Fluent Mandarin speaker Vijay Keshav Gokhale is India’s new Foreign Secretary. In a much-predicted move the Indian government announced that Gokhale will commence the role on January 29 when he formally takes over from Dr S Jaishankar.
Vijay Gokhale was Ambassador to China before returning to Delhi in October 2017 and has also served as India’s China and East Asia Director and as Joint Secretary, East Asia. For the majority of his previous career Gokhale worked on the China desk in India’s Ministry of External Affairs and now joins a long line of Mandarin-speaking “China hands” as the Ministry’s head. According to Ashok Kantha, who preceded Gokhale in Beijing, his experience makes the appointment “excellent”.
“He has served in the permanent mission to the UN in New York and has dealt with multilateral diplomacy,” Kantha told Asia Times “He has also served extensively in the region.”
Doklam crisis
Vijay Gokhale was in Beijing as Ambassador between January 2016 and October 2017 and his tenure oversaw a series of bilateral strategic issues. The crisis between India, China and Bhutan over Doklam was particularly tense when, in June 2017, the Chinese started building an all-weather road that would lead right to the tri-junction area. Bhutan complained that this, by changing the strategic character of the area, went against the spirit of ongoing bilateral negotiations and asked New Delhi to assist by sending in troops. The resultant military standoff between India and China brought a series of eyeball-to-eyeball – and sometimes physical – confrontations.
A visit by India’s National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval to Beijing led to a thaw. While the visit was ostensibly to prepare for an upcoming BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) meeting, Doval used the opportunity to discuss the border issue with the Chinese.
Gokhale was India’s key point person for the negotiations and government sources told Asia Times that he pushed for a firm line and maintained that the Chinese would eventually see India and Bhutan’s point of view. He was in India when, at the end of July, word came that Beijing was ready to negotiate a scaling down of troops to diffuse the crisis. Gokhale rushed back to Beijing and spent the night in discussions with his Chinese counterparts and by morning a compromise had been thrashed out.
Negotiating a complex world
In his new role, Gokhale will have to tackle several more complex China-related issues as India’s foreign policy unfolds under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India has rejected China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and it was left to Gokhale to convey this to the Chinese leadership. Delhi argued that the BRI causes major issues of sovereignty and these need to be resolved before India can participate. India has also raised concerns about Chinese aid to various countries in the region leading to a debt trap.
Washington’s latest US Security Strategy also present challenges. The strategy, unveiled two weeks ago, calls China a “challenge to American power, influence and interests”, claims Pakistan is a sponsor of terrorism and highlights how Islamabad has become a key strategic and economic ally and an integral part of both the BRI and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.
India, sandwiched between two potentially hostile, nuclear-armed neighbors, will have to walk a delicate diplomatic path just as the global influence of traditional ally Washington, under President Donald Trump, seems to be on the wane. For Gokhale it is this that will surely test his considerable experience to the limit.
India, potentially a giant, has lagged behind for last 3-4 millennia, a condition unlikely to change this century.
Other large systems – China, USA, Russia, Brazil, EU manage to find at least one trait – race, language, culture, values, to unify them, India relishes in internal division by Caste System.
The disaffected attracted foreigners – Aryans, Greeks, Arabs, Afghans, Turks, Uzbeks, Muslims, Christians – Portuguese, French, English, helping them to prevail over India.
Now that 700 years of Muslim rule, 200 of English, and 70 of secular Democracy had weakened the Castes, Modi is undoing all that work. Will the hapless Kashmiris and Assamis invite China as India’s next savior?
India is also a South Asian laggard. Here are some Pak firsts:
1. Free Enterprise – Pakistan 1947, India 2000
2. Free Trade – Pakistan 1947, India 2000
3. Alliance with the West – Pakistan 1950, India 2000
4. Friendship with China – Pakistan 1960, India 202?
5. Distancing from Socialism – Pakistan 1947, India 1990
6. Distancing from dying Corporate Capitalist West – Pakistan 2000, India 2050?
7. Talibanization: Pakistan 1977 with Zia, India 2014 with Modi.
8. BRI/New Silk Road Pakistan 2013, India?
Most important, Pak is now going through a much needed Civil War to align itself with Globalization and Free Trade. Will India start the same process in 50 if ever?
