Author: Arun Shourie
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 12, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/271801._.html
Every time China advances a claim, watch how
our government - and media - react in feeble, confused, and contradictory
ways
We were all at the weekly meeting of the BJP
members of Parliament. L.K. Advani was presiding. Two of our colleagues represent
Arunachal in the Lok Sabha - Tapir Gao and Kiren Rijiju. They drew attention
to the fact that Chinese incursions into Arunachal were not just continuing
- these were becoming more frequent and the Chinese soldiers were coming in
deeper into our territory. They pointed to the statement of a senior official
heading our force that is deployed on the border: the official had felt compelled
to disclose in a public statement that there had been 146 incursions in just
2007. The MPs - who know the area well, who tour extensively across the state,
to whom local inhabitants regularly and naturally bring information - said
that the Chinese were now preventing locals from going up to regions where
they had been taking their animals for grazing; that they were being supplied
goods from Chinese shops...
They drew even sharper attention to an incident
that had occurred just three weeks earlier. For as long as anyone could remember,
there had been a statue of the Buddha - well inside Indian territory. Local
inhabitants used to go up to it - pray, make their offerings. The local commander
of the Chinese troops had told Indian soldiers that the statue must be removed.
Our soldiers had pointed out that the statue was well within Indian territory,
and so there was no question of removing it. The Chinese had come, and blown
off the statue...
I raised my hand for permission to speak.
It so happened that I was half-way through a book, Why Geography Matters,
by the well-known geographer, Harm de Blij. Setting the stage, Blij points
to the clues that one can get from maps, and why it is important to pay attention
to them - especially when governments publish them. He recalls 'a telling
experience' he had in 1990. A colleague of his, working then at the University
of Baghdad, had sent him an official map that had been published by the Government
of Iraq. The map showed Kuwait as the 13th province of Iraq. At a meeting
in Washington, Blij had drawn the attention of the then chairman of the foreign
affairs committee of the US House of Representatives to the map and its implications.
The gentleman had told Blij not to worry, the US Ambassador, he said, was
on top of things... A few days had not passed, and Iraq had marched its armies
into Kuwait... The first Gulf War...
But it was the passage that followed that
was of urgent interest to us, and I sought Advani's permission to read it.
The passage is as follows - please do read it carefully:
'Cartographic aggression takes several forms.
Some overt, as in the case of Iraq, others more subtle. In 1993 I received
a book titled Physical Geography of China, written by Zhao Sonqiao, published
in 1986 in Beijing. On the frontispiece is a map of China. But that map, to
the trained eye, looks a bit strange. Why? Because in the south, it takes
from India virtually all of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, plus a
piece of the state of Assam. Now this book is not a political geography of
China, nor is the matter of appropriated Indian territory ever discussed in
it. China's border is simply assumed to lie deep inside India, and the mountains
and valleys thus claimed are discussed as though they are routinely a part
of China. Make no mistake: such a map could not, in the 1980s at least, have
been published without official approval. It should put not just India but
the whole international community on notice of a latent trouble spot.'
BJP members of Parliament are acutely sensitive
to national security issues. Here were two colleagues from the state testifying
to what the Chinese were doing in Arunachal, and now here was a book that
was warning about what was afoot - a book published far away, a book written
by an author who had no interest in either running down China or upholding
India's position on anything. The effect was palpable. Advani said that the
two MPs and I should attend the BJP press conference that afternoon, and draw
the attention of the media to the facts. Advaniji said that, in addition to
explaining the background, I should read out the passage too.
When Parliament is in session, the press conference
is held every afternoon. The large room was packed with journalists. After
Sushma Swaraj and Vijay Kumar Malhotra had dealt with events of the day, Tapir
Gao and Kiren Rijiju narrated the facts. I set out the context - and read
the foregoing passage.
I had hardly concluded that the usual clutch
- pro-Congress, pro-Left - was up in arms. 'When was the book published?'
one demanded. I couldn't get the relevance of the question: what has the date
of publication got to do with the warning that the author had penned, even
more so with the facts that the MPs have set out? 'No, no. As the book must
have been available even during the NDA regime, what did your government do
about the matter?' I hadn't looked up the date of publication. I did now.
