By Ankit Panda
India needs to decide how it’ll handle a Chinese invitation to a Second World War commemorative parade.
Indian leaders have a diplomatic call to make as they weigh an outstanding invitation from China to send a high-level delegation and a contingent of soldiers to march in a historic military parade in Beijing on September 3, marking 70 years since the formal surrender of Imperial Japan and the end of the Second World War in Asia, or, as the Chinese call it, the “War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.” The Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has to consider whether it should meet China’s expectation, thereby possibly upsetting Japan, a close partner, or to spurn the invitation and thereby risk poor optics with Beijing.
The decision highlights how India’s standing in the region isn’t insulated from the historical tensions that have come to permeate Northeast Asian diplomacy so visibly this year. New Delhi’s calculus is considerably complicated by the fact that the so-called “Abe Statement,” the Japanese prime minister’s widely anticipated statement of contrition for Imperial Japanese atrocities on this anniversary, remains indeterminate. The significance of Indian participation or non-participation in the Beijing parade will largely be influenced by the outcome of the Abe statement.
Observers expect that should Abe’s statement omit language on Japanese ”aggression” during the war and fail to adequately express “deep remorse and heartfelt apology,” as per the benchmark 1995 statement by Japan’s then-prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, and the 2005 statement by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Beijing will react negatively. In the case that Beijing finds the Abe statement unsatisfactory and India sends inadequate representation for the September 3 parade, perceptions of a India-Japan alliance are bound to intensify in China. After their declaration of a strategic partnership in 2006, a security partnership in 2008, and a trade liberalization agreement in 2011, India and Japan have continued to strategically converge amid mutual perceptions of a growing Chinese threat to the status quo in Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat