(The writer was an aide to India's former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Comments are welcome at sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com)
India and China have a dispute over the nearly 4,000-km border that is now more than half-a-century old. How much longer will it remain unresolved? Another 50 years? 100 years? At some point in the future, it will have surely ceased to be a dispute. For History has a way of making most problems of this kind history in one way or the other.
Therefore, let us position ourselves at that point in the future when the India-China border dispute would have become a non-issue, look back and find out how it was resolved. Let us leave out of our discussion predictions by some loony futurologists that either China or India or both will disintegrate. Here are the two likeliest scenarios.
The less, far less, likely scenario: the two Asian giants fought yet another fruitless war, which turned out to be hugely destructive on both sides, and came to the conclusion that it was necessary to settle this issue once and for all. And when they settled the issue, it was on the basis of mutual accommodation and compromise, since it was impossible for any one side to get all it wanted.
The second scenario: India and China came to the same conclusion, without fighting a war. This happened due to persistent efforts by some enlightened leaders on both sides, who had sound and pragmatic appraisal of the geo-political realities on the ground. Besides, they were guided by the conviction that the wisdom and the universal human values embedded in the world's two great civilizations strictly prohibited them from seeking a military solution to the border dispute. They understood the truth of what the Buddha, a king among sages whose teachings had effortlessly crossed the forbidding Himalayan border between ancient India and ancient China, had said: "In a battle, the winners and the losers both lose." Indeed, pursuit of cosmic harmony being the common teaching of both civilisations, the Indian and Chinese leaders' adherence to this teaching made their task of finding a mutually acceptable solution to the border dispute a lot easier. What finally sealed the happy agreement was the determined and successful efforts by these leaders to persuade their respective populations to accept the solution arrived at on the principle of mutual give-and-take.
If this is how a solution to the border dispute is ultimately going to arrive, doesn't common sense tell us that India and China should hasten its arrival? Those who are familiar with the nature and origin of the border dispute know that both sides will have to show flexibility. Ultra-nationalists' rigid and jingoistic posture of not wanting to give even an inch of one's "sacred" land to the other is an invitation to disaster, the costs of which future generations will have to bear. Already, the prolongation of the dispute has severely constrained the opportunities for mutually-beneficial cooperation between India and China, besides creating new complications. For example, India views with suspicion China's support to Pakistan. Similarly, China views with suspicion India's growing closeness to the United States. There is a luxuriant crop of western scholars who affirm that India and China can never be friends and that their enmity will intensify as both countries become more prosperous. Are we to prove these scholars right? Who benefits from India-China enmity? Surely, arms manufacturers who have become the mainstay of the declining West's doddering economies.
Any eventual resolution of the border dispute will mainly require India making concessions in the western sector (Aksai Chin), and China doing the same in the eastern sector (Arunachal Pradesh). Sadly, as far as India is concerned, a combination of ignorance and obduracy, both at the political and popular levels, has prevented any constructive debate on creating a national consensus around such a compromise-based settlement. Neither the BJP nor the Congress, our two main political parties, is willing to admit that India too committed grave mistakes that led to the entirely avoidable war in 1962. And in today's highly confrontationist relationship between the two parties, neither wants to be seen as advocating compromise with China. In the absence of a broad consensus between major political parties, there can be no societal consensus either. The absence of such national consensus has heightened the risk for any Prime Minister to make resolution of the border dispute with China his priority. The same might be true in China, even though it is under single-party rule.
As a result, both countries have chosen to simply manage the dispute, and not try and surmount it. India and Pakistan also have made the same choice. South Asia is paying a huge price because of these myopic choices.
Yet, true leaders are those who refuse to follow the tide of events and, instead, show the vision and the will to change its course in the direction of the desired destination. Are Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping such history-changing leaders?
Happily, there are now some indications that India and China have finally decided to get serious about making real progress on this knotty issue. The 18th round of border talks, held in New Delhi on March 23-24 between the special representatives of the two countries - National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and State Councillor Yang Jiechi - have resulted in both sides agreeing to take necessary steps to maintain "peace and tranquility in the border areas". They have "agreed to build on the momentum provided" by Xi's visit to India in September 2014 to further expand bilateral relations in areas such as railways, smart cities, vocational education, skill development, clean and renewable energy and manufacturing sector. They will now "enhance their consultations on counter-terrorism, maritime security, climate change, reform of United Nations and civil nuclear energy cooperation."
Most importantly, the border talks in New Delhi, held for the first time after Modi became Prime Minister, have emphasized the two countries' commitment "to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution of the border question at an early date". The reference to "an early date" is truly hope-giving.
There is a memorable photograph from the Chinese president's visit to India last year, when both he and the Indian Prime Minister sat together at Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and spent a few moments spinning Mahatma Gandhi's
charkha. Let us hope this was not meant merely as a nice photo opportunity. For Gandhi, the spinning wheel was a powerful messenger of peace and harmony, both in human and cosmic realms, and this message powerfully echoes the teaching of Confucius and other great Chinese gurus. Gandhi's vision for future India-China relations was articulated in a letter he wrote in 1942. "As a friend of China, I long for the day when a free India and a free China will cooperate together in friendship and brotherhood for their own good and for the good of the world." His words have a ringing relevance for today, tomorrow and forever.
Modi's visit to China in May should achieve a decisive breakthrough in ensuring complete and irreversible peace and tranquility along the Line of Control (LAC). Thereafter, he and Xi should move quickly towards resolving the border dispute in a mutually acceptable manner. In India in the meantime, BJP and Congress should take the lead in creating national consensus on the settlement.
History is surely waiting for the triumphant Modi-Xi handshake announcing this agreement, which will be a turning point in world history.
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