The edition I had in hand had been published in 2007! It records that the
book was first published in 2005! The journalist subsided. In any case, I
pointed out, trying to soften the deflation-by-date, the vital thing is not
what the book says - the passage from the book just illustrates that, while
others are concerned, we continue to sleep. The thing of vital consequence
is what is happening on the ground, and this is what my colleagues here -
who represent the area in Parliament - have just narrated.
'But what did the NDA do about the incursions?'
another member of that clutch demanded. First, the head of the force at the
border has spoken about the incursions that have taken place this year, in
2007, I pointed out. What could the NDA government have done about them? But
assume that incursions were taking place then, and that the NDA government
did nothing. Does that in any way become reason for not doing anything today?
Please do have some mercy on our country, I said. Here is China claiming our
territory; here it is, having begun that well-rehearsed series of steps which
precede a grab. Are we going to divert ourselves from that reality by the
usual 'tu-tu, mein-mein, NDA vs UPA?'
'No, Mr Shourie,' - it was the pro-Left journalist
- 'but you have to acknowledge that there is no agreed international border
between India and China. So...' That is the Chinese position as articulated
by your paper often, I said. It has not been the position of any Indian Government...
By now enough diversion had been created.
The press conference was soon over. My Arunachal colleagues were, of course,
disheartened - 'If this is how much the national press cares...' I was incensed.
For years I have seen such clutches divert attention from life and death issues
and been unable to do anything about it. Here was another painful instance.
Not only was the question at hand a matter
of life and death for our country. It was one on which we had the most recent
historical experience to keep us alert. When Acharya Kripalani, Ram Manohar
Lohia, K.M. Munshi and others had first drawn attention to Chinese maps that
showed vast swathes of Indian territory to be part of China, Panditji had
replied that he had taken up the matter with the Chinese and they had said
that these were old, colonial, faulty maps, and, as they had just gained independence,
they had not had time to correct them. Later, these very maps were used to
argue that the areas had always been part of China. Mao had then declared,
Tibet is the palm of China, and the Himalayan kingdoms are the fingers of
that palm... Did the journalists not remember any of this?
An anchor from a news channel phoned. I saw
your press conference, he said. We have been following this story for many
months. Can you please come to our studio?... No, I said, I really am very
upset at what happened... But I give you my word, he said, we think this is
an important issue, and we are going to follow it in the coming months also.
I will send an OB-van to your house.
The van came. The late night news. The earpiece
in my ear... All set. Delay - quite understandable: some new eruption in Nandigram...
Eventually, the anchor and I are talking.
'But are you sure about the facts or is the
BJP indulging in its usual fear-politics?' the anchor asks. But why don't
you ascertain them from the two MPs who represent the area? I respond. Better
still, why don't you send your own correspondents and photographers to the
area? I inquire. We will, we will, I assure you. I was just making sure...
In any case, look at what the ambassador of
China has himself said, I remarked. Remember, just days before Hu Jintao,
the Chinese President, was to come to India, the ambassador declared, right
here on Indian soil, that Arunachal is a part of China...
'But maybe he was saying it for rhetorical
effect,' said the anchor.
Rhetorical effect? I skipped a heartbeat.
Is the Chinese Ambassador also running after TRP ratings like the TV channels?
Would an ambassador say such things just for effect? And that too the ambassador
of China, of all countries? You mean an ambassador, you mean the ambassador
of China of all countries would claim the territory of the country to which
he is accredited, that he would lay claim to an entire state of that country
for rhetorical effect? I asked. And remember, I pointed out, he repeated the
claim in Chandigarh later. And look at the government of China - it has not
distanced itself from the claim advanced by its ambassador. On the contrary,
its 'think-tanks' have held 'seminars' in the wake of the ambassador's statement.
In this the 'scholars' and 'diplomats' and 'strategic thinkers' have declared
to the man that Arunachal is 'Chinese territory under India's forcible occupation';
that it is 'China's Tawang region'; that it is 'Southern Tibet' which must
be brought under the control of the Tibet Autonomous Region. And you call
this rhetorical? That is just lunatic...
