chiang Kai-shek, the man who had in the past supported India’s freedom struggle movement and, along with President Franklin D Roosevelt of the United States, pressurised Winston Churchill to leave India.
Nehru immediately directed the foreign secretary to “send for Dr Lo (the Ambassador of Nationalist China in New Delhi). Tell him of our decision. Tell him also that it is with deep regret that we have to sever our official relations with him”.
So, India recognised communist China in Beijing and derecognised the Nationalist government in Taiwan without seeking anything in return. India’s border dispute remained unresolved. The Tibet issue was kept under abeyance. Till Mao thought he was militarily ready to flex his muscles on the two issues.
Several important voices tried to caution Nehru about Mao. Sardar Patel wrote a long letter to the Prime Minister on November 7, 1950, almost a month before his death, cautioning him about communist China trying to “delude us by professions of peaceful intention”. He reminded Nehru that even if “we regard ourselves as friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as their friends. With the Communist mentality of ‘whoever is not with them being against them’, this is a significant pointer, of which we have to take due note”.
Patel also talked about the “new situation” that “now faces us as a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we knew it, and the expansion of China almost up to our gates”. China’s presence in Tibet opened “for the first time, after centuries” the second front against India, Patel wrote.
Then there was Girija Shankar Bajpai, who highlighted how “Chinese communists, like any other communists, reacted well to firmness but would exploit any sign of weakness”. In his letter to Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister, he also talked about his efforts in curbing the Prime Minister’s “enthusiasm” over China.
Nehru refused to listen to them. He failed to see the truth staring into his eyes. It was because the first prime minister was “not a good judge of character and is therefore easily deceived”, as observed by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, an admirer of Nehru who was also his cabinet colleague. She also accused him of having “a conceit in him which makes him at once intolerant to criticism”.
This, along with a bloated sense of ideological superiority that he often exhibited, made him commit blunders one after another without any serious attempt at correcting them. Nehru, for instance, retained Krishna Menon in his cabinet, despite knowing his shortcomings, just because he felt his Defence Minister (who led India during the disastrous 1962 war) was “the only genuine foil Nehru had in the government” with whom he could discuss Marx and Mill, Dickens, and Dostoevsky!
Mao, in sharp contrast, had no such illusions. While Nehru was as much obsessed with means as he was with ends, for Mao it was all about ends. Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran explained this Chinese mindset during a public lecture in 2012. Referring to a conversation between former Secretary-General, Ministry of External Affairs, RK Nehru, and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai in 1962, just before the big war, Saran said, “RK Nehru drew attention to reports that China was leaning towards the Pakistani position that Jammu & Kashmir was a disputed territory. He recalled to Chou an earlier conversation, where when asked whether China accepted Indian sovereignty over J&K, he had said rhetorically — has China ever said that it does not accept Indian sovereignty over J&K, or words to that effect. At this latest encounter, Chou turned the same formulation on its head to ask: Has China ever said that India has sovereignty over J&K?”
Today, as India is gearing up for a new beginning at the LAC, it should never forget the true nature of the Dragon. China respects power — and power alone. India showcased the best of its national strength and commitment after the PLA’s Galwan misadventure. Xi Jinping decided to step back only when he realised that this was a never-ending stalemate. India should now be prepared for China’s proverbial ‘two steps forward’ plan.
(This is Part 1 of the ‘China: Myth Vs Reality’ series. The next article will talk about how BRI was born out of myth, and will end up being a myth too: Is this the beginning of the end of Chinese century?)
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.