India and China

India and China are the two giants of the world. Both are among the BRICs, or BRICS. Indians have been looking at China with suspicion for fifty years. Even then they have come to terms with such expressions as 'rising China and emerging India', knowing that China is ahead of India in deregulating economy by 10-12 years. But they have keenly felt that between India and Pakistan China has consistently supported the latter.
In the past six months India has been visited by the new Prime Minister of Britain, President of France, President of the US, Prime Minister of China, and President of Russia, the top leaders of all the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council. Of these, the Chinese Premier has gone to Pakistan after India, and promised much more than he did in India by way of economic cooperation in the private sector. The Pakistan sources have stressed the importance of the corridor about to be completed from Gwadar port near the mouth of the Persian Gulf to the southwestern part of China. In fact both China and Pakistan openly talk of their special relations.
If the Chinese move has helped to ease age-old tensions between India and China, and India and Pakistan, all is well on the eve of the new year. There is, however, a question mark.
A friend from Taiwan who studied and taught in Japan once told me that the Chinese people, no matter where they come from, easily get mixed and make friends. Not so with the Indians, meaning, for want of a better term, the greater Indians, not only of the present India but also of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The scar of the partition of 1947, and the divide and rule which led to the partition, is still deeply felt. An Indian historian B.R.Nanda, who has been making biographical research of the political leaders of India, has published a new book, Road to Pakistan : The Life and Times of Mohammad Ali Jinnah(2010). The whole book is a discussion of "an Anglo-Muslim plot to thwart Indian nationalism"(p.18). And then the unspeakable violence, destruction, bloodshed, dislocation, not only around 1947 but right up to Gujarat, India, in 2002.
Until this legacy is overcome, the greater Indians stay divided, and China will remain ahead of India in development. But China herself is able to do something for India and Pakistan to overcome it, and the best way is not to support Pakistan too much against India, thus to continue the divide and rule policy. Here the stake is extremely high. The last of the above-mentioned visitors contracted with India the sale of 126 fighter jets and their joint development involving enormous money. What for? Already experts have written about India "arming without aiming". Does not the same apply to Pakistan and China? This is a vicious circle which started at least in 1971. An overall disarmament among the three countries is the only way out.