A lost opportunity for India-China diplomacy

Wang Yi (File image)

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to India was damaged even before it began. Thirty six hours before the Foreign Minister’s arrival in New Delhi, the atmospherics surrounding the trip were vitiated by a forthright “rejection” by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of Wang’s “uncalled” for recent utterances.

Whoever on Raisina Hill, the seat of power in New Delhi, took forward the proposal made by Beijing for this visit about 10 days ago did not do due diligence. It was known for weeks that Wang would attend a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), where Kashmir is routinely brought up.

As and when it is brought up at any forum, China simply cannot look the other way because Kashmir is not a matter of foreign affairs for those who rule in Beijing. Like it or not, China is in physical possession of large parts of Kashmir, gifted to it long ago by Pakistan. Chinese possession of Kashmir is illegal and contravenes norms that govern relations between nations, but it cannot be wished away. It is a ground reality.

Therefore, whoever agreed to a visit by Wang to New Delhi on his way back home after commenting on Kashmir – which was widely anticipated – must be faulted for not seizing the diplomatic opportunity in a historic first bilateral visit from China since the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan and the sharp deterioration in ties between the two countries over their border disputes.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi singularly tried to set the tone for Wang’s engagements in New Delhi by expressing his “deep grief” – as officials of the Prime Minister’s Office described his emotions over a Chinese air tragedy – stories appeared in the media that said no significance should be attached to Modi’s comments. Here was a Prime Minister who stuck his neck out to expressly say that he was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the crash of a Chinese airliner which took 132 lives, but a powerful lobby would rather underplay the message within the condolence message just before Wang’s visit.

How often does a Head of Government anywhere publicly commiserate with three-figure loss of lives in another country, be it a natural disaster or an accident? Modi did that to give the Wang visit a chance. Any loss of life is one too many, but an accident that claims lives in three figures is not one that normally stirs a head of state or government in times when tragedies claim human lives in tens of thousands. There was deliberation in Modi’s condolence.

Wang said recently that India and China should not waste their resources in mutual confrontation and that another country – unnamed – and its surrogates were behind downturns in relations between the two Asian neighbours. Conspiracy theories abound in diplomacy. But instances like a deliberate downplaying of Modi’s message designed to promote goodwill lend credence to theories that outside forces have a vested interest in seeing that India and China do not mend their fences. Powerful countries from outside their region have a history of destabilising Sino-Indian relations.

Unfortunately, some South Asian powers add fuel to this fire. Imran Khan’s invitation to Wang to attend the OIC meeting in Islamabad was not meant to prove, yet again, that Pakistan and China are “all-weather friends,” the description used worldwide in reference to their long-standing alliance. It was in retaliation for the United Arab Emirate’s landmark invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in March 2019 to similarly speak at an OIC meeting which the UAE was then hosting.

If Pakistan still believes in its foundational principles as an Islamic nation and as the self-proclaimed “Land of the Pure,” it should not have exploited the opportunity provided by the OIC conclave in its territory to host China, which has a history of mass persecution and elimination of Muslims simply because of their religion and ethnicity linked to Islam. But Islamabad will not miss any opportunity to retaliate against India for what it perceives as a slight to itself.

The only occasion when Pakistan boycotted an OIC meeting in that organisation’s history was in protest against the invitation to Swaraj to address the OIC in Abu Dhabi. It will not be lost on fellow Muslim countries that Pakistan has now paid back in equal measure for that perceived slight. What is alarming, yet unsurprising, is that even when Khan was beleaguered by existential problems at home, his focus was laser-like when it came to hitting back at India. The events surrounding the OIC meeting also showed that Pakistan may be a deeply divided society, but they unite at all costs against India.

Given the circumstances under which Wang’s visit to New Delhi is taking place, it may now be nothing more than window-dressing, but Wang will go home satisfied that his confabulations at the OIC will be fruitful in the pursuit of its ongoing policies against religious and ethnic minorities. It is time for India to pick up the threads of a similar engagement from where Swaraj left off when she died. Perhaps her successor, S Jaishankar, should devote an equal amount of time comparing notes with his Chinese counterpart on their relative experiences in dealing with the Islamic world as non-Muslim nations than on their intractable border question.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. 

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.