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New Delhi, July 25 (IANS) China has formally invited United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her “family members” to attend the August 8 inaugural ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. Sources said Chinese ambassador to India Zhang Yan called on Gandhi Thursday at her 10, Janpath residence and handed over a formal invitation from the Communist Party of China (CPC).

“The Chinese ambassador took the opportunity to congratulate her on the UPA government winning a confidence vote in parliament and also handed over the invitation to attend the inaugural function of the Olympic Games,” the sources said.

A number of heads of states and governments, including US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nikolas Sarkozy have already confirmed their participation at the Olympics’ inaugural.[link]

While China has taken care to invite the formal heads of State and Government from all other countries. In the case of India it has deliberately decided to not invite either the President or the Prime Minister of the country and has instead extended an invitation to Sonia Gandhi and her “family members”. While it is common knowledge that she is indeed the power behind the throne in the current ruling setup and the PM is a mere puppet of hers. This arrangement is India’s internal matter and for all official purposes Sonia Gandhi and her “family members” who hold no official position as ministers or cabinet members are to be considered as private citizens.

China has to go through the official procedures and invite the formal heads of state and government of India which is only when it will be considered as an invitation to India. Inviting a private family is not the same as inviting India to the opening ceremony.

It is unfortunate that nobody either in Parliament or the Media has raised this issue and it is even more unfortunate that the Indian government and the MEA have remained quite in the face of this deliberate snub by the Chinese and have not lodged a formal protest with the Chinese.

Harsh V Pant in an article titled “India’s Power Challenge” in Outlook in response to Guha’s earlier article in the same magazine saying that India shouldn’t indulge itself in the so called skulduggery of international power politics makes the point that international relations are anarchic and involve skulduggery in the first place to begin with and India cannot close its eyes to that fact and avoid the situation by chanting the peace and goodwill mantra alone.

He also wonders why Indian politicians who practice the worst form of realpolitik in the domestic arena shy away from power politics when it comes to the international arena.

A fundamental quandary that has long dogged India in the realm of foreign affairs and that has become even more acute with India’s ascent in the international order is what Sunil Khilnani has referred to as India’s lack of an “instinct for power”.

Most recently, this ambivalence was expressed by the Indian minister of commerce in a speech when he said: “this word power often makes me uncomfortable”. Though he was talking about the economic rise of India and the challenges that India continues to face as it continues to strive for sustained economic growth, his discomfort with the notion of India as a rising power was indicative of a larger reality in Indian polity. This ambivalence about the use of power in international relations where any prestige or authority eventually rely upon traditional measures of power, whether military or economic is curious as the Indian political elites have rarely shied away from the maximization of power in the realm of domestic politics, thereby corroding the institutional fabric of liberal democracy in the country. It was Indira Gandhi who long back, while addressing a foreign audience, suggested that India doesn’t believe in power (apparently only when it came to foreign policy it might seem).

Well the reality is actually quite down to earth. This is because most Indian politicians and bureaucrats and so called “intellectuals” included do not understand the outside world the way it is. They are more comfortable politicking in a domestic arena where they can easily recognize themselves with their opponents, rivals, supporters and other assorted cast of characters and even second guess them. On the other hand the rest of the outside world is indeed very foreign to them. They do not understand the ideologies, the fears, the ambitions and the desires that animate those outside India and thus their instinct since the last six decades has been to stick to a formula, that of professing its peaceful intentions and goodwill towards the outside world and hoping that they will leave them alone so that they can continue to indulge all their politicking energies in the domestic arena.

And one cannot blame them since they are the product of a culture that has been very insular and did not seek to know very much about the outside world until very recently. Only in modern times perhaps since the mid-nineteenth century have Indians traveled abroad in significant numbers. Until then it was even a religious taboo to travel abroad and those who did faced social ostracism on their return.Nowadays it is becoming more and more common and the globalization process means that more and more Indians are coming in direct contact with the outside world in some way or form.

