India-China Dispute: Opposition Needs to Stop Playing Divisive Politics to Gain Political Points - News18

It is regrettable to see how China succeeds in roiling our domestic politics with its border transgressions. An egregious decision was made in 1954 by the then Congress government to accept China’s sovereignty over Tibet without settling the border issue. More than two decades later, Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi re-engaged China, and another Congress leader Narasimha Rao reached stabilising border agreements with Beijing to prevent the possibility of an actual military clash. With the chequered history of India-China relations under both the Congress and BJP governments, the border issue remaining unresolved, China continuing to steadily build military infrastructure in Tibet and provoking border incidents etc., the point scoring by the political Opposition against the government that we are seeing currently is not in the country’s larger interests. India, in a joint statement, during Chinese premier Le Keqiang’s visit in 2013, agreed that the “two sides are committed to taking a positive view of and support each other’s friendship with other countries,” and, much more surprisingly, endorsed China’s policies in our neighbourhood, saying that both “support each other in enhancing friendly relations with their common neighbours for mutual benefit and win-win results.” We expressed satisfaction at the “active role of the Strategic Economic Dialogue in promoting macro-economic policy coordination.” India also agreed “to further enhance bilateral cooperation on maritime security…and strengthen cooperation in naval escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and waters off the coast of Somalia, earnestly safeguarding the security of international sea lanes and freedom of navigation.” Under the Congress government, we called China’s incursion into Depsang in 2013 as “acne” on the beautiful face of India-China relations, and the then External Affairs Minister said that he would “love to live in Beijing.” All this should bring wry smiles to all our faces today.