Sino-Indian Relations and Pakistan | Social Issue Essay, Article, Paragraph for Class 12, Graduation and Competitive Examination.

Sino-Indian Relations and Pakistan

Scheme of the essay

Exposition: Despite political uncertainty at home there is and ought to be consensus about foreign policy.

Rising Action: The new government at the centre is confronted with the ongoing cold war with Pakistan

Climax:

(1) The collusion between China and Pakistan is traceable to the Sino-Indian Conflict.

(2) In 1965 China advocated plebiscite in Kashmir.

(3) In 1971 China gave moral support to Pakistan during Indo- Pak war.

(4) Today China is less enthusiastic about Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir.

(5) China used Pakistan in opening out towards the Gulf States and in forcing the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Falling Action: These developments created fear in the minds of Indians

Ending: The latest developments show that China is distancing from Pakistan because of the latter’s one-dimensional policy towards India.

At a time of unprecedented political uncertainty in the domestic context, the near-unanimity on foreign policy comes as a welcome relief and is reassuring in all its ramifications, including the framework. The processes, and relations with our immediate neighbours. As the country has entered the era of coalition politics with a common minimum programme, it will be of more than academic interest to delineate the consensual elements in formulating external policies in a manner that will help create an area of convergence among different political parties on several crucial domestic issues.

On a priority basis, any new government at the Centre would be confronted with the reality of an ongoing strenuous cold war with Pakistan. Having set for itself the goal of establishing a peaceful environment on its periphery, it then behoves the incumbents to take some meaningful initiatives in extricating the Indo-Pak impasse from its present rigidities as well as expanding ties with China which have undergone a positive transformation in the last few years. Since there lingers a pervasive sense of inadequacy in India’s China policy, mainly centred on the latter’s high-profile camaraderie with our arch-rival Pakistan, it may be worthwhile to explore the parameters of Sino-Pak relations and their causal connection, if any, with the developments in Sino-Indian relations.

It may be recalled that Sino-Pak relations remained distant lukewarm, and, at times tense in the first decade of communist rule in China. Specifically, the origins of the entente cordiale between China and Pakistan are directly traceable to the Sino-Indian conflict. By the end of the 1950s. Nehru’s China policy had virtually collapsed and new alignments were already in the making in the immediate neighbourhood some of which were highly disconcerting from India’s security perspective. The formulations of the Sino-Pak strategic relationship were tentatively laid around this time through the instrumentality of negotiating a provisional border agreement between the two.

In 1960, China refused to include the boundary of Kashmir west of the Karakoram Pass in its discussions with India. In the following year. Pakistan for the first time endorsed the representation of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations, thereby debunking its continued support of Taiwan. By December 1962, China and Pakistan had reached an accord on the defining principles to negotiate the border between Xinjiang and the part of Kashmir under Pakistan’s occupation. India’s argument that China and Pakistan had no common border, was disregarded and an agreement was signed in March 1963 underlining, above all. China’s keenness to establish a precedent that its southern periphery needed to be delimited and demarcated.

Responding to India’s objections to Pakistan’s locus standi the Chinese denied that they had ever accepted India’s position without reservations and argued that they “cannot leave unsettled indefinitely its boundary with the areas the defence of which is under the control of Pakistan merely because there is a dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir”.

The pro-Pak strategic shift was subsequently reflected in the Chinese assertion that the Kashmir issue should be determined by a plebiscite following the UN resolutions. The 1965 Indo-Pak were further reinforced a shared objective on Beijing’s behalf to add to India’s discomfiture and to relieve pressure on Pakistan when the Chinese moved their troops stationed on the Sino-Indian border as a diversionary tactic. In the 1971 Indo-Pak war also, the Chinese came out strongly in Pakistan’s support.

While the strategic partnership between China and Pakistan has demonstrated a remarkable tendency to survive in the face of far-reaching developments affecting both. China’s position on Kashmir is no longer the same. In its view, the outstanding differences between the two South Asian neighbours may not be resolved early or easily but an exchange of views across the board may serve a useful purpose. China has been less than enthusiastic in sharing Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir and has talked of the two protagonists reaffirming the Shimla agreement, supported by various political groups in Kashmir. According to Beijing’s new thinking which is a fact a resurrection of its stand held in the heyday of Sino-Indian fraternization, the parties to the dispute should work out their own solution without outside interference.

To some extent, the different rhetoric now articulated by China may be explained by the latter’s desire to shed the unwanted baggage of holding on indefinitely to a static position which has become unproductive with the passage of time. More importantly, a Chinese pronouncement of support for the agenda of self-determination in Kashmir would fly in the face of its own stiff resistance to some such demands, lately being raised in the Muslim-dominated north-western province of Xinjiang. Under the circumstances, China would not lower its guard against the possibility of covert encouragement to these forces through the agency of Pakistan even if it is done through unofficial channels.

In Central Asia, Pakistan vies with China for influence though realistically speaking it is in no position to match the vast Chinese resources except that the Islamic card at its disposal has its tactical uses. While China has used Pakistan as an intermediary in opening out towards the Persian Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, and joined hands with Islamabad in concert with the United States in forcing Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. China would pre-empt any attempt to be upstaged in the region on the premise of Islamic fundamentalism of ethnic separatism.

Although China has refused to be drawn publicly into the Indo-Pak nuclear controversy and to play a more dynamic role to prevent an arms race in the subcontinent. India rightly perceives a linkage between its Prithvi missile programme and China’s transfer of M-11 missiles as a deliberate policy of helping Pakistan build an effective deterrent against India, besides extending long-term assistance to Pakistan’s plans to modernise its conventional weaponry. These decisions, stretching beyond more than a quarter century of alienation between India and China, during which time close interaction with Pakistan evolved in its present form have undoubtedly created a fear psychosis within India that China continues to share its security interests with Pakistan to its detriment.

In the final analysis in the absence of an effective leverage over China’s military cooperation with Pakistan which is held out as a legitimate exercise between two sovereign states, India should be sufficiently encouraged by the incremental delinking of Sino-Indian relations and Sino-Pakistan relations from their past entanglement to hope for the ultimate dissolution of the spectre of a Sino-Pak axis. From all indications. China is distancing itself from Pakistan’s one-dimensional policy towards India without any fanfare as it moves forward to build a cooperative relationship with India.