Burgeoning Sino-Indian trade is a welcome development for the future of bilateral relations, but we must not allow this aspect alone to lull us into complacency. To all those who get dreamy-eyed about the future of Sino-Indian relations, I would pose just one question. Where in the annals of international relations can one find a precedent for one nation handing over to another not just the designs and expertise, but also actual hardware relating to nuclear weapons and a family of ballistic missiles? And here I hark back to the post-war McMahon Act which was used by the Americans to deny atomic secrets to their Anglo-Saxon cousins, the British.

The Chinese are not even distant cousins of the Pakistanis; so there must be a compelling reason for this nexus which has forced India to divert scarce resources, and substantially checkmated her developmental plans. Till we unravel this conundrum, and as long as Indians resident in Arunachal Pradesh are termed “Chinese citizens”, it would be prudent to remember Palmerston’s words and hedge our bets.

The writer was chief of the Indian Navy