India And Its South Asian Neighbors: Perceptions Of Threats
And Realities – Analysis
Shift in India’s Approach Towards its
Neighbors was Short-lived
The
most formidable obstacle to the South Asian regional integration process has
been pre-occupation of the states with a state-centric approach to security. In
the initial years since South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
came into existence in 1985, India hesitated to get actively involved in the
regional forum as it believed the group was intended to be a platform for
smaller powers to gang up against India given the initial move for establishing
the South Asian regional grouping was made in January 1980 in the in the
context of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and the US and
Pakistani resolve to resist the intervention.
The Gujral doctrine, propounded by
the former Minster of External Affairs I.K. Gujral in 1996 who later became
Indian Prime Minister, was a response to address an atmosphere of distrust that
characterized India’s relationship with its neighbors for long starting from
India’s unequal treaties with Nepal and Bhutan keeping the protectorate arrangements
of British India intact under Nehru’s leadership to the evolution of Indira
doctrine designed to keep the external powers out of the South Asian region and
compel the neighbors to seek India’s assistance to resolve their problems onto
Rajiv Gandhi’s commitment to follow Indira doctrine to its conclusion by
intervening in Sri Lankan civil war.
The doctrine marked a departure from
India’s earlier obsession with keeping the region within its orbit of influence
to an inclination for non-interference and non-reciprocity. For instance, India
stopped intervening in neighboring states’ foreign policy decisions that was
previously considered crucial to India’s security. For instance, India did not
contest Sri Lanka’s arms purchase from Pakistan. The principle of
non-reciprocity which demanded unilateral positive gesture from India to
maintain neighborly relations irrespective of the capacity of other small
states to reciprocate allowed India to gradually convert existing treaties with
neighbours into free-trade agreements.
However, euphoria surrounding the
Gujral doctrine subsided quickly, as the Chinese footprint in the region became
more pronounced and likelihood of China-Pakistan axis in the region became
palpable to India’s foreign policy makers. New Delhi began to view regional
developments from a military security driven perspective instead of pushing for
regional integration.
The perception and narrative of
Chinese threat has been built around many developments such as India’s defeat
in the 1962 border war which was considered a breach of trust and violation of
the spirit of ‘Panchasheela Agreement’ signed between the two countries,
continuous Chinese supply of arms and nuclear technology to Pakistan
irrespective of India’s concerns, Beijing’s flexing of muscle in its
neighborhood, occupation of Tibet and expansionist territorial claims by
portraying Arunachal Pradesh-an Indian territory as part of China and its
palpable intrigue in its unwillingness to disrupt its ally Rawalpindi’s alleged
connection with religious radical groups for instance, New Delhi’s move to
question Islamabad and seek UN Security Council sanctions against Hizbul
Mujahideen Chief Syed Salahuddin, the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, was
blocked by Beijing.
India’s Military Strategy and the Region
The lesson that India learnt since
1962 border war was its lack of conventional military ability to take on China.
India has ever since more focused on developing its military capacity by
modernizing and investing larger portion of its budget towards defence
preparedness.
As per data on arms transfers released by Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI), arms imports by India increased by 24% between
2008-12 and 2013-17 periods. More intriguingly, the data project India as the
world’s largest arms importer accounting for 12% of the total global imports
for the period 2013-17. It is very much clear that India’s defence preparedness
is directed more towards China than Pakistan over which India already enjoys
military superiority.
However, what is glossed over in
this strive for military build-up is that India is continuously bleeding as a
result of growing instances of cross-border terrorism and proxy-wars which
cannot be contained let alone wiped out by its increasing conventional military
capacity. Outcomes of a 74-day long military stand-off between India and China
in Doklam located on the strategic tri-junction of Bhutan, China and India went
in favor of India as both China and India not only agreed to return to their
previous position, Beijing stopped its road construction activities in the
area. While this action pointed to India’s military resolve to insulate the
South Asian region from Chinese territorial incursion, this has also fed into
the narrative that India needs to continue to strengthen and modernize itself
militarily not only to avoid a humiliating defeat of 1962, it would also be
able to deter China from making military inroads into the South Asian region.
India’s Perception of Looming Chinese Threat in the
South Asian Region
India perceived a greater threat
from Chinese foray into the South Asian region than threats emanating from
Pakistan in the form of terrorism and proxy wars. Many Indian leaders and
experts expressed their concerns regarding Chinese inroads into the region and
a parliamentary committee report on external affairs noted “China is making
serious headway in infrastructure projects in our neighborhood…..the Indian
government is committed to advancing its development partnership with Bhutan
and Nepal, as per their priorities”.
