Don't Defer To China

Galwan valley should finally compel us to make major course correction

- Pavan K Varma

The Rig Veda was composed around 1500 BCE, some thousand years before Confucius and Lao Tze ushered in structured thought into China. For conventional strategists, this would be an inconsequential matter. But, the relative long-term strengths of nations is precisely about such ‘inconsequential’ matters. India’s ancient civilisational strengths, in spite of setbacks, continue to pulsate. China’s don’t. India is the world’s largest democracy. China is the world’s largest autocracy. China is stronger militarily and economically, but India is no pushover either. The India of 2020 is not the India of 1962.

It is useful to remember this because for decades as a nation we have been abject prisoners of a deferential syndrome towards China, leading to strategic blunders. On the very day when 20 of our brave soldiers were martyred in the Galwan valley, there was a column in a leading national daily by an influential national security adviser of the UPA government. Amazingly, he argued for further appeasement of China.

India should not, he argued, ‘provoke’ China by reinforcing our quadrilateral grouping with Japan, Australia and the US (Quad). India should not accept President Donald Trump’s invitation to an expanded G7 meeting, where China is not an invitee. India should not expand its strategic ties with the US, because China would not be happy.