VISION NOT FORCE

After several years of painstaking efforts on both sides China and India were set to emerge from the hangover of distrust and suspicion following the 1962 war ending in China occupying the Aksai Chin area and a gullible Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru carrying to his grave the pain and anguish of having been done in by the clever Chou EnLai. After many years of painstaking effort one was hoping that some more sittings and fruitful deliberations would see the border problems getting sorted out to mutual satisfaction so that both countries could embark on greater cooperation in several areas and finally mitigate their endemic problems of poverty, poor health and, poor education of their peoples through bilateral trade and people to people exchanges.

Unfortunately China has seen it fit to enter Indian territory and set up apparently permanent structures in certain areas of Ladakh that are of importance to India in accessing the Karakorum range and beyond, a historically well established trade route. Now India has to do a lot of talking with the Chinese to restore status quo ante.

The Chinese are saying that certain structures erected by India in certain parts of Ladakh are the reason for their action. These structures, according to India, are just tin roof shacks where Indians can rest and resume their journey in the area which was never objected to by China so far either at ambassador level or in the several meetings both sides had had till now.

Geo-strategic experts are saying that China wants to establish an all weather route to Pakistan through Ladakh which will perhaps give them the advantage of reaching out to Afghansitan after the USA pulls out next year. Some are saying that the incursions give strategic advantage to China in the event of a war since it will be an uphill task for India to move men and machines while China can easily neutralise advancing Indians from the heights they have recently intruded into.

Everyone knows Afghanistan is rich in several minerals. China may want access to the mineral wealth of Afghanistan. There are reasons to believe that China may not use imperialistic-militaristic methods to achieve this goal, judging by how China has tapped into the mineral resources of African countries in recent years. The only negative aspect of China's approach in accessing African resources is that it is allegedly using slave labour, namely, Chinese convicts are employed as labourers in executing developmental or infrastructural projects in African countries. We do not have all the facts, but considering that winds of change are sweeping across China slowly but steadily China is moving in the direction of more freedoms for its people. It is a fair guess that these convicts will be compensated adequately and that they may be better off after serving their sentence with the money they earn as labourers in African projects executed by China. Let us pray humanity will progress to a such a level that the dignity of human labour anywhere will not be exploited as in the past.

China also may harbour misgivings about Obama's Pivot Asia policy and about India being seen as an emerging power in Asia that is being courted by the developed economies for their businesses. One hopes the across-the-Great-Wall-of-China handshake between Obama and Hu Jintao a few years back that made headlines across the world translates to greater trust between the two big powers. At any rate poor India should not be used as a cat's paw or a pawn by China to balance its power equation with the USA. As Julius Nyerere once said, “whether elephants make love or make war the grass gets trampled upon”. This is true for elephants and grass but god forbid if it becomes a paradigm of international dynamics of power and strategy. Whether the USA and China come together for peace of for supremacy, India, basically peace loving, should not be caught in the crossfire. Therefore, China may do well to engage in diplomatic dialogues with the USA about what the Pivot Asia Policy means for it and spare India the travails of having to defend its land militarily. India by itself is too much of a chaotic democracy, though a beautiful spectacle for those who have cultivated a taste for it, to be a war mongering threat to China anytime at all.

Xi Jinping the recently elected President of the Communist Party of China, like his predecessor Hu Jintao, seems to concentrate a lot on solving China's huge internal problems of skewed distribution of the fruits of the past five decades of spectacular economic growth, rooting out corruption and other misdemeanours in all organs of governance and empowering citizens at the local level with enough powers to become a part of the decision making processes affecting them. China's economic growth also needs a lot of reorientation towards greener technologies. The Beijing fogs of last winter, god willing, should never happen again. So many children and the old and the infirm suffered so much. China also is trying to improve labour practices which alone can sustain growth in the long term. When major issues like these occupy the attention of the top leadership of China it is rather unfortunate that they have found it necessary to flex their muscles in Ladakh, putting India under great and eminently avoidable stress. I have a gut feeling that the military establishment in China might have had the new Premier's ear more than what is healthy for both China and India. It is a basic principle in international relations that in today's progressive and enlightened world of instant spread of news and communication and open source knowledge, a leader gains stature more by contributing to positive aspects of leadership like ensuring equitable growth, mitigating poverty, ushering in transparency and accountability and enabling the common man to live a life of peace and lawful pursuit of happiness, frail as it is for many. Good leadership is seen across the world by a majority of people as something that promotes peaceful cooperation and just and reasonable negotiation of problems. If that is not possible, as is the case sometimes, at least existing peace and harmony needs to be preserved so we can build on it when we get opportunities conducive to do so. Militarism per se has taken a back seat in boosting the stature of world leaders for quite some time now. Leaders of vision who can wage peace have come to be honoured more than leaders who wage war.

China would perhaps reconsider its actions in Ladakh and build trust and a way forward when India's Foreign Minister visits China in the near future, followed by the visit of the Chinese Premier Li Kequiang's visit to India later. Obviously, diplomacy is often “underwater diplomacy” as it should be. One need not see behind the scenes so long as the show on the stage goes smoothly.

There is something about the image of China and the Chinese people that bothers me a lot. It is the image cultivated by the genre of cinema that shows superhuman and death dealing prowess of Chinese characters in action movies. I have a feeling the Jackie Chans and Bruce Lees are not quintessential China, nor is the fire spitting Dragon an all encompassing symbol of China. I haven't travelled to China but I'm pretty certain that the thousands of years of the wisdom of Confucius and Taoism that prevailed in China must still linger in the Chinese psyche, giving it a capacity for contemplative insight into life's problems. I personally feel China must have had its own type of Zen masters whose legacy can be gleaned even now in rural China, if not in the crowded urban centers. It is such a pity these two civilisations, India and China, have not engaged in the recent past in the kind of vigorous intellectual exchanges they seem to have had during the days of Taxila and Nalanda, during the days of Hieun Tsang and Fa Hein and the Budha's disciples.

Perhaps the present Ladakh situation can be seized upon by both these two sister civilisations as an opportunity for reviving their civilisational discourse of ancient vintage.

Another very important and urgent matter can also be our focus now. It is the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan. At a certain level one can see the problems there through the prism of a clash of civilisations, the clash between strict Islam and liberal Christianity, the most tragic aspect of which was the destruction of the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon. A scholarly book has been written under the same title, Clash of Civilisations, with a lot of historical research going into it, starting from the days of the Crusades. The thesis of the book is somewhat gloomy in that it seems to portray the inevitability of violent clashes between strict Islam and liberal Christianity. Ground reality around the world seems to support such a view. But the term ground reality itself needs to be looked at afresh. What is making news is clashes and murders and armed conflicts and refugees fleeing here and there. All this is heart rending. All this is happening on a large scale. But we should also remember that participants in a conflict as such are far less in number than the people in the areas affected, who are the victims. Their lives, their prayers, their pastimes and their avocations do not make news till they get affected by the conflict. Are these silent majorities engaged in any Clash of Civilisations? Have the silent masses engaged in conflicts or wars by themselves? They don't make news though they are the vast, peace-loving, hard-working, decent-living majority. Are they not the real ground reality? It follows therefore that leaders in any field who lean towards peace and progress are the true leaders of the majority of the ground level masses. We may add a footnote here that street level racist attacks or attacks on members of a particular identity in some countries are of recent origin, say a decade or two, and their leaders seem to be up to the task of putting in corrective efforts that are bound to yield resuts.   

China and India together can do a lot in averting the Clash of Civilisations. We will revert to this a little later. First they should remodel their leadership paradigm away from militarism and aggression and towards harmony and peace which is true leadership. It so happens that Pakistan and Afghanistan are in the common neighbourhood area of India and China. Discarding militarism, colonial habits and, the practice of hegemony that have characterised the past few centuries of human history, India and China have a unique opportunity to help build structures and institutions of cooperation in Pakistan and Afghanistan that will help these two countries stand on their own feet and evolve at their own pace. China and India cannot do this if they themselves have border disputes. Therefore China, if it truly wants to play to its potential in this part of the world, should perhaps sit down with India and de-escalate the Ladakh problem to start with, followed by a lasting solution to the border problem. If that is not possible in the near term, at least there should be a commitment not to escalate the situation on the ground beyond what obtained before the Ladakh incursions took place.

