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Mending Fences in India, China, and Pakistan
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16441 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1989 |
2,967 Words |
| Author
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Sumit Ganguly
Sumit Ganguly is associate professor of political science at
Hunter College, City University of New York. |
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's recent visits to the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Pakistan have focused renewed attention on India's troubled relations with its two most important neighbors. Historically, visits by India's prime ministers to these nations have not yielded positive results. The bonhomie and goodwill generated in the wake of Prime Minister Nehru's visit to the PRC in the early 1950s quickly dissipated as a dispute over the Sino-Indian border came to the fore. Relations deteriorated further when the Chinese ruthlessly suppressed the Tibetan rebellion and large numbers of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama (the temporal and spiritual head of the Tibetans), sought, and received, sanctuary in India. Despite diplomatic efforts to reach an amicable settlement, the conflict erupted into full-scale war in 1962.
A similar fate befell Nehru's successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri, in his dealings with Pakistan. Within six months of his visit to Pakistan in September 1965, war broke out between India and Pakistan over the state of Kashmir. In both cases India's adversaries inferred that the Indian military was ill-prepared and that the political leadership lacked stomach for battle.
In 1962, the Chinese had reached this conclusion on the basis of the poor quality of Indian defense preparedness along India's northeastern borders. However, in 1965, the Pakistani regime made the same assessment without the benefit of sound intelligence. Instead, their war plans were driven by their fears of Indian military expansion in the wake of the 1962 war and the concomitant concern that the last chance of regaining Kashmir was about to go. But the experience of 1962 had fundamentally altered Indian defense and security policy. India
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