The anchor was off to the next item. 'Be that
as it may... Another controversy... Thank you, Mr Shourie. Always a pleasure
talking to you. Moving now to a slightly less controversial story...' 'SHILPA
SHETTY,' he said, his voice rising, 'has not been in the news since the famous
Richard Gere kiss, but we have her back today. Here she is, SHILPA SHETTY...'
The sound on my earpiece cut. Shilpa Shetty
had once again trumped poor Arunachal.
Both sets of exchanges - at the press conference
as well as over the TV news channel - had been typical. In part, the problem
is extreme, brazen partisanship - and this takes two forms. One is the premise
of many: India can never really be in the right: you just have to see the
play Musharraf's devious formulae have got in many of our magazines - the
presumption is that we are in the wrong in Kashmir, and so we are the ones
who must bend, and go on bending till Pakistan expresses satisfaction. This
premise is compounded in the case of many others by commitment: you can rely
on several of our colleagues to see merit in China's stance on everything.
The second variant is domestic predilection: the BJP is evil incarnate; because
the BJP has raised the issue, the issue itself must be trashed. That is how
the mortal danger from Bangladeshi infiltrators has been shouted out. That
is how the dual-faced, anti-national politics of many in Kashmir has been
shouted out. That is how appeasement of narrow sections for votes is routinely
shouted out. That is how what is happening in Arunachal is being shouted out.
And then there is what has become the nature
of the media: the obsession with the sound bite on the one side and with the
next 'breaking news' on the other. Issues like Kashmir, the nuclear deal,
the way China is translating its economic strength into military might - these
require more than a sound bite. The media has no time for that.
Similarly, to deal with China, to counter
Pakistan's proxy war, the country must sustain a policy for 20-30 years. And
for that, you have to keep readers and viewers focused on that issue for decades
at a time. But the media is fixated only on what it can project as 'breaking
news' in this shift - what was 'breaking news' in the last shift is 'old hat'
by this one.
Even more than partisanship, and the obsessions
of the current media with the next 'breaking news', the problem is superciliousness
- this has become the reigning ideology today. What we see every day in papers
- that 'Shilpa Shetty over Arunachal' business - was brought home to me directly
one day. We happened to meet while flying to Mumbai - the owner of one of
the country's foremost newspapers and I. I accosted him about what his paper
was carrying on Kashmir - every allegation, every smear that any and every
secessionist thug was spitting out at our country and our forces was being
carried on the front pages of his paper as fact. Aren't you reading the nonsense
that your paper is printing on Kashmir? I asked. And I gave examples from
the preceding few days. The entrepreneur listened. And then exclaimed: 'Arun
bhai, yehi to faraq hai aap mein aur hum mein. Aap abhi bhi hamara paper padhte
ho!' - 'That is precisely the difference between you and us, Arun bhai. You
still read our paper!'
That such a person no longer bothers to read
his paper was just a pose. His real message was, 'Kashmir, did you say? I
am above such trifles...'
This weak-kneed government is a problem, of
course: its nominal leaders have lifted helplessness to new heights. But the
even graver problem now is that the one instrument by which it could be shaken
up, the media, has become a problem of its own.
Make no mistake: China watches all this. It
watches the feeble, confused, contradictory ways in which our government,
and even more our society, reacts each time it advances a claim. And it pursues
its policy:
o Claim;
o Repeat the claim;
o Go on repeating the claim;
o Grab;
o Hold;
o Let time pass.
And they will reconcile themselves to the
new situation. Has the policy not succeeded in regard to Tibet? No Indian
Prime Minister will dare mention the word 'Tibet' or 'Taiwan' - lest doing
so offends China. But China will go on claiming what it wants - for reasons
that we must understand!
But why think of Tibet and Taiwan? Has the
six-step policy not succeeded in regard to Aksai Chin? In spite of the unanimous
resolution that the Parliament passed at the time under Panditji, is there
an Indian leader who will today demand that China hand back Aksai Chin? And
do you think that when they deliberate over what they are to do in regard
to Arunachal, the Chinese do not remember the success they have achieved in
Aksai Chin?
-The writer is a BJP MP in Rajya Sabha
