China, India, Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh
Yesterday Prime minister Modi visited Arunachal Pradesh to inaugurate its first ever railway link. Within hours, Chinese government protested by saying “India should pay attention to the strong concern of the Chinese Side”. To begin with, Its ridiculous to think that Chinese government even has a concern about an Indian prime minister visiting to its own Indian State.
Chinese have long tradition to rake up the boarder issues with its neighbors to keep a check on them. Chinese should first introspect about their involvement in Tibet before voicing concerns about other countries. Not long ago in 2008, Chinese had an embarrassment with all over the world when Olympic torch baton relay took place. Even their state owned media could not keep mum about strong protests by young Tibetans against Chinese illegal occupation of Tibet.
The unfortunate leadership of early leadership of Indian independent India allowed China to become a neighbor. Fact is, Historically China was never been a neighbor to India before it illegally occupied Tibet in 1951. The Chinese gripe about India is that it is sheltering Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) leader Dailai Lama in India. It wants to put pressure on India by raking up with boarder disputes. Whenever any discomfort with Indian government there will be incursions in the Ladakh region to bully and bring India to a negotiation table. This has been going too far now, but China will soon slowly take notice of the power shift in Delhi and will behave better in the years to come.
Modi is well aware of the issues with China, for now he would totally concentrate on Indian economic growth and modernization of Indian military and rightly so. The process has begun already, India started aggressively spend on three branches of the military. Progress in total Indigenous defense manufacturing on its way. On the diplomatic front India will strongly lobby for permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Now that, all the five veto powered nations principally, at least verbally, agreed to Indian state induction to UNSC, Modi will pursue on that with continuous effort. Modi should be as proactive as he was with the International Yoga Day announcement by UN. It may not be easy but becoming a permanent member is just a eventuality because of India’s sheer size in both population and economy.
Meanwhile India can play low key fight with India voicing for Tibet’s Independence. The previous Indian establishments are too timid to talk about Tibet. Modi doesn’t belong to that list but I believe he is waiting to set his own house right first before showing eye to eye to the Chinese. This is/should also be an eventuality.