India’s love triangle

Wah, Punditry!
Vicky Leek 

 

This is a new column. It has only one purpose: to pour scorn on columnists, especially the ‘iconic’ ones. For them, the old saying ‘more to be pitied than censured’ should be inverted: no one is more deserving of censure than these pundits because they think an opinion is worthy merely because they hold it.

They come in two versions. One is the Pratap Bhanu Mehta category,  who uninhibitedly write on everything under the sun, primarily for the liberal audience. Mehta can intellectualise a samosa or a plate of keema-paratha. 

The other sort is C Raja Mohan who sticks to one subject, foreign policy, in his case but with a monotone of pro-government lullabies. It doesn’t matter which party is in power, for Mohan the government is always right. 

What, you might ask, about those children of lesser gods, you know, columnists like Swaminathan Aiyar, T N Ninan, Aakar Patel, Swapan Dasgupta, Tavleen Singh and Ashok Malik? You may well be right about them but I will forgive these people their weekly trespasses for they write for their daily bread; they are mere journalists Excellencies, purveyors of piffle, distributors of drivel, no more.

But the pundits can’t be let off so easily. More than anything else they write for personal glory, the applause and kow-towing by folks looking for endorsements, mentions and approval in their columns. They make me think that Raghuram Rajan, who sets my aging widowed heart a-flutter whenever I see his Bond-like images, said it best: these pundits are the one eyed who lead the blind. They are like frogs for whom every event is a monsoon shower which makes them sing in joyous disharmony.

But enough said on why this pin is needed. Let’s get on with poking it into the balloons.

 

Punditry on Indo-US

 Last month Mehta could see nothing right at all with whatever the government had done, was doing or, indeed, would do. In sharp contrast was Mohan who thought that the sun rose from the government’s behind. Both held forth on India’s China and US policies. One thought both were flawed; the other thought both were almost perfect.

In my book, darlings, that’s called prejudice. My late husband was like that, a very pukka bureaucrat who, about six months after he joined the service, became convinced that he was Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva combined. Silly man, never made it beyond JS.

Anyway, Mehta rubbished India’s US policy last month after it was considering signing three agreements: Logistics Support, Communications and Information Security, and Basic Exchange and Cooperation. 

The article was basically a rehash of what he had written exactly10 years ago in Seminar. As then, now also he grumbled that India was surrendering its sovereignty – not his words but certainly his implication – to the US. 

Don’t, for heaven sake, he said in his usual elegant manner, get into the immoral eagle’s claws. You will lose your identity and independence in foreign policy. You will become a pawn, a vassal, a lickspittle of the US.

Just as you were beginning to wonder what this meant and where independence and identity had got us, he explained himself thus:

“The US is making no secret of the fact that it wants to position India in its plans for China. But it is not in India’s interests to become a frontline state in that emerging faultline. Its interests have always been to do business with both countries so that both take it seriously... It does not suit our interests to jump the gun, as it were.”

Mehta said we are weak and therefore must not align with the US. For God’s sake, dear man, if were strong why would we need to have friends or, as you call it, “align” with someone? Remember 1971, when we “aligned” with the USSR. You were probably still in school, then perhaps but I remember August 20, 1971 clearly. 

Our weakness, said Mehta is that we are weak. “...assume a worst case scenario in terms of China’s stance in Asia: tensions escalate, particularly in the South China Sea. Do we really think we will challenge the Chinese there with the Americans, when all that the Chinese have to do is take a little walk across our vast borders to make us feel vulnerable?” 

It is just in order to prevent that I would imagine, we need powerful friends, no?

His other grievance was that all this was happening without debate. Considering how extensively India’s relations with the US have been discussed since 2002 this was a strange remark to make.

Mehta’s Bottom line: Considering how easily China gets annoyed.  remain weak and friendless because otherwise you will annoy China.   

As expected, Mohan took the opposite view. 

 “Some in New Delhi fear that expanding the military partnership with the United States might have huge negative consequences for Delhi’s engagement with Beijing. The idea that India must unilaterally cede a veto to China over its partnership with America reveals an enduring strategic diffidence in Delhi...Will Beijing really go “crazy” if Delhi warms up to Washington?”  

