By Prashant Kumar Singh
India must decide where to direct a new core strategy.
Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s recent articulation of the One-India Policy finally gave official expression to India’s long-held suspicion that its friendly geopolitical concessions and gestures toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have gone unrequited. Swaraj first communicated this thought to the visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in June. She told him that if China expects India to respect its One-China Policy, it should also reciprocate and respect the One-India Policy. Later, at a press conference on September 8, Swaraj insisted that this message was a success. If this thought can become inherent in India’s China policy, it would indeed mark a significant departure. However, the government needs to flesh out some more details for the thought to become policy. It should have a clear perspective on whether it wants to put forward the One-India Policy with respect to India’s China policy only, or if it wants to make it the general framework of a more confident foreign policy. Either option involves nuances that India will have to consider.
The belief that India should ensure the strict reciprocity of gestures and concessions in its political relations with China is not new. India has consistently maintained that China never truly appreciated India’s swift change of recognition from the Republic of China (ROC) to the PRC in 1949; its championing of China’s entry into the UN; its surrender of extra-territorial rights inherited from the British Indian government in Tibet to China; and its refusal to join the U.S. and its allies in isolating China after the Tiananmen Square episode. India in return complains that China has maintained ambiguity with regard to the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, even during the heyday of the India-China friendship in the 1950s; it has propped up a nuclear Pakistan against India and essentially follows a balance of power approach towards India in South Asia, East Asia and Central Asia; and it has been less than forthcoming in supporting India in its fight against terrorism. Indians suspect that their generosity on Tibet has been in vain, as it has not resulted in India gaining any concessions from China in other border disputes. India’s insistence on reciprocity was first seen when the government of Manmohan Singh did not make the customary pledge to support Chinese authority over Tibet and its One-China policy in joint communiqués. Tibet has not figured in any joint communiqué since 2008, and the reiteration of support for the One-China policy has not appeared since 2010.
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