The logical for India would be to obliterate its Caste System, leave Kashmir to Kashmiris, make peace with Pakistan, and join the BRI/OBOR to unify Europe, Asia, and Africa, rather than act as a spoiler. That is unlikely as India loves its divisions far too much.
The author’s claim that Bhutan asked India to send troops to Doklam is incorrect. Bhutan never asked for any such help.
In the Doklam standoff there wasn’t any invitation from Bhutan to India to intervene on her behalf, not on any record. The Bhutanese merely complained that the road construction will affect the finalization of the border, and then shut up through out the crisis. No Bhutanese invitation to the Indian to intervene and no support on India’s position.
India’s position on the BRI has no ratinal basis. It is emotionally contrived and using falsehoods to justify it. The Indian put forth so-called debt traps as evidence which are not supported when the facts come to light. Claim of violation of sovereignty is clearly contrived. How about the Chinese claim of violation of Chinese sovereignty in Arunachal Pradesh where India is building up the infrs-structure ? It is hard for India to accept that the Chinese are ahead, and can come up with such initiative as BRI. The Indians are miffed.
No thanks, no Chinese has any interest in India.
No one stop India from creating it’s own organizations, or starting it’s own projects. Why not circle itself with country more agreeable and Lord over them than trying to mess with everyone else business.
People want to move forward, not to be pull down to India level.
With delusional elite like this, no one should have any illusions.
They are delusional people. I doubt they know what is the truth, what is the fiction. They need to secure their birth right privilege, that can not be done if they tell the truth…
Let us look positively on what the writer is hinting – that it is better for India that its new Foreign Secretary is a fluent Mandarin speaker and has some actual working knowledge of the Chinese – it makes for smoother dialogue even when the two nations might disagree to start off with.
To be fair, the Foreign Secretary is just the ‘messenger’ – the Indian Government or more particularly it is the PM that dictates policy and strategy.
I am inclined to believe that Modi would be more a Hindu Nationalist rather than an Anglophile like Nehru.
Where things went haywire was when Nehru simply like an anointed Englishman saw it as sacrosanct and immutable – the India-China border as unilaterally drawn by the Colonial British as the MacMahon Line. This was despite the Chinese saying that since antiquity both ‘peoples’ have simply accepted on very broad terms that the border between the two civilisations were the Himalayas as a nebulous geographical and geological boundary. There was no border ever drawn in dots and dashes or in modern parlance in GPS terms. China asked that a joint committee be set up to negotiate the border as Asian brothers and neighbours. But Nehru was too much of an Englishman! He refused. He insisted that what was previously the British was now India’s!
An irony really. When independence from the British was predicated on disputing the legality and validity of the British Empire. Not by a preexisting ‘India’ before British India, as there never was an India unitarily before the British but a mortley or coterie of Hindu and Muslim Indian sub-continent kingdoms and principalities etc.
Whereas in contrast, China was before and after the existence of British India, the same China since antiquity.
China like India was conquered but in China’s case the conquerors became Chinese, for example there is now no living Manchu community living and talking and eating Manchu. It is an extinct culture!
But the Muslim conquerors of India forced many Hindus to convert to Islam. And thus the people of the Indian sub-continent are today still divided on religious grounds alone, both as India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as internally within India itself. There are more Muslims in India than many of the Middle East combined!
China however remains a unitary atheist or agnostic people and civilisation. Not only that it has one single written language, and since Communism a national oral language in Mandarin, and the same uniform and universal spiritual and customary culture and traditions.
If only India were still the India as before its Muslim and British conquerors. The India that taught China Zen Buddhism and Shaolin Kungfu and modern mathematics!
India will prevail because it is democratic.
India loses no opportunity to snatch defeat from jaws of victory, by making the wrong choice.
For 2,000 years, Gupta/Maurya to Aurangzeb (300BC-1700AD), both China and India produced 1/3 of global wealth; the rest (Europe, Africa, ME) the other third.
But while Chinese wealth was shared by all, Indian wealth, was concentrated at the top – Kings, Rajas, Nabobs. Today, it is the Westernized English speaking elite (those who post here).
