A quiet burial to lal aankh policy

A remarkable aspect of the India-China disengagement at Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh is how the word ‘dialogue’, which had almost passed into disuse over the last 10 years, especially after 2019, is back in fashion. All the details of the deal with China — Delhi calls it an agreement, Beijing says ‘progress’ — are not in the public domain. But A-listers in the Modi government have praised it as the result of ‘patience’ and ‘continuous dialogue’.

Even for the sake of optics, there is no more talk of ‘muscularity’ against China.

“At various points of time, people almost gave up. We have always maintained that on the one hand we obviously had to do counter-deployment, and we have been negotiating since September 2020. It has been a very patient process, though more complicated than how it should have been… it is a product of patient and persevering diplomacy,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar noted on October 21.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also ascribed the ‘broad consensus’ reached by India and China on the disengagement to “the power of engaging in continuous dialogue because sooner or later solutions will emerge”.

In fact, the two sides, represented by military commanders on the ground, had begun to negotiate as early as the first week of June 2020 towards disengaging in the Galwan valley. The clash at Galwan, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed, took place because Indian troops challenged the erection of a tent by the Chinese in the buffer zone created for the disengagement.

Clearly, the decision to negotiate was born out of early pragmatism, belying the rhetoric of a return to status quo ante -- the demand that China restore the situation at the LAC to what it was prior to the ‘unilateral changes’ by it in April 2020. It was dictated by the acute realisation that India was not fully equipped for a military response to the Chinese transgressions. Even the sending up of 50,000 to 60,000 fully equipped additional troops to the border to match the Chinese build-up was a massive challenge. Barring the single ‘quid pro quo’ action by India to occupy the Kailash heights, Indian troops did not undertake any kinetic response to the Chinese ingress. The entire exercise was focused on guarding the border from further Chinese transgressions than trying to reverse losses.

In 21 rounds of negotiations between the ground-level military commanders, which led to disengagement from four more ‘friction’ points (aside from Galwan) from February 2021 to September 2022, India agreed with China to set up demilitarised ‘buffer’ zones at each of these points. This was done to separate the two armies and prevent further Galwan-like escalations. The buffer zones continue to exist, and there is no word yet if that territory will be restored to India.

In time, Delhi’s pragmatism expanded to distance itself from the demand for ‘status quo ante’. The Army brass, though, continued to use the phrase in media interviews and speeches at think tanks. Indeed, the Army Chief, Gen Upendra Dwivedi, called for a return to status quo ante as recently as October 22, a day after the deal was announced.

Over the last four years, the pragmatism has included the realisation that the Indian economy needs China. Despite the ban on Chinese investment, visas, people-to-people ties and a number of Chinese apps, including TikTok, two-way trade with China soared to new levels, touching $100 billion and beyond, of which 85 per cent comprised Chinese exports to India. Over the last year came further realisation that Chinese investment is essential for a leg-up to the economy, specifically in some manufacturing sectors.

The 2024 Economic Survey put this in blunt black and white: “It may have other risks, but as with many other matters, we don’t live in a first-best world. We have to choose between second and third-best choices. In sum, to boost Indian manufacturing and plug India into the global supply chain, it is inevitable that India plugs itself into China’s supply chain. Whether we do so by relying solely on imports or partially through Chinese investments is a choice that India has to make.”

This is not to say that China may not have its own reasons for making nice with India. It is in the throes of its own economic difficulties. External pressures, including higher US tariffs on Chinese exports, and US-led Western sanctions on its chip industry have not made it easier for Beijing. A former ambassador to China has pointed out that Beijing may not have agreed to a meeting between PM Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit had it not felt the need to restore normalcy.

For sure, normalcy is still some distance away, as the External Affairs Minister has said, in a way clarifying his initial remarks that “the situation has gone back to what it was in 2020”. It is now understood that normalcy will come with ‘de-escalation’, when China thins out its troops and its war-like build-up on the LAC, and the Indian Army does the same.

An India-China detente is undoubtedly a positive development. Pragmatism is a wonderful problem-solver, especially in international relations where principles are often shelved at the altar of realism. A realistic assessment of what is achievable, what is not, dialogue and negotiations are great problem-solvers, and their power in diplomacy to bring about beneficial outcomes can never be underestimated. But undeniably, the emphasis on ‘persevering diplomacy’ is a shift away from how the Modi government has wanted to be seen as dealing with difficult neighbours. It is too early to say if this applies to Pakistan, where the power asymmetry is in India’s favour. But with China, India has travelled a long way from PM Modi’s ‘lal aankh’ days, a phrase popularised by the BJP and its friends to embellish the Hindutva narrative of the disengagement at the India-Bhutan-China trijunction at Doklam. Even for the sake of optics, there is no more talk of ‘muscularity’ against China.

Negotiations driven by the cold logic of pragmatism have compromise built into them. It is reasonable to assume some give and take for India to have regained its access to patrolling points in Demchok and Depsang that the Chinese were blocking for four years. No information is forthcoming from the government, though it has not denied media reports that as part of the agreement, the Chinese PLA will now be allowed to patrol in Yangtse and Asaphila areas in Arunachal Pradesh — the whole of which China claims as south Tibet — where it has been blocked by Indian troops for years. And, has India “swallowed the bitter pill of buffer zones”?

The shortage of details about the agreement in the public domain is of a piece with the government’s opacity from the start about what really happened in those icy heights, and why India was caught by surprise. Recall that the first statement by the PM on the situation, at an all-party meeting after the Galwan clash, was an emphatic denial: “Nobody has intruded into our border, neither is anybody there now, nor have our posts been captured”. There never was a satisfactory reply to what then was being negotiated in the multiple rounds of talks over the years, and why.

Now that India’s ‘lal aankh’ policy towards China has been given a burial on the banks of the Pangong Lake, the present is a good time for the Modi government to give a full account and come clean on what really happened in Ladakh in 2020 and thereafter. This may help it make a more persuasive case to a nation that has been led to believe in military solutions why Hindi-Chini should be bhai-bhai again.