If we leave apart diplomatic verbosity and token commitments, Chinese President Hu Jintao's New Delhi visit remained Arunachal Pradesh centric. Winding up the official tour Hu Jintao clearly stated that his goal was early resolution of border issue. A week ago, the Chinese Ambassador in India had said that the whole of Arunachal belongs to Tibetan State of China.

There is an important monastery of Buddhists in that area. The fact, however, remains that Arunachal is an Indian state inherited from Britishers many centuries back. The Britishers collected land revenue from that area. Going by the Chinese argument India can rightly claim Kailash Mansarover area, for origin and existence of numerous Indian religious scriptures in that area.

Till recently Chinese had been posturing that border controversies be put on the back burner and let other relations flourish. Now, it seems that border issue has been put on the front burner. In 1962 China attacked India in the north-eastern border area and its army went upto Tejpur. India suffered a humiliating defeat and lost over 33,000 sq kms of territory. USA pledged some military aid. China backtracked in a few weeks. It would be alarming to recall that CPM in its resolution echoed Chinese sentiments and called India aggressor and expansionist, a favourite words used by Bangladesh and Pakistan against India. Even Nepalese murmur it sometimes.

One cannot forget that just four decades ago, under Nehru's regime, India reverberated with slogans of "Hindi-chini bhai hai" and "Panchsheel" when Chou-en-Lie the Chinese Prime Minister came to Delhi. Both Nehru and Chou-en-Lie flew pigeons as the messengers of peace and freedom. In 1962 Nehru learnt the bitterest lesson of diplomatic naivete. It was the same Nehru who strongly supported China's membership of UNO and tried to convince the leadership world over, about their good intentions. At that particular juncture Sardar Patel showed much better understanding of the world-order. Patel in his letter to Nehru on November 7, 1950 wrote:

"I have carefully gone through the correspondence between the External Affairs Ministry and our Ambassador in Peking and through him the Chinese Government....My own feeling is that at a crucial period they managed to install into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so-called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means. There can be no doubt that during the period covered by this correspondence the Chinese must have been concentrating for an onslaught on Tibet....

Your direct approaches to them, indicates that even though we regard ourselves as friends of China the Chinese do not. With the Communist mentality of "whoever is not with them being against them....In the background of this, we have to consider what new situation now faces us as a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we knew it, and the expansion of China almost up to our gates. Throughout history we have seldom been worried about our north-east frontier.... The final action of the Chinese, in my judgment, is little short of perfidy. The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put faith in us; they chose to be guided by us; and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence."

We as a nation are carried away by the propaganda and often ignore the encirclement of India by China. China has well entrenched into Pakistan. It is helping Pakistan in an unprecedented manner in the field of nuclear power from mid 80's till date. It is also constructing strong naval base at Gwadar in Baluchistan. Pakistan's military preparations are targeted on India.

Coming to the northern border, high level Chinese officials' regular visits to Kathmandu. Late King Mahandra gave permission to build a highway from Lhasa to Kathmandu. All over in Tibet and the main land, railway and road links have been constructed. Even such roads as Karakoram highway from Sinkiang to Rawalpindi adds to the military preparedness of China and Pakistan, both. Chinese lobbyists including CPM are very powerful in the Central Govt. With Bangladesh, China has already entered into an alliance for defence co-operation.

Bangladesh, of late, has emerged as a front line state to China, like that of Myanmmar, which is being enormously helped by it. It has already acquired naval base in southern Myanmmar and Coco island which was gifted by Nehru to Myanmmar for nothing. Now Chinese radars are watching our missile launching stations of Sriharikota and Chandipur. Our northern neighbour is trying to allure Bhutan for quite sometime. Does this indicate that China is our potential friend?

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, November 26, 2006