Sino Indian relations – Time to wipe off the silly myth of a China threat

Bloomberg has this article ‘India sends China stern message with naval build up’ reprinted in the Today paper on 30 Jul 15.  What stern message? China must be shivering in its pants. Remember 1962? Anyway the message is very clear, India and China are military rivals and India is gaining on China and telling China not to mess around with India. The western media has been playing up the rivalry and hostility between two nations like they are arch enemies, China trying to swallow up India and India in a hurry to fend off an aggressive China? How true is this myth?

The Indian media and the mentality of its leaders did not help either to dispel this myth. They want to believe that China is going to invade and take over India like the Americans telling themselves of Chinese wading ashore along the western American states to take over America. What is the truth? It was America and western countries that invaded China and turned China into a semi colony. And the West has been bullying China and trying to contain China by building military alliances to ring China when not a single Chinese soldier is outside China. Modern China has never invaded any country but being invaded by the colonial powers of Japan and the West. But China is demonized by the West as an ambitious and aggressive power trying to conquer its neighbouring countries when it was the West and Japan that conquered and colonized these countries and China.

What about the fabricated fears of a hostile China invading India? Historically China had never invaded India nor conduct wars of aggression against India. There was this recognition that land over the other side of the Himalayas was not part of dynastic China. What about the Sino Indian border war in 1962?

The Indians have been harping till today that it was China who invaded India when they knew that it was the opposite. The invasion of China, to seize Chinese territories, was an Indian game plan with the formation of a 4^th Indian Army Corp specifically for this purpose. And to move back a few centuries in Indian history, there was really no India for centuries until the British conquered, colonized and consolidated all the loosely held kingdoms in the subcontinent under British rule. The British Empire went further to carve out Chinese territories as theirs at a time when China was weak and broken up.

A formal Indian state came into existence in 1947 when it was given independence by the British. And India claimed that all the land carved out by the British from China is part of India. The border areas were territory snatched from China. China did not attempt to reclaim the land by force. It was an ambitious and ego inflated India that thought it could seize the land by force when China was a weak new country under communist rule in 1962.  The rest is history.

Till today, the Indians are putting on a false front accusing China of invading India. The fact, China repelled the invading Indian 4^th Army Corp, marched to the outskirt of New Delhi, and then withdrew. Would an invading army do that, would an aggressive China harbouring an intent of conquering India withdrew from a defeated enemy on the run? China treated tens of thousands of Indian POWs like lost boy scouts, treated their injuries, fed and clothed them, clean and polished up all the captured weapons and returned the POWs and the weapons to India.  What did all this said about a hostile China?

India should stop its nonsensical accusation of China and the myth that China is waiting to invade India. In 1962 China could over run New Delhi in pursuit of the defeated Indian Army but did not, voluntarily withdrew without looting and raping or burning India along the way. India got away too lightly for its invasion of China.

In today’s geopolitics, conquest and colonizing another country is no longer acceptable and feasible as an option to global ambition. Only the Americans think so. China has no bad intent or ambition to want to have a war with India, to conquer India. All the Indian talks about building intercontinental missiles, aircraft and aircraft carriers and now submarines to defend an imaginary China running over India is simply hogwash. Too much toddy in the head.

India and China should continue to build economic ties and friendly relations and grow economically and military powerful as big countries. There is nothing wrong for the India to harbour wild ambitions to be the most powerful nation in Asia or in the world. But to build a straw man that China is its arch enemy and India must do everything it could to counter a China military threat is simply silly.

Stop drinking toddy and come to your senses, build your military machine for whatever purposes, but don’t create a myth that China is India’s enemy. There is no reason for China to want to invade India or any neighbouring country. North Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and many central Asian states with common borders with China have not been invaded nor have any border dispute with China. The Indians should negotiate with the Chinese and return the land carved away by the British warlord from China peacefully.

China is not asking for more land, not an inch of an India created by the British Empire. If there is going to be war between India and China, it would be the Indians conniving with the Americans to attack China, not the other way. The hostile and aggressive country is India and its superpower ambition. China is already a super power in its own right by trading and manufacturing and helping countries building infrastructures, without having to go to war, not invading or conquering any country. China is now a superpower without having to grab any country’s land by force. What for?