As I stated in my other post, India learnt nothing from successes or failures of othes, e.g Pakistan. While at Indepence India was semi-industrialized, Pakistan from scratch has managed to survive and is at the verge of takeoff in the coming era of Globalization and Free Trade.
As always, India has chosen to take losers as partners – USA and Japan, both have-beens, rotting for the last 30 years.
We wish India well. But she must eschew dreaded Caste System, join the civilized in building humanity into one with trade and peace via BRI/New Silk Road that will unify Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Instead, Modi is undoing the good work done by 700 years of Muslim and 200 years of English and 70 years of secular democracy. India will become a Zero by forgetting its own wisdom.
"He who sees diversity, but not the unity behind its diversity, marches on from death to death" – Katha Upanishad.
An Indian confirming what I have been posting.
http://www.atimes.com/article/200-year-old-battle-comes-back-haunt-indias-caste-faultlines/
Jo Snow The author also claims Washington is India’s traditional ally. Huh? Since when? Clearly delusional indeed.
Syed Abbas,
Valid point. All nations, big or small, whether any of the superpowers or the minnows, have their archilles heel. It seems incongruent that India can claim to be a democracy with its Hindu caste system.
But life is very complicated. Things are not what it seems – all is quite illusory in their appearances. Socialism without capitalism is communism. Capitalism without socialism is fascism by the rich autocracy. Religion does not unite but divide. The Hindu multitude of Gods against Islam’s one God against China’s no such thing as God, and here we are mortal humans talking about what is the exact GPS border between China and India in the inshospitable and inarable Himalayas. But the point is who gave the British the godgiven right to unilaterally draw the MacMahon Line as the international border?
Vince Cheok
Thanks for the novel definitions of economic systems.
Yes, religions divide, but it can unite too. Religions are nothing more than socio-economic systems. Rituals bind people with same outlook together. Religions are tied to economy – Pastoral (Judahism), Agrarian (Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism), and Trade (Hellenism, Islam).
People outgrow their Achilles Heels; China did. But India seems to be an exception as Modi is taking them back to what made them slave for 7-10 foreigners in last 3500 years.
Every dog has his day. The British divided and ruled, but today they are tasting their own medicine – Brexit, split from within as Scots want to leave. The future being shaped by BRI/OBOR, in the coming era where Asia, Europe, Africa will be one land mass, the Americas, Australia, England, Japan are unconnected islands, thus irrelevant, a footnote to history.
Seyed Abbas your first line does not make sense. there was never an "India’ till the British formed it. The word "India’ is alien to that region and no Souh Asian language used it, The region was a collection of Kingdoms and Empires . An estimate of the collective economies of South Asia in the 18th century pegged it at 25% of the known world. That means South Asia was doing well.
COPYCATS!
If you guys are that smart, solve your own problems using your own theorems and your own formulas. Copying other people’s system to save face while wishing death upon them is plain stupid.
Look, it’s genetic. You either have it or you don’t.
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Yes they did.
Bhutan sought assistance against Chinese encroachment, India obliged. China slinked back because it didnt want BRICS summit to end in a disaster. India is miffed bcos China is building infra in territory illegally occupied by Pak. Not too different from Chinese getting pissed off when someone invests or sells arms to Taiwan.
China’s history of rule in Tibet and Turkestan is indeed just as shallow as Russian rule over the 5 central asian Stans. The territorial size of China has been far smaller, for most of the last 2 millennia, has been smaller than what it is today. Doubt if it is the ‘end state’ of history.
The hardening of caste in India is an outcome of British rule; as is the poisoning of Hindu-Muslim relations. Not to worry. Both are being dismantled. India’s rise has been slower than China, since 1940s. But FYI, India’s economy is twice as large as its ex big brother Russia and steadily getting bigger. Expect to see India as third largest economy in next decade. It is 5th largest currently.You should concern yourself with Pak staying ahead of Bangladesh.
And Manchu’s gave China the god given right to Mao to set China’s borders? Ummm … why is that any fairer than Republic of India acting as the legitimate successor state to imperial rule of Britain.