Experts on Security Affairs
furnished a geopolitical theory on Chinese foray into the region known as
‘String of Pearls’ strategy in academic literature. While Beijing uses
catchphrases like ‘One Belt One Road’, Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road project
to emphasize its economic thrust and regional necessity, India perceives a
threat of ‘encirclement’ in the Chinese move. The Chinese project has already
taken off in the form of construction of roads, railways and air ports in
landlocked Nepal to creation of ports, bridges and airport facilities in
Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives.
What makes India’s concerns look
more genuine is roads, railways, bridges and ports can be used for dual
purposes – civil and military. There may be ulterior military objectives
underlying Chinese mega connectivity project which cannot be denied only on the
basis of official declarations from Beijing. These threats are getting more
pronounced when India, under Modi’s leadership and in line with his
‘neighborhood first’ policy, played a leading role in the deliberations of the
18th SAARC Summit held at Kathmandu on November 26-27, 2015 to strengthen the
regional integration process, his proposals for having three agreements on
road, rail and power (electricity) connectivity not only invited tough
resistance from Pakistan as was expected, most of his unilateral gestures were
viewed with skepticism in the region. Moreover, the South Asian countries
including Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives expressed their
willingness to induct China from an ‘observer’ status since 2007 to full
membership in SAARC.
India’s Non-Military Response to Chinese Threat
Perceptions
Due to its long-standing political
and cultural penetration in the neighborhood, India believed it could
manipulate internal political and cultural conditions within neighbors to
foster its influence and undercut nascent Chinese foray into the region.
It kept anchoring certain political
parties to maintain its dominance in the region, increased the amount of aid
and extended lines of credit and quickly responded to humanitarian disasters in
the region such as Tsunami affected South Asian countries – Maldives and Sri
Lanka in 2006, earthquake affected Pakistan in 2005 and Nepal in 2015, relief
assistance for Rohingya refugees to mitigate humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh
2017.
However, the nature of the
assistance that India extended to its neighbors was bilateral and driven more
by India’s concerns related to Chinese growing investment and influence in the
region than any desire for removing the barriers to regional integration.
The South Asian Neighbors’ Security Perception
The neighbors while perceived threat
to their sovereignty and territorial integrity from India’s neighborhood policy
for long and many times took the form of resentment and statements suggesting
India not to interfere in their internal affairs, China, a relatively new player
in the region has not been viewed from this perspective.
As a result, the small South Asian
countries either used the Chinese card to dissuade India from embarking on a
robust regional policy or they allowed China a bigger role in the economic
development and modernization of the countries. China’s mega connectivity
project ‘OBOR’ received warm welcome from the small states as they saw a huge
development potential from the initiative and some expressed their willingness
to see China as a full member of SAARC.
While such pro-China gestures in the
neighborhood is not seen favourably by India, small states are hard-pressed to
walk a cautious path given India’s deep economic, political and cultural
penetration in the region much before China’s entry. The Sri Lankan leadership,
for instance, quickly responded to India’s security concerns on Chinese
maritime strategy around Hambantota port facilities and made it clear that
Beijing would limit its activities to commercial development of the port and no
maritime strategies would be allowed.
When the Indian Prime Minister Modi
made a visit to Nepal in May 2018, he received warm welcome from the communist
leadership there despite recent history of animosity arising out of Nepalese
accusations of India’s political interference in Nepal in the process of new
Constitution-making and the irritant of economic blockade. Despite Bangladeshi
regime’s invitation to China for infrastructural development, it turned to the
Indian government for putting pressure on the government of Myanmar to take
back Rohingyas in order to defuse the humanitarian crisis.
India’s Fixation with Chinese Threat is more Imaginary
than Real
Notwithstanding the Doklam standoff,
a war or direct military confrontations between the two countries is unlikely
given the shifts in regional and global power configurations since 1962. The
outcomes of the stand-off indicated India’s ability to project its power in the
neighborhood cannot be challenged without serious risks.
India is not only a nuclear power,
it has developed its conventional military capacities and naval presence to an
extent which may not be to the proportion of projecting its power beyond the
region but can defend the region. The Indo-US strategic relationship, India’s
naval cooperation with Japan and Australia in the Indian Ocean along with the
US can go a long way in tearing apart the ‘String of Pearls’ strategy of China.
