|
Fallacy of China’s claim to Arunachal |
 |
Harjit Singh
Even as the policy makers in South Block were fretting over another assertion of the Chinese claim to Arunachal Pradesh by denying visa to an IAS officer from the North-Indian State, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Germany, drew his attention to Article 7 of the Guiding Principles the two countries had agreed to in 2005 which clearly state that “In reaching the boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.” This means that China should recognize the Indian nationality of those living in Arunachal Pradesh rather than denying visa to the IAS officer on the frivolous ground that as he hailed from the territory which is claimed by China, there was no question of his being issued the visa. When External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee met new Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Berlin on June 6, the latter said that the “mere presence” in populated areas would not affect China’s claims on the Sino-Indian border. China is thus repudiating the provisions of Article 7 of the 2005 Agreement on the guidelines the Special Representatives would observe in addressing the border issue, though its apologists would claim that this was merely China’s interpretation of that Agreement.
The Chinese appear to believe in the principle that if you make repeated claim to something, the other parties will be forced to accept the claim or at least compromise. Right from the days after the 1962 India-China war, during which the Chinese occupied some eight thousand square kilometres in Aksai Chin in Ladakh, and Pakistan gifting China the trans-Karakoram tract from the occupied parts of Jammu and Kashmir, China has been laying claim first to only Tawang, which is part of Arunachal Pradesh, and then the whole of the State calling it part of South Tibet. Not bringing on the table its own occupation of the Indian territory of Aksai Chin and instead asking India to vacate Arunachal Pradesh, what it is saying is that what it has in hand belongs to it and what it does not have should be negotiated.
For the first time, Chinese shocked the wits out of South Block in 1986 when the then Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Shuquing, at a meeting with a group of visiting Indian journalists, said that “some 90,000 square kilometres of Chinese territory” was under India’s occupation”, adding that there would be no border settlement “unless India resolves this key to the overall situation.” New Delhi was shocked by the statement made by this ranking Chinese official 24 years after the war when India-China bilateral relations were turning friendly. Twenty years later, there were reports that the Chinese were walking in and out of the border areas of Arunachal Pradesh at will and had even built a helipad. Again, ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to New Delhi in November last year, the Chinese Ambassador, undoubtedly on instructions from Beijing, said in a TV interview that the “whole of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory.” India, however, played down the envoy’s utterances lest it would jeopardize President Hu’s visit and hoped that aware of the Indian sensitivities, China would desist from raising this issue at a time when the Special Representatives of the two countries were busy sorting out differences on the border dispute. But, by denying visa to an Indian IAS officer who was part of a larger hundred-plus delegation of Indian bureaucrats on a training and study programme, China has once again dug out an issue which has the potential of derailing the border talks.
China claims 90,000 sq km of Indian territory, which is the entire State of Arunachal Pradesh, in the eastern sector. It is in illegal possession of Aksai Chin, and occupies 5,180 sq km of Shaksgam Valley in Jammu & Kashmir which was ceded to it by Pakistan in 1963. After the September 1993 Treaty of Border Peace and Tranquillity, India accepted that the entire 4,056 km-long border is disputed and will be called the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Before this treaty, the LAC was a mere 320 km stretch from Daulat Beg Oldi to Demchok in Ladakh and had a 20 km demilitarised zone on either side. India called the entire eastern border the McMahon Line which was defined, but ceased to exist after the 1993 treaty.
For any honourable settlement of the dispute on the basis of what China insists “mutual understanding and accommodation”, India and China should each be prepared to demonstrate the flexibility in negotiating positions to the same degree that they expect to see in the other. For the talks to succeed, both India and China will have to make significant departures from the national mythologies that had been constructed about the boundary dispute. The negotiations cannot be built on expectations of unilateral concessions from one side alone. The broad contours of settlement are widely understood in both the capitals — the so-called package deal requires China to give up its claim to Arunachal Pradesh in the Eastern Sector and India its claims to large parts of Aksai Chin. Within that broad framework, there are many wrinkles to be ironed out.
|
