Sometime back an email was circulated where in God showed India as His finest creation except that it did not have good neighbors. It is aptly said that you can choose your friends but not your neighbors. In this post, I will briefly take you through an introductory note on how India’s influence in the neighboring nations of South East Asia is being slowly eroded by China. In the successive posts, I will take each of the nations in greater detail.
1. NEPAL: Traditionally, Indo-Nepal relationship is always seen as friendly and cordial. But with the end of monarchy, came the shock win for Maoists in Nepal. With the rise of Prachanda, the Maoist leader, came the elements of distrust between the two countries. China grabbed the opportunity to increase its footprints in the Himalayan nation and the Maoist regime only seemed to make its task easier. India was caught off-guard by the unexpected victory of the Maoists, but it needs to mend its ways with them to keep this country within its sphere of influence.
2. BHUTAN: The world’s youngest democracy was helped by India to conduct its first ever elections and overall has a very friendly relationship with India. But recently it shocked India by conducting border talks with China. The shock was not much because of the stealth nature of the talks but because India was not informed of the same. China has steadily reduced the disputed area from 1000sq kms to 269sq kms in April 2004. This hints towards increasing Chinese influence in yet another Himalayan nation.
3. PAKISTAN: China-Pakistan has always had a very friendly relationship which has been mutually beneficial. Each country helps each other to check India’s prowess. It has been more than just boon for Pakistan by gaining access to nuclear technology, modern arms as well as economic aid all due to its close relationship with China. But Pakistan has deftly handled its close ties with the United States as well, thus gaining major fund from the US. According to recent reports, it has been found that Pakistan had been using the funds to develop nuclear warheads pointed to India. By coming under fire for this action, Pakistan promptly began a quasi civil war against the Taliban.
4. SRI LANKA: This is yet another nation where China has made great in roads again due to India’s inaction. China started to make its impact by restoring the structures during tsunami. Next it announced its support to the SriLankan Governmment in its war against LTTE. India had to maintain a neutral stand keeping in mind the relationship with SriLanka and the sentiments of the Tamils. This paved way for China who became the largest donor to Lanka. Also China has taken up the task of building Hambantota port in Sri Lanka which seems to be a part of a larger scheme which also includes upgradation of ports in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar.
5. MYANMAR: The nation ruled by the military junta has always placed India in a dilemma. Being a democratic nation, India supports the pro-democratic movement in Myanmar, but at the same time it seeks to keep good relations with the junta, thus again taking a neutral stand. Myanmar becomes an important nation for both China and India due to its vast reserves of natural gas. Recently China supported the junta rule in Myanmar thus leaning Myanmar on China’s side. Myanmar’s tilt towards China is clearly visible through its act of selling natural gas to China even though ONGC Videsh and Gail had a combined stake of 30% in the same.
This was just an introductory post on increasing China’s influence in the Indian Ocean region, thus trying to undermine India’s supremacy in the region. India needs to proactively take stands and improve its relations with the neighbors or else even they (the neighbors) will become puppets (like Pakistan) in the hands of China, which can then be used against India in its quest of becoming a super power. India can become a global power only by making an impact in its sphere of influence to compare to the Chinese efforts in the same direction.
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The influence was felt particularly when SL crushed LTTE with Chinese weapons. TV channels showed interviews of SL army generals candidly admittting tht we ‘had’ to take chinese help, since India didn’t help in the weapons dept…
Last year, i did a trip of North East India, and one of the places i visited during this trip was Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. This place is extremely close to the border, so much so that villagers can actually walk all the way to the border, through the mountains quite easily (once the snow melts).
It so happens that Tawang was captured by the Chinese during the Indo-China war. We lost the war, but the Chinese left Tawang with us, for whatever reason (there is a memorial there for the Indian Martyrs, which is a must see). However, after going back to China, they started building up the infrastructure (roads esp.) near the Tawang border. There is a large Indian military presence in Tawang, obviously, and one of the Army men told us that for reaching the Tawang border, from the Indian side it would take a few hours, whereas from the Chinese side, a few minutes!! even during peak snow. This is extremely scary, since China claims Arunachal Pradesh to be theirs as it is. Why this huge difference in infrastructure, in such a sensitive area, is a huge question mark.
While the Army presence is very reassuring, China sure is flexing their muscles in the NE, and infrastructure wise, we seem to be making an effort to remain weak.
Funnily enough, there is a road sign on the Indian side of the border which says ‘Beijing 5000 km’ or some similar distance.
For the uninitiated, the strategy that China seems to be following is called the “String of Pearls Strategy”. This involves having geo-political influence in the entire Indian Sub-continent region.
This particular strategy will undermine the efforts of the Indian Navy to transform itself from a Brown-Water Navy to a Blue-Water Navy.
Very aptly described. Failure to respond to situations is a failure itself. Entire Europe was silent when Hitler was building up his war machinery. And once the war broke, all the nations fell like a deck of cards. I fear that there is a great level of incompetency among our politicians to plan and act decisively. We are locked up in the old notions of Non Alignment being completely oblivious to changing circumstances around us. We get into wrong books for every wrong reasons with our neighbors.
I think time has come to start addressing foreign relations in a strong, bold and in a manner beneficial to India and not locked up by any ideology.