One should look from the 1950s when both India and China became a republic. Jawaharlal Nehru not only handed India’s security seat in the UN which was given after China became communist, but the Americans also threw Chiang Kai Shek Government seat and offered it to India and then Prime Minister Nehru said that it belongs to the People’s Republic of China.
Even during that time when the Chinese entered Tibet, India kept quiet at a time when India had very close relations with Tibet for which Sardar Patel wrote Nehru letter that we have so many border issues and now China after invading Tibet will use it for expansion policy. So if Nehru is to allow annexation of Tibet then it should set preconditions of settling border issues with China once and for all which is McMohan Line and in Aksai Chin, it is McDonald Line. For this Sardar Patel was heavily criticized by Nehru’s close aide and now in retrospect when we look Sardar Patel was right in pointing out the issue.
We should have a debate on what type of relations we want with China. Today, China has Nepal on its side which is a serious failure of our foreign policy. Because of the same reasons, even Sri Lanka became pro-Chinese. Should India be with America against China or with China against Americans or should India be neutral? The ideal solution is to be neutral and be friends with both countries. Chinese can be good friends with India if we are upfront with them.
China is our neighbor and we share about 1700 km border with them. We have historical relations with China from BC 700 with the Qin Dynasty – they were the first ones to call India as Hindu Rashtra. Such a long history we have with China and we never faced any issues and compare that with Europe every year there were some issues between French and British, British and Germans, etc.
The biggest learning from Nehru’s failure is never to develop defense policy basis foreign policy. Foreign Policies are on basis of intentions – whether we have to be friendly so be it. But defense policy should be basis capacity – if Chinese are in the Indian Ocean we should also get in India Ocean. If China is helping India’s neighbor we should also find ways to help China’s neighbor. Vietnam is a neighbor of China but it is not in good terms. So if the Chinese go and develop Pakistan, India can go and develop Vietnam. As far as Defense is concerned India’s capacity should we based on Chinese capacity and should match that.
There is a difference between American and Chinese. Americans are pure give and take relationship, cold-blooded, one-dimensional people – it’s all materialistic and they are good in it because they follow the contract. Chinese are not contractual they are sentimental. Today is the best time to build infrastructure in India, just print notes and pay and it becomes part of demand and thus improves supply and it will become part of the economy. We should be building huge roads, abolish the income tax, simply corporate tax structure, rework the GST – hassle-free system with strong IT-based software, lower interest rates – the interest rate Americans pay for their loans is just 2%, we are not paying less than 12%. There is nothing structurally wrong within the Indian economy; there is a mismatch between supply and demand which we have to correct.