“India and China remain conscious of not allowing mutual tensions to disrupt their historic rise”
Prof. Swaran Singh teaches International Relations and Disarmament at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and is President of the Asia Scholars’ Association. In this interview with Aditi Bhaduri, he talks about India-China relations and the probable trajectory of these relations under Modi 3.0. Excerpts from the conversation:
On assuming office External Affairs Minister Dr. S.Jaishankar said: “Our focus about China will be on finding a solution for the border issues.” How hopeful are you about this? Do you think a solution to the border issue will be easy to find?
Without a doubt, the solution to the India-China border cannot be an easy proposition. This is the world’s longest – both in (terms of) space and time – border dispute that involves territorial claims over 130,000 square kilometers. This is larger than the size of several nations around the world. This also involves terrain which is rather difficult to demarcate on the ground. These territories involve glaciers, tropical forests, and mostly uninhabited lands except a few places in the middle sector where the clash in claims is also minuscule compared to the clash of claims in Eastern and Western sectors of their border. This makes it near impossible to evolve a shared understanding of mutual historical claims based on folklore about who was grazing or taxing these lands in the past, with few official documents or maps from their ancient past. Indeed, until their liberation from their imperial subjugation, India and China were largely compilations of various empires, kingdoms, and principalities loosely knitted together with the Himalayas loosely defining their frontiers.
Independent India, which had a peaceful transfer of power and inherited British India’s mandate, depended on boundary lines that were defined and demarcated by British India. China, on the other hand, had a violent revolution liberating itself from its imperial and bourgeoise past and it defies these lines as symbols of imperial humiliation of China. Even the India-China Line of Actual Control (LAC) has [called forth] confusion at over a dozen points and more. But what is important is their shared commitment to peacefully resolve their border problem and this commitment has been codified in over a dozen agreements since the early 1990s. What also gives hope is their repeated enunciations to together explore and ensure peace and tranquility in their border areas till both sides can find some kind of final solution.
Do you see any connection between the renaming of several places in Tibet by India and the recent bill passed by the US Congress on Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act? Do you think these actions will yield any concrete results?
China issuing its maps that include parts of India’s Arunachal Pradesh is nothing new and has happened before as well. For China, these are routine matters though its timings may betray some mischief on their part. Likewise, the US Act on Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute also must be seen as part of US-China geopolitical contestations. Since the mid-1970s, there has been little coordination between US-India Tibet policies unless the future reveals anything different when archives become available. At best, such Acts of the United States may have some indirect impact on India’s Tibet policy but nothing more than that. Also, rising India will have to deal with its challenges on its own and this has been repeatedly clarified to the US by Indian leaders saying that India will not need any of their mediation and is fully capable of addressing its China challenge.
As someone who knows China so well, what in your opinion should the future trajectory of India-China ties?
First of all, the future of India-China relations will be like no other example in the past. These are the world’s most populated nations — the third largest US is only one-fourth of either India or China. These are also continuing civilizations with a history of several millennia that are today the world’s fastest growing and largest economies (respectively fifth and second largest) which are transforming beyond imagination. These are also nuclear weapon states with the world’s two largest militaries with respectively third and second-largest defense budgets. These are also the two with the world’s largest disputed border that has sporadically seen tensions including the border tensions of the last four years that have witnessed huge forward military deployments.
However, India and China also remain conscious of not allowing mutual tensions to disrupt their historic rise which is vindicated by their 21 rounds of core commander-level talks and half a dozen rounds of their Working Group on Consultation and Coordination on Border Affairs, held during these last four years. Even Modi and Xi have had several meetings during various multilateral fora including their brief bilateral interactions on the sidelines of at least two such multilateral interactions