Assuming that China and India solve the problem of the Ladakh incursions, and assuming that they develop enough momentum together in their approach to Pakistan and Afghanistan, we now come to what enormous work they can accomplish in mitigating the Clash of Civilisations we referred to earlier. Pakistan is going through difficult times or promising times depending on one's mindset. Some well informed Pakistanis are saying that Pakistan has enough resilience to emerge better through its present difficult phase. The power holders of Pakistan seem to be mature enough to seriously work for an end to the hide and seek game between democracy and military rule in Pakistan. Presumably democracy would come to prevail, though it may not be a replica of Western democracy. If the Sino-Indian synergy happens and if it holds, it can do a lot to facilitate Pakistan fashion its own destiny by giving Pakistan an opportunity to face and resolve its problems. The most critical of these problems is how soon can Pakistan shed its unfortunate image as a haven of terrorism earlier and now as victim of terrorism as well. This problem at its root is what is highlighted by the phenomenon of the Clash of Civilisations. It is the competition between strict Islam and liberal Islam for the minds and hearts of Muslims. There are many liberal scholars of Islam who have started the work of interpreting Islam's Holy Book, the Qura'n, in the footsteps of Seyyid Qutb, basing their interpretation on Qutb's work itself, namely, “In the shade of the Quran”, a thirty volume commentary or interpretation of the Quran, held in high esteem by many Muslims across the world. Some scholars have gone to the original Arabic roots of the Qura'n. They are demonstrating that faithful translations of the original Arabic which they say has a certain mathematical precision of grammar is quite different from what many are told is the meaning. Devoid of the compulsions to please any cruel tyrant or dictator these translations seem to be quite true and liberal. Pakistan as an Islamic State can look at its own psyche, interpret Islam in its original Arabic purity and evolve at its own pace in its own unique way at peace with itself at last. For this to happen Sino-Indian synergy should buffer Pakistan from destabilising forces. This Sino-Indian synergy may prove crucial for Pakistan and eventually to Afghanistan too. God willing, or Insha Allah as the Musselman says, a new template may evolve in time that may reconcile the warring factions of Islam. Pakistan-Afghanistan may be the crucible where this template is fashioned and Sino-Indian synergy may be the facilitating factor here that buffers the two Islamic countries from instability. This blogger at first hand has seen the marvellous process of an inhuman mindset blossoming into a kindhearted individual. In the proper ambiance there comes a magic moment when this happens. The extreme religious mindset that has perpetrated so many unbelievably cruel acts has all along been a twisted and traumatised mind that has been tragically misguided to use religion to cloak itself with self-acceptance. When all existential threats are removed, when non-judgmental facilitation is available, the magical transformation referred above happens. As with the individual, so with a nation. Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the help and support of India and China can be the “breakout” countries that can put behind them their bloody past and present and bring about a silent revolution of peace in the Islamic world, Insha Allah.

At this point, we should be honest in stating in so many words that both India and China need the natural resources of Afghanistan through Pakistan. Also, through Afghanistan, perhaps both of them need to reach out to the Central Asian countries as well for the same reasons. Here is where Sino-Indian synergy can demonstrate to the world that there is a fair and just way of doing business with resource rich but not-so-well governed countries. All along many such countries have been ravaged and exploited to the hilt by rapacious, predatory, resource-hunting countries, which boasted of great liberalism and humanism back home, when in fact what they were doing all along was waging wars and practicing several avatars of “vulture capitalism” and “Disaster Capitalism”. (See “Shock doctrine” of Naomi Klein). Demonstrating its opposite by empowering Pakistan and Afghanistan to set their own terms for fair business parameters for utilisation of their resources in an eco-friendly and sustainable model, helping them build their own factories hospitals and schools conforming to their choice and giving them access to the huge markets of India and China will confer great stature on India and China in the eyes of the world.

Whether China intended it or not, it looks as if the Ladakh incursion may be the inflection point for all the countries in the region to usher in a historic period of equitable growth prosperity and peace that has eluded this part of the world for so long.