It does not matter whether Karat was taking the cue from Beijing to block the nuclear deal with the US. What matters is an incontrovertible fact — China is the only major power that opposes India regaining access to the international nuclear energy market. Nor is there any doubt that China is trying to perpetuate nuclear parity between India and Pakistan at a moment when the US is trying to de-hyphenate the subcontinent’s nuclear rivals.

As part of a consistent effort over the last decade to improve relations with China, India has been willing to forget and forgive Beijing’s unpardonable transfer of nuclear weapon designs and missile production technologies to Pakistan.

Thanks to Karat’s adventurism, India’s long accumulated nuclear grievances against China are surging back to the surface. As mainstream India concludes China is out to block India’s impending nuclear liberation, it is Beijing that will incur the political costs.

With friends like Karat, China does not need enemies in India. If the Chinese establishment does its India sums again, it would quickly distance itself from the CPM and support the resumption of international nuclear cooperation with New Delhi. If it doesn’t, Beijing will risk stoking the fury of Indian nationalism and pushing New Delhi closer to Washington and Tokyo.

Border talks

Karat’s threats will have the greatest negative impact on the sensitive Sino-Indian boundary negotiations. Atal Bihari Vajpayee ended India’s impractical approach to the boundary dispute and Manmohan Singh has continued down that road.

The boundary talks with China, however, are completely opaque. Unlike the nuclear negotiations with Washington, where every comma has been debated vigorously, there has not been a single parliamentary debate on the boundary talks with China that began in 2003.

There is only one public document — the joint statement of the two governments in April 2005 on the guiding principles for the boundary settlement. It is no secret that India’s current boundary talks with China are in deliberate violation of the 1962 parliamentary resolution that demands New Delhi get back every square inch of territory occupied by Beijing.

India is ready to settle for the territorial status quo and prepared to give up claims to the Aksai Chin in Ladakh. Beijing, however, wants new territorial concessions from New Delhi, especially on the Tawang tract in Arunachal Pradesh.

Karat might fervently believe China’s attack against India in 1962 was a “just war”, Jawaharlal Nehru was the “aggressor”, and Beijing has legitimate claim to Indian territory. That, however, is not the national view.

If we accept Karat’s proposition that Parliament must have a say on all negotiations and put the talks with China to the same political scrutiny as the 123 agreement, the boundary talks will be dead in no time and Sino-Indian relations will stay in the same rut for another 60 years.

Playing politics

China has never been able to figure out the complexity of India’s domestic politics. It has tended to view them from the distorting prism of ‘pro-China’ and ‘anti-China’ forces. In 1998, Beijing was peeved with Vajpayee for citing the China threat in justifying the nuclear tests and was eager to see the NDA government go.

When Vajpayee’s ruling coalition was falling apart in 1999, the Chinese ambassador to New Delhi presented himself at the gathering of the then opposition leaders, Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalithaa and Subramaniam Swamy. Beijing might be making a similar mistake if it believes the CPM and the BJP could be used to stall India’s rise as a great power.

1962 and 2007

After humiliating Nehru in the 1962 war, Mao Zedong apparently exulted that China had bought itself 30 years from the Indian challenge. Beijing might hope that wrecking the Indo-US nuclear deal by pulling down the UPA government offers it a long breather. India of 2007, however, is very different from that of 1962, notwithstanding Prakash Karat.

The writer is professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore