Diplomacy on a wing and a prayer

Almost from the word go wishful thinking has been a bane of Indian diplomacy and even foreign policymaking. For instance, when during the heyday of the Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai era this country realised to its dismay that Chinese maps were showing large parts of India within the Chinese borders

(some called it “cartographic aggression”), the ministry of external affairs took up the matter with Beijing at the highest level.
Zhou Enlai’s bland reply was: “These are maps dating back to the old regime, and we haven’t had time to review them”. Emphasis in the previous sentence is added in view of what followed. Not just the government but almost all Indians interpreted the Chinese assurance to mean that the offensive Chinese maps would “soon be revised to our satisfaction”. Ironically, the 1954 agreement on trade and allied matters concerning “the Tibet region of China” strengthened this comfortable feeling. Why? Because China had agreed to Indian pilgrims going to Kailash and Mansarovar and identified the passes they could use, as also the places where border traders could set up “marts”. Only years later, B.N. Mullik, this country’s intelligence czar almost all though the Nehru era, admitted ruefully that New Delhi had failed to understand why the Chinese had refused, “without ascribing any particular reason”, to let India open the customary “trade mart at Rudok (in western Tibet). This was no doubt because the Chinese were building the road from Rudok to Sinkiang via Aksai Chin” (My Years With Nehru: The Chinese Betrayal). What he does not say is that the Indian intelligence network, like the rest of the country, became aware of the Aksai Chin road only after Beijing had issued invitations to its inauguration in 1957.
Other such essays in undying and disastrous wishful thinking will be cited later. Let me first indicate what has provoked the present painful reflection.
For the third time in the last six years, the Indian media has gone gaga over China’s assumed support to this country’s claim to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC). On each of these three occasions our correspondents and commentators, with or without official encouragement, have vastly exaggerated Beijing’s carefully crafted and delightfully ambiguous words to proclaim that China had lined up with those who were backing Indian candidature.
This happened in 2005 when the issue of UN reform was on the agenda of the General Assembly in New York only to be jettisoned. Even the United States was not supporting the Indian cause then and did so only last November during the visit to Delhi of US President Barack Obama. But we took it for granted that when China wanted to see India play a “more important role in international affairs, including at the UN”, it was welcoming us to join it at the horseshoe table at Turtle Bay. In two subsequent statements the Chinese did incrementally make their language a little more palatable to this country but at no stage did they support this country’s membership of the UNSC. However, each time India took it for granted that the Chinese had done precisely that. Euphoria followed.
Unfortunately, there has been a dismal repeat of the past performance after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Sanya in China for a summit of Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The first point to note therefore is that China by itself has made no statement on Indian membership of the Security Council. All five members of Brics issued a joint statement on a series of subjects, including the comprehensive reforms of the UN, including the Security Council. Since Russia and China are already permanent members of the UNSC, the Brics statement mentioned favourably the “aspirations of Brazil, India and South Africa” in this context.
This surely meant a further slight advance in the previous Chinese position but it came in a collective declaration not in a unilateral Chinese statement or as part of a bilateral India-China communiqué. Moreover, if the Sanya statement advances the standard Chinese position somewhat, it also dilutes Russia’s unequivocal support to India’s permanent membership of the UNSC.
However, few in India had any time to devote to these intricacies. By Saturday evening, TV channels were vying with one another loudly to welcome China’s support to India’s quest for a permanent UNSC seat. Newspapers the next morning sang the same song. Only a few of them had the good sense to add that China’s support was “vague”. In all fairness, this time around the officials in the Prime Minister’s entourage were cautious and advised everyone to read the “language (of the Sanya statement) carefully” before drawing any conclusion. But, alas, the journalists covering the event paid little heed.
The tragedy is that, like the Bourbons, we seem to learn nothing and unlearn nothing from experience. All too often wish becomes the father of the thought, with disastrous consequences. Let me mention only a few of the many examples, beginning with the 1966 Tashkent talks, under Soviet auspices, between the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Field-Marshal Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s President at that time. These talks only ended the 1965 India-Pakistan War. Yet, during the interval between the signing of Tashkent Declaration and the death of Shastri, top Indian officials tried hard to persuade those of us covering the negotiations to project the absurd notion that the Tashkent agreement amounted to a “No War” pact. We refused. In any case, the Tashkent spirit evaporated fast. The Shimla spirit (1972) met the same fate though it took a while longer for us to realise that our hopes about Zulfikar Ali Bhutto living up to his “oral commitment” to convert the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir “gradually” into a “permanent border” were dupes.
In 1999, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s bus ride to Lahore was followed by the Kargil War, and so on. Even so, it would be unfair to prejudge the future of the “Mohali spirit”. But it is necessary to add that we need to be coldly realistic and not be carried away by emotion and make-believe.