And resultantly the current generation is much more aware of the outside world and India’s place in it. So it is largely a matter of a generation gap and once the current generation of politicians and bureaucrats who had their young formative years back in the era when the dinousaurs roamed the earth retire and ride into the sunset over the course of the next decade and the new generation takes over India will begin to engage with world in a significantly more assertive manner.

When the External Affairs minister Padmashri Shri Pranab Mukherjee landed in Beijing for his scheduled meeting with the Chinese leadership. He found that neither Hu or grandpa Wen could spare any time to meet him. But they instead fixed up a meeting with the newly appointed Vice President Xi Jinping who is currently assigned for dealing with crank cases.

That has left the Indian side including both the MEA and MEdiA quite confused and they are trying to figure out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.The current leadership shows no inclination to meet him while at the same they arrange a meeting with the supposed future leadership.

Well let me help them out of their stupor. In one short sentence- It is a BAD thing and it is a straightforward diplomatic slap in the face.

Xi Jinping might be the chosen successor of Hu Jintao slated to succeed him in 2012. but the CCP history is littered with the corpses of such “chosen ones”. from President Lin Biao to Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang there are many who one day were on the path to superstardom only to find themselves in a dark dungeon the next day holding their intenstines in their hands and begging for mercy from the red guards just because of one small real or perceived misstep.

Xi knows this very well. So all that Pranab can expect from this encounter is more homilies, platitudes, joint declarations ad hominem but nothing of substance.

And one more thing that has missed the notice of most Padmashri Shri Pranab should have chosen a better day to make his trip to Beijing than preferring to go on the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in an Olympic year when the whole world is trying to use the Olympics as a leverage to pressure Beijing to improve its record on human rights. It is said that diplomacy is a lot about symbolism. The posturing matters just as much as the substance. It is unlikely that the either Pranabda or the babus of the MEA were unaware of the significance of the day.

Now the timing is definitely not an issue between India and China. Most certainly the Chinese would have been just as boorish as they have been today even if the Indian foreign minister had landed on June 6th, 7th or 8th or whenever. it wouldn’t make a dime of a difference.

But where it will come to matter is in the court of International opinion which the Indian diplomats are trying to woo for myriad reasons and especially for their coveted permanent security council seat. For a country that is drumbeating its credentials as the largest democracy in the world to gain a seat at that supposed high table. It matters what message each of its words and actions sends to the rest of the world. This unfortunately has only sent the message that India really doesn’t have any courage of conviction to act on its own professed principles and again when they see the craven attitude of Mukherjee and his ministry in the light of Chinese boorishness it doesn’t raise their confidence that India has the ability to even stand up for its own self. No wonder governments in most world capitals do not take the Indian diplomats seriously.

One another item to add to the long list of inglorious achievements of the UPA regime that will haunt India in the coming decades is helping establish a pro-China regime in neighbouring Nepal which effectively brings the communist sickle right upto India’s heartland endangering its security in ways that will only become apparent as time rolls by.

One of the first acts of the Maoists after seizing power in the recently held elections was to dictate the end of Nepal’s 240 year old monarchy thus removing a sizeable thorn in the way of their ultimate aim of seizing absolute power in Nepal in incremental steps. They haven’t yet disbanded their militia and reports are that they used them extensively to intimidate opposition party candidates and supporters in the recent elections.

In the meanwhile the Maoist leader is on a charm offensive. In an interview with Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate he has laid out his vision for the future course of Indo-Nepal relations. It is a very charming interview where Prachanda or Pushpa Kumar Dhamal has tried to make all the right noises and lull his enemies into a false sense of security. In that he has learnt from the example of his predecessors from across the globe ranging from Stalin to Mao to Castro and others on how to charm the gullible left-liberals and use the enemy’s own free media against him. that in itself begs the need to keep an eye out for this hooded serpent.

Read the rest…

NEW DELHI: In a strange move, at a time when the government is promoting “Come to India — Walk with the Buddha” to attract foreign tourists to Buddhist circuit in the country, five foreigners have been given Quit India notice to leave the country within seven days “for participating in a religious activity”.

James Petersen, Lex Pelger and David Huang from US, Maryla Cross from UK and Paul Christians Buntz from Norway were given the notices for “violating the visa rules” by Pithoragarh SP Puran Singh Rawat on Friday as they reached Banspatan in Uttarkhand’s border district with the Tibetan marchers who have been walking towards Tibet since March 10.[source- Quit India notice to five foreign marchers]

As is obvious from the above passage these men were detained for participating in a peace march- a political activity. and maybe just maybe even that is a violation of the rules of the tourist visas issued to them. but the haughty idiots that man India’s foreign policy citadels simply cannot be bothered to even refer back to the very rulebook under which they claim to be operating.

The government insists that the five have violated visa rules. “On tourist visa, you cannot take part in a religious activity. If we allow that, you will have people coming here to propagate their religion. It’s only for travelling and sightseeing, etc. So, they have violated the visa rule by participation in the march,” said Ashim Khurana, joint secretary (Foreigners) in the ministry of home affairs. Read the rest…

A little under two years ago on July 6, 2006, the Nathu-La Pass situated on the border between India and now illegally occupied Tibet was opened for border trade between the Indian state of Sikkim and the so called Tibetan Autonomous region.

At that time much of the media and officialdom had gone on an overdrive peddling the line that this was being done because China had finally recognised Sikkim as an integral part of India, in exchange for the India’s unequivocal recognition of Tibet as a part of China.

But since then though countless Indian officials, mediamen and politicians cutting across party lines have many times chanted the mantra that India recognises Tibet as an integral part of China without the slightest provocation, no Chinese leader has ever made a similar statement on Sikkim even when asked pointed questions in that regard. The closest that they ever came was when Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in his April 2005 visit to India in reply to a pointed question tactfully replied “It is well known that the issue of Sikkim is no longer the problem between China and India. This is the common consensus reached by the leaders of both countries.”

The Indian side unfortunately did not push this matter forcefully enough with the Chinese side and extract a unambiguous written statement from the Chinese declaring that they accepted that Sikkim was an integral part of India and chose to be content with the Chinese statement that “Sikkim was no longer a problem between China and India”.

Well now they have decided to make it a problem. A year after they demolished a makeshift bunker on the Indian side comes the news that they have now laid claim to a piece of land in North Sikkim.

China has surprised India by laying claim on a small tract of land in North Sikkim, even threatening this week to demolish existing stone structures there. India has strongly rebutted these claims, lodged an official protest and barred Chinese troops from entering the area.

Referred to as the “Finger Area” by Indian armed forces, this territory falls north of Gyangyong in Sikkim and overlooks a strategically important valley known as the Sora Funnel. It contains several stone cairns, which are essentially heaps of stones that can be used for shelter. The area is in the northernmost tip of Sikkim, north of a place called Gyangyong, and appears like a protruding finger on the map — hence the name Finger Area.[link]

The bottomline is that the Indian side brought this upon itself by not extracting a written and unambiguous statement from the Chinese side that they regarded Sikkim as an integral part of India and lulling themselves into complacency. The Media is not entirely blameless in this episode as it had back then shirked its duty of playing the role of a vigilant watchdog and allowed itself to be taken in by the government line that the absence of an unambiguous statement from the Chinese side was not a big deal at all. so this despairing statement at the end of the article in the Indian express appears quite disingenuous.

But clearly, what was considered a settled issue once China recognized Sikkim as part of India is now making an uncomfortable re-entry into the boundary settlement discourse.

can we hear that collective refrain from the Indian establishment and the media- oh! the wicked Chinese not respecting the “spirit” of that “settlement” .

got news for you guys with Communist China even the letter doesn’t matter. but it would have atleast made you guys look less stupid now if you had only managed to get it.

The Indian Embassy in Beijing seems to be compromised and penetrated to the hilt by Chinese intelligence agencies. According to this report this is the second such occassion in recent years when a top official at the embassy has been caught in the arms of a female Chinese handler.

BEIJING/NEW DELHI: An official posted at the Indian Embassy in Beijing has been sent back to Delhi in the wake of allegations that he had developed some liaison with a Chinese woman.

