Knowledge Partner
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist
he great concern of foreign offices is to avoid conflict and to find
peaceful ways of handling their differences with other states. For India,
this has always been an especially important preoccupa*on,
surrounded as it is by countries that can be hos*le and ready to use force to
gain their purpose. India has always been compelled to seek ways of
countering hos*le ac*ons aimed at its territorial integrity, while s*ll
maintaining its drive to develop and progress.
There were more biQer experiences in store, from a different direc*on:
rela*ons with China had begun on a hopeful note, with the two recently
liberated countries of Asia making common cause as they combated the
ves*ges of colonialism and imperialism, and came together to promote
the cause of solidarity among developing countries at events like the
epochal Bandung conference of 1955. But rela*ons deteriorated
thereajer and China’s 1962 assault on India s*ll casts a shadow on
bilateral rela*ons. In this case, neither India nor China was ready to look
to the UN or any other interna*onal body as adjudicator, and their
differences remained unseQled, as indeed they do even today.
T
These mul*ple concerns go back to the earliest days when the Indian union
was born and almost immediately thereajer suffered invasion from its
neighbour, Pakistan. Although that military assault was successfully resisted,
a price had to be paid through diversion of resources from development
towards the requirements of na*onal defence, and this conflict remains a
primary concern of India’s diplomacy, some*mes more or less dormant, at
other *mes flaring into open baQle. There has never been tranquility and
normality in India-Pakistan rela*ons, so it is inevitable that rela*ons with this
neighbour should form a large part of our diploma*c exposure and strongly
influence our diploma*c prac*ce and experience.
The differences could not be seQled but India and China made serious
aQempts to resolve them through discussion. There were many rounds of
talks between their representa*ves: senior officials and even their Heads
of Government met and tried to find an agreed way forward. Both sides
laid out their views in great detail, in the expecta*on that the validity of
their claims would be shown in a persuasive manner and be sufficient to
affirm the legi*macy of their claims. The many rounds of talks that
succeeded each other led to the publica*on of a number of White Papers
that set out respec*ve posi*ons on the border alignment. These
documents are part of the permanent record of the discussions and they
bear witness to the great effort made by both sides to find a solu*on by
peaceful means, turning away from the diplomacy of force and decep*on
that was associated with the methods of the colonial powers.
While standing firm against aggression, India Rela@ons with China
never abandoned its effort to find peaceful
have been more
and construc*ve means of resolving its
differences with the neighbour. Its quest for readily restored than
an orderly seQlement made it one of the first rela@ons with
countries to invoke the UN's interven*on in Pakistan.
a bid to seQle a bilateral issue. The UN itself
was under test having been recently recons*tuted in its present shape ajer
the conclusion of World War II. Pakistan had invaded Jammu and Kashmir
soon ajer Independence and it was its aQempt to annex that part of India
through force of arms that led India to take the maQer to the UN and seek a
solu*on through diploma*c means under the authority of the world body.
India has been accused of adop*ng a legalis*c approach to the
discussions, unlike China which was more pragma*c and less dependent
on the wriQen record in presen*ng its case. The Chinese aQack, when it
came, caught India unaware, and has ins*lled great watchfulness and
cau*on on India’s border management policies. The limits of diplomacy
were made painfully obvious in 1962 when India’s border defences
crumbled before the invader and the country suffered a far-reaching
crisis; it had seemed at one stage that more general war extending
India was confident that the UN would not fail to restore the situa*on ajer
Pakistan’s invasion, for there was no doubt about which of the contending
states had entered the territory of the other or made territorial claims that
had no legal basis. However, the powerful na*ons that dominated the UN
and its key instrument, the UN Security Council (UNSC), chose to
prevaricate and enter into a prolonged process of discussion and
adjudica*on, which proved inconclusive and failed to resolve the issue. What
should have been a straighkorward maQer was stretched out indefinitely,
not for its intrinsic complexity but because it was caught up in Cold War
considera*ons: India’s nonalignment estranged it from the West to which
Pakistan had *ed itself through security pacts and reaped the benefit of
support from that source. Ajer that biQer experience India has invariably
shied away from referring its bilateral problems to mul*lateral bodies like the
UN: it makes beQer sense for India to engage in direct discussion and
nego*a*on in order to resolve problema*c issues rather than bring third
par*es with their unpredictable priori*es into the picture.
Image 1: The India-C hina border crossing at Nathu La, Sikkim, India
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