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.

... contd.