First Secretary M M Sharma, originally from the RAW, was shifted after his alleged connections with the Chinese language teacher came to light recently, sources said.

Considering the sensitive nature of post held by Sharma, an inquiry is being conducted to ascertain what kind of liaison he had with the Chinese woman and whether or not any sensitive information had been pilfered[link].

Sharma worked as a first secretary dealing with issues relating to science and technology at the Embassy. That it has now been publicly revealed that Sharma was actually a RAW officer throws some light on the government’s ability to keep its own secrets, a source pointed out.

There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese government on the issue. This is the second occasion in recent years that a senior government official serving at the embassy here has been charged with romantic liaison with a local woman.

A source said New Delhi was concerned that the woman in question could have been an informant of the Chinese government. If true, it could mean the Chinese side knew about India’s moves and counter-moves on the border talks over the past one year when Sharma served in the Embassy in Beijing [link].

That the Chinese make extensive use of “honeytraps” and other underhand means to snare senior Indian government officials, politicians, journalists and assorted intellectuals is well known. Even George Fernandes, former defence minister recently in an interview to Karan pointed out this disturbing aspect.

And Considering that the pro-Chinese rhetoric of a certain well known editor from a very famous newspaper published from Chennai and prominent members of a party which provides outside support to keep the UPA afloat becomes more frantic in direct proportion to their frequency of trips to China this phenomenon might be more deep-rooted than ever thought.

This is not an one-off incident but a part of a determined and sustained attempt by Chinese intelligence services to compromise the Indian establishment from within and any complacency on this aspect would prove very costly to Indian interests in the medium to long-term. The Indian security establishment should ruthlessly crush all such attempts at penetrating and compromising Indian security to the point of acting decisively against any and all such Chinese plants and compromised sources regardless of their so called position or status.

Karan Thapar: You always believed that India should stand up to China. How did they receive you when you went to China as defence minister?

George Fernandes: I was well received. The Prime Minister had come to receive me.

Karan Thapar: Breaking protocol?

George Fernandes: I don’t know if it was protocol.

Karan Thapar: I believe he also put his personal plane at your disposal.

George Fernandes: Yes the entire plane was at my disposal.

Karan Thapar: For the full one week.

George Fernandes: For one full week and if I wanted to stay more as long as I stay there.

Karan Thapar: I believe they also tried to make you happy. They put women at your disposal.

George Fernandes: Not in that sense. Some people will think that I had some fun. I didn’t have any fun.

Karan Thapar: But the women were made available. You had three or four women with you all the time – pretty women.

George Fernandes: Yes. When I came back they were waiting at the doors.

Karan Thapar: Whenever you came back they were waiting at the door?

George Fernandes: Yes.

Karan Thapar: So China in other words, despite the fact that you are a critic, went out of its way to make you happy. This is proof that if you stand up to China, China respects you.

George Fernandes:Yes I believe that.

The only problem here is Karan’s Interpretation. He doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility of Honeytrapping. One of the oldest tricks of trade in the spying and subversion profession[link].

Update: An earlier post on Chinese subversive activities targeting important Indian politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders with gifts, bribes and inducements.

The young Mongol knelt “reverently upon the ground” and “with the deepest gratitude”, acknowledged himself “to be a Mongol slave of inferior ability, perfectly unable to repay in the slightest degree the imperial favours of which his family have been the recipients for generations past, he declares his intention of performing his duties to the best of his feeble powers”. He then “turned himself toward the palace and beat his head upon the ground…in grateful acknowledgement of the imperial bounty.”

The above passage is excerpt from an 1878 report in the Peking Gazette and quoted in Jack Weatherford’s book ‘Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World’, giving a glimpse of the ceremony of receiving an Ambassador from a vassal state in the Manchu court of those days.

And this is exactly how future Indian Ambassadors could be sworn in a decade from now at the Chinese court if the recent events are any indication of the path the MEA and its political master the UPA are hell bent on dragging India towards.

