Even as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was drafting soaring demands for a multipolar world with his Chinese counterpart in Russia last week, the People’s Liberation Army, as reported in The Sunday Express, was displaying some aggression on the border with Sikkim. At about the same time in Beijing, China’s officials warned Indian diplomats that the PLA has the right to destroy structures it objects to on the Indian side. Meanwhile, Defence Minister A.K. Antony seems more intent on being politically correct and downplaying the China threat. Mukherjee has not explained why China refused to endorse India’s claim to a permanent membership of the UN Security Council at