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