 

He then went on to give half a dozen examples of how China itself “walked on two legs” which means it sees no problems in contradictions (which, I thought, is like the Congress and the CPM fighting in Kerala and kissing in Kolkata).

Then he plunged the knife in deep, really deep. (Even) “Some Chinese analysts seem to have a better appreciation of Delhi’s changing policies than India’s own strategic community. They think Delhi today is playing a sophisticated game like Mao’s China that “aligned with the far” (America) to “balance the near” (the Soviet Union).” 

Then he twisted it: “That nations have no permanent friends or allies but only permanent interests was not original to Lord Palmerston, who served as British prime minister in the 19th century. It’s very much part of the ancient statecraft in China and India. Like modern China, India has not been averse to switching partners or creatively reinterpreting the foreign policy mantra when the need arose.”

Then he cooed that Narendra Modi, like Indira and Rajiv Gandhi was “reordering India’s great-power relations. But those in Delhi wedded to a crude foreign policy schema appear as unprepared for a surprise today as they were in 1971. Then, like now, Indira’s political opponents accused Delhi of abandoning non-alignment.”

Mohan lost the point, though: China’s bilateral relations with the US are such that India is, as Mao famously said about Hong Kong, “a pimple on China’s arse”. India is screwed because nothing it does can influence either US or China policy. It is, as a Chinese newspaper recently wrote like a beautiful woman seeking favours from the rich and powerful. 

So, then, boys what about India’s China policy? Is it ok or not?

No, said Mehta; yes, said Mohan

Mehta took the government to task for cancelling visas to Chinese activists. He forgot that just a few weeks earlier he had admonished the government for annoying China by allying with the US. Now that it was trying not to annoy China, he was offended. “The Indian government’s handling of the issue of visas to Chinese “activists” like Dolkun Isa, Ray Wong and Lu Jinghua has shown our systems and strategy in poor light.”

After criticising the hardware of information systems in the visa section of the MEA, he went intellectual. “Our visa framework has been a standing testament to our lack of confidence in our liberal democracy...we should be ashamed of our suspicion of anything to do with ideas. Consultants, people who move around money, lobbyists, arms traders, corporate business, and tourists who keep their mouth shut, do not go through the kind of scrutiny that people coming to “conferences” do.” 

Then he berated the home ministry. “It is as if anyone who deals with ideas is inherently the object of suspicion more than anyone who deals with money.”

Finally he took on Modi: “We framed a political narrative around a new-formed machismo: We can stand up to China...but it does look like we ate humble pie. If we are being honest, we have to admit that dealing with China is not going to be easy on a number of issues where our values clash...in dealing with China, the issue is not just how we deal with their power. It is also whether we know what we stand for. It is not clear that we do.”

Mohan didn’t comment on India eating crow on Isa’s visa. Instead he focused on India’s China policy which, he said, “continues to oscillate between unmitigated romanticism and unreasonable hostility”. But people forget, he said that “Prime Minister Modi has settled down to a pragmatic engagement with Beijing.” He didn’t say if China had done so also. I suppose it hasn’t, that’s why.

After suggesting that the UPA had been weak-kneed, Modi will do what is best for India, he wrote. Next he wrote that Modi knew that China was China and India, India. One was powerful, the other weak. India, basically, acknowledged Mohan, was over a barrel.

The rest of the article read like something that the MEA cannot convey directly but only through trusted columnists. It told China we are being nice so stop screwing us.

“For Delhi, the answer can’t lie in objecting to China’s security cooperation with smaller neighbours. It must be more sensitive to the political concerns of the South Asian nations and offer attractive terms for military partnerships...the government’s most important departure from the past is in the framing of the China question itself...If the UPA government consciously limited its defence cooperation with the US for fear of upsetting China, Modi’s wager is that expanded cooperation with Washington and Tokyo could eventually help alter China’s calculus on matters of concern to India, especially Beijing’s all-weather partnership with the Pakistan army.” 

Then came the key message from the MEA to China: “Modi’s approach is not very different from that of Beijing, which always had a keen appreciation for power politics...What we now have, instead, is a self-assured Delhi that is ready to compete with Beijing where it must and cooperate where it can.”

Hahaha!

 

Vicky Leek is a hack turned lesser pundit who carps for her daily bread.  She  lurks in the pontificating environs of Central Delhi.