China’s foray into the South Asian region is of comparatively recent origin,
while India has already deep socio-political and economic penetration into the
region.
India enjoys a geostrategically
better location to project its power in its immediate neighborhood and in the
Indian Ocean than China. Perhaps, for all these reasons, India’s neighbors
while resent its interference in their internal affairs, they remain vigilant
to India’s security concerns and allow China a role limited to infrastructure
development. Apart from this, the large volume of trade between India and China
precludes the possibility of armed confrontation because that would not only
sabotage existing trade and investment, prospects for trade relations would get
suspended for an indefinite period.
China, which is predominantly an
export-driven economy, has not only flooded the South Asian markets with cheap
products, it has moved a large amount of capital in the shape of concessional
loans to the South Asian countries for infrastructural project. The flip side
of these projects is that when loans accrue without timely repayments these
turn into debt-burden for the South Asian countries.
The projects ensure not only the
Chinese companies are engaged in the infrastructure development works; all the
raw materials and products necessary for the works are imported from China.
When a South Asian country expresses its inability to repay loans, attempts
were made to acquire land on lease as the Sri Lankan experience exemplifies.
The Sirisena government of Sri Lanka leased out land to China for 99 years,
under debt pressure, for the development of Hambantota port which aroused
resentment from different quarters of the country. Pakistan, Nepal and the
Maldives, on a few occasions, objected to the terms, conditions, negligence of
local economy and modus-operandi of the projects. While the Chinese projects
involve a huge amount of movement of capital, these may backfire in the
long-run.
On the other hand, India’s aid to
the South Asian countries is of lesser amount but they are targeted towards
sectors like housing and railways with greater impact on local population.
According a World Bank report,
around 5 million South Asian migrant workers in India sent more than $7.5
billion back to their home in the form of remittances in 2014; in the same year
only 20 thousand South Asian workers in China sent a meager amount of $107 million
back home. These statistics drive home the point that India’s economy and that
of the South Asian neighbors is more organically inter-linked due to
socio-cultural and geographical reasons than their economic linkages with the
China’s export driven economy. Due to stronger economic linkages, India’s
growth has a ripple effect on the South Asian countries.
For all these reasons, India should
engage with its neighbors as a confident power and play a major role in the
regional integration process instead of looking at the region from a security
perspective. Many a times, its neighborhood policies largely dictated by a
security perspective has led it to meddle in the internal affairs of the
countries much to their chagrin.
South Asia: A Region of Hope and Despair
South Asia remains a region hope
because it is the fastest growing region and shows prospects of further growth
as findings of a recently released World Bank report indicated. Notwithstanding
this optimistic note, the Bank’s chief economist for South Asia Martin Rama
observed “the acceleration of growth that we see in the region is not
necessarily that all countries are doing much better…..but given the size of
India, India’s bouncing back is driving the growth”.
What this statement implied is as
the negative fall outs of Demonetization and Goods and Services Tax (GST)
policies in India gradually settled, it induced the regional growth to the top
of the order given India’s size, population and remittances that migrant
population of the South Asian countries generated. The average growth rate of
other South Asian countries were below 6 per cent.
Despite registering robust growth
rate, India is still facing serious challenges from all the non-conventional
threats that affect others in the region. The primary reasons for this have
been uneven distribution of resources within India and lack of regional and
sub-regional integration within South Asia. Even achievement of a modest level
of regional integration has the possibility of not only inducing growth rates, it
can steer the South Asian economies towards inclusive growth by opening up
larger market, keeping the rates of products low and providing different access
points to avail health and education services. So far as the regional
integration is concerned, South Asia provides a gloomy picture as it is one of
the least integrated regions with intraregional trade accounting for only
around 5% per cent of total South Asian trade.
India and its neighbors are fixated
on state-centric or conventional threat perceptions as they see the source of
threats to their sovereignty and territorial integrity only in powerful nations
or in perceived aggressive moves of neighboring or external powers within the
South Asian region. It is no gainsaying the fact that the region is home to
many non-conventional threats like terrorism, poverty, illiteracy,
unemployment, underdevelopment and illicit trafficking of people and drugs to
name a few which can only be addressed through a non-conventional security
perspective, regional integration and cooperative participation of
extra-regional players in the regional attempts at handling these issues.
Eurasia
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