New Indian Avatar Pleads For Chinese Understanding Of Her Sovereignty

By Rajeewa Jayaweera –January 29, 2017

Rajeewa Jayaweera

The Raisina Dialogue is a joint initiative by the Government of India and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), an independent think tank based in New Delhi. India has strived to organize the conference in the lines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. It is designed to be India’s primary conference on geo-politics and geo-economics.

Its inaugural edition was held in March 2016 and was inaugurated by Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj. The theme was ‘Connecting Asia’. The second edition, with participants from 69 countries was concluded last week in Delhi and the theme was “The New Normal: Multilateralism with Multi-Polarity”. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the second edition.

Being an Indian initiative, discussions over two and half days laid emphasis on the issue if today’s world was a multi-polar world and if India was one of the poles of the world. Three dominant questions which arose were;

• India’s capability of being a pole
• India’s readiness to be a pole
• India’s right to be a pole

A pole may be one or a group of countries with a group leader and other countries aligned behind the group leader. Therefore, it may be argued, a multi-polar world is one with several group leaders who obviously would be economically and militarily powerful with the remaining not so powerful and powerless countries aligned behind one of the several group leaders.
Until January 20, it was a given, the block leaders were US and Russia with China a group leader in waiting. Not to be forgotten are the sub group leaders Britain and France who still wield influence over former colonies. France and some of its former African colonies is a good example. India, judging by its conduct towards it neighbors since 1970 has been striving hard to portray the image of a sub group leader, which it now wishes to expand to that of a block leader.

The keynote speaker at the 2017 edition was India’s Foreign Secretary, Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Some parts of his address are best described as perfidious, at least from a Sri Lankan perspective. There could be similar perspectives notably from Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan to name a few.

The Foreign Secretary requested China to be “sensitive to its sovereignty” and not to see India’s rise as a threat to China. Claiming China has till now, not shown any consideration for India’s sovereignty, he further stated, “China is a country which is very sensitive on matters concerning its sovereignty. So, we would expect that they would have some understanding of other people’s sensitivity on their sovereignty.” According to Jaishankar, ties between China and India, developed through trade and people-to-people contacts have been diminished due to differences on political issues. Describing terrorism as a “pervasive and serious” threat to global security, the Foreign Secretary lamented of the deficit in efforts by major powers in dealing with terrorism. He also referred to the decision making body of the UN as an ‘absurdity’ and touched on the need to reform the world body to enable the organization to deal with contentious issues confronting the world today. India’s quest for a permanent seat at the Security Council could not have been far away in the Foreign Secretary’s mind. Referring to the regional grouping SAARC, he stated, “Regional groupings are today one of the building blocks of the global order. Their driving force and commonality are perhaps the most obvious of all. India is a founder member of SAARC, an organization that has been made ineffective due to insecurity of one member. We hope to partially remedy this through the BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal) sub-regional grouping. It is also our expectation that the current level of enthusiasm among members of BIMSTEC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan, Nepal) can be channeled towards far reaching initiatives.”

It is believed, a move is being promoted by a group of persons in the Indian establishment to jettison Pakistan from the SAARC regional group due to objections raised by Pakistan to some Indian initiatives. It has also been reported of moves to isolate and ignore Pakistan. The theory may have some substance in view of comments during interviews given by a Maldivian Minister and Nepalese Ambassador to India during the Raisina Dialouge to an India journalist. It may be recalled, the last SAARC summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad in 2016 was cancelled due to India pulling out from the summit, citing Pakistan’s involvement in terror attacks in India.

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