The Chinese of course were rude and discourteous enough to summon the Indian ambassador and a lady at that at 2 am in the morning to express their “displeasure” at the scaling of their embassy wall in New Delhi by Tibetan protestors. Now this is something that could have easily been taken up during working hours. And one can easily blame the Chinese for their uncivilized conduct. But what one cannot excuse is the pusillanimous behavior of the MEA in the light of such reprehensible behavior on the part of the Chinese. Not only did the Ambassador meekly turn up at the doorstep of the Chinese foreign ministry to face the music, the MEA did not even lodge a protest at this public humiliation later on!

India was not the only country where the local Chinese embassy was targeted by protestors during the last one week. Protests took place in dozens of countries all over the world. The Chinese embassies were also targeted in New York, Sydney, Paris and Austria. But not one of the Ambassadors of these countries was humiliated in this way. Infact in these cities the incidents were even more violent involving mob violence and in one case protestors scaling the embassy building itself and tearing down the Chinese flag which never happened here.

In all these cases the Chinese expressed “satisfaction” with formal apologies from these countries. Only India was targeted in this manner and this begs an explanation. What is the MEA doing wrong in representing India and its interests abroad?

The Chinese embassy in New Delhi is huge even by the palatial standards of the embassies in the Chanakyapuri enclave. Big enough to host an entire PLA armoured division. There is a huge open ground in front of it and as far as one can tell there are no barricades around the embassy like there is around the US embassy nearby, it is easy for anyone to walk right up to its walls. So the Chinese themselves are not blameless here. To prevent the incident where a small group of Tibetan protestors tried to scale the walls of the embassy the Delhi Police would have had to form a two layer thick human chain all around this huge building 24 hours a day seven days a week in anticipation of such an event which might or might not have happened!

The MEA couldn’t even be trusted to put forth this point forcefully in front of the Chinese and protest the horrible treatment meted out to its envoy and one wonders why? Unfortunately when an incident like the public shaming of the ambassador by a foreign country happens it automatically morphs into an issue of “insult to the country itself” and the people automatically line up behind their man (or woman in this case) .

But in this case this will merely shield the MEA from accountability for its sins which brought about such a situation in the first place. Atleast in this case the Indian public can save their anger and direct it where it should be, not at the Chinese but at their own foreign office. Because the trend since the days of KM Panikkar and going right upto and including the current foreign secretary when he himself was posted there has been for the Indian embassy in Beijing to act as a surrogate for Beijing rather than as a representation of India. No wonder the Chinese, practitioners of realpolitik have developed a healthy disregard for Indian diplomats and treat them as their doormat. This is perhaps what made the difference for an insomniac Chinese foreign office clerk ordered by his masters to find a scape goat among the nearly two dozen countries to trouble early in the morning to pick up the phone and dial the Indian ambassador’s number.

In a significant development the Indian public has given a tight backslap to the panda huggers of the MEA who sought to show the Tibetan refugee community their place in India as mere “guests” who in their opinion should refrain from protesting the brutal occupation of their country by the Chinese, by coming out onto the streets to support their “guests” of 50 years in their movement for justice and freedom and thereby showing starkly how out of touch with reality and national sentiment this dinosaur of a ministry of the Indian govt really is.

Local Indians living in and around Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh on Saturday extended their moral and political support to Tibetan refugees living in their area for the last 49 years under the leadership of the Dalai Lama

Talking to rediff.com, Prem Sagar of Himalaya Pariwar said, “We want to express our solidarity with Tibetan community. We believe that the philosophy of the Dalai Lama is admirable. His solution for Tibet known as ‘middle path approach’ is the right solution and is workable”.

According to him, local businessmen’s organisations, taxmen’s union, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh-backed Bharat-Tibet Sahyong Manch, Indo-Tibet Friendship Society and many other local outfits have joined the Tibetan refugees, who are protesting the Chinese government’s repressive policy against Tibetan protestors in Lhasa.

Indians and Tibetans took out a huge rally in Dharamshala. Shops and bazaars of the entire area remained closed to express solidarity towards Tibetans.[link]