Love thy neighbour…Don’t love thy neighbour

India and its borders are layered with tenuous and complex relationships. Will it all change in 2007?


After decades of hard bargaining with its smaller neighbours, India has an uphill task in resolving its border disputes. Gazing into the new year, however, the process of building peace with its neighbours holds some promise. The most promising, ironically, seems to be the one that has endured the longest: the dispute with Pakistan. For the first time there is evidence of some imagination in negotiations and the usual planned rounds of talks could prove to be less than mundane.

Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee is likely to visit Islamabad on January 13 to invite Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for the SAARC summit in New Delhi in April 2007—a visit that will provide an occasion for summit-level discussions on the peace process. The two foreign secretaries will meet in February, in Islamabad, to launch the fourth round of the ‘composite dialogue’. This could be followed by a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Islamabad in the first half of 2007.

This follows the meeting between Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and his Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Mohammad Khan, in New Delhi on November 14-15, 2006, to resume talks that had been placed on hold after the July 11 Mumbai blasts. The foreign secretaries reviewed the third round of the composite dialogue, which includes talks on eight subjects: confidence-building measures, Jammu and Kashmir, Siachen, Wullar Barrage/Tulbal Navigation Project, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial cooperation, and promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields.

On the Siachen dispute (Pakistan brought a reworded proposal to accommodate India’s non-negotiable demand for authentication of troop positions of both sides), Pakistan says it is willing to authenticate troop positions provided that would not in any way endorse any Indian claims on the status of that area. However, it did not elaborate on how exactly troop positions would be authenticated and there is skepticism in Delhi whether Islamabad would be willing to mark troops’ positions on a map: a bottom-line Indian demand. Highly placed sources say gaps still remain between the two sides and an early solution is unlikely.

The Sir Creek dispute has moved a step closer to resolution. Delhi and Islamabad agreed to hold a meeting of experts on December 22-23, 2006, to decide on the coordinates for jointly surveying Sir Creek and the adjoining areas. The experts would conduct discussions on the maritime boundary. The joint survey is to be completed by February this year.

Meanwhile, Musharraf has sent out another trial balloon through an interview. Referring to the joint Indo-Pakistani administrative mechanism for J&K, he substituted his earlier calls for “self-rule” with the terms “autonomy”, “self-governance” and “joint management” of J&K with “joint supervision”. These new formulations bring Pakistan closer to India’s position. High-level sources believe these proposals have been raised by Musharraf through the media to allow him to gauge reactions within the Pakistani establishment.

The government of India has been guarded in its response. But the political parties in Kashmir, including the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the National Conference (NC) and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), have welcomed the proposals.

In Islamabad and within the prime minister’s office (PMO) in Delhi, some of the keenness on Siachen revolves around providing a suitable occasion for a summit meeting in Islamabad between Singh and Musharraf. Delhi wants a suitable breakthrough in the dialogue process; Islamabad believes the visit would itself be the breakthrough. The compromise could be an agreement on Sir Creek. Not in itself an intractable dispute, lack of movement on Siachen is likely to result in a Sir Creek accord being made the highlight of Singh’s visit to Pakistan.

Overall, there is potential for a slow, incremental progress on the dialogue, and dramatic, unexpected developments that could surprise political players in the J&K arena. Musharraf’s television diplomacy and the joint statements after the foreign secretaries’ talks last month represent the public margins of the debate. What is holding up further advance is Musharraf’s need for assurance that the proposals being discussed will be acceptable within Pakistan.

There is little political consensus within India on a final settlement with Pakistan on J&K. The UPA government has barely consulted its own coalition partners, far less opposition parties like the BJP. However, given the BJP’s history, an illogical and hostile position can’t be ruled out.

The visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao (November 20-23, 2006), meanwhile, saw some movement on the boundary issue with Beijing. While the visit did not yield any breakthrough in the 57-year-old boundary dispute, Indian apprehensions that Beijing had placed the boundary talks on the back-burner were allayed by a joint declaration at the end of the summit talks: “An early settlement of the boundary question will advance the basic interests of the two countries and shall, therefore, be pursued as a strategic objective.”

Building on the ‘Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of India-China Boundary Question’, which was signed during Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit on April 11, 2005, New Delhi and Beijing declared their intention to “complete at an early date the task of finalising an appropriate framework for a final package settlement covering all sectors of the India-China boundary”.

There are indications that China may not be happy with India’s representative, MK Narayanan. Just prior to Hu’s visit, India had proposed a meeting of the special representatives. China turned down the proposal.

Despite this, the political-level dialogue on the border issue between the special representatives will continue, alongside the meetings of the official-level joint working group, which is clarifying and confirming the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and the implementation of confidence-building measures. It was agreed to start the drawn-out process of exchanging maps, indicating the respective perceptions of the alignment of the LAC.

Growing economic ties between India and China look set to dominate the relationship, perhaps more than the geopolitical dimension. Despite the call to expedite the boundary settlement, there is bound to be slow movement because of disagreement over the future of the border district of Tawang and the large Tibetan diaspora in India, including the Dalai Lama.

This negative potential was evident from the controversy triggered by Chinese envoy Sun Yaxi’s pro forma remark that Arunachal Pradesh was part of China. Indignation had to be quelled by Pranab Mukherjee, who stated in Parliament that India “unambiguously rejected the Chinese contention” and that Arunachal is an integral part of India.

Despite these hiccups, the growing trade relationship between the world’s two fastest growing economies is challenging traditional mindsets and is encouraging improved ties. China is deeply interested in Delhi’s growing ties with Washington, especially the landmark nuclear agreement. India is watching China’s relations with Pakistan and whether it will offer a similar deal to Islamabad.

As for Bangladesh, in whose birth India played midwife, it finds it easier to deal with Pakistan, a country that Bangladesh itself blames for the deaths of three million Bangladeshi freedom fighters in 1971. Thirty-five years later, India has been unable to function with the Awami League, and the ruling Bangladesh National Party (BNP). The BNP beats India with every stick it can find. Thanks to India’s hard bargaining over simple border demarcation and water sharing treaties, this is good politics in Bangladesh.

India alienated large sections of Bangla opinion by its handling of as sensitive an issue as the sharing of water. The Farakka Barrage, on the Ganga, completed in 1974, gave India control of much of the water flowing into Bangladesh. During the years the water-sharing treaty was being negotiated, Bangladesh had little choice but to accept the water released to it, which it considered too little during the dry season and too much during the monsoons. While this was a shared problem, India’s arbitrariness created enormous ill will among the 40 million farmers in Bangladesh whose livelihood depended on water flows. The water-sharing treaty was signed in 1996, but the bitterness is still being tapped by the BNP.

A border agreement in 1974 between Indira Gandhi and Mujibur Rehman left only 6.5 km of border to be demarcated, with an area of just 3,000 acresworth haggling over for a farmer, but hardly for an aspiring superpowerto be negotiated. Indeed, this little detail sums up the tenuous and troubled, but still evolving and hopeful, relations between India and Bangladesh, specifically, and largely, with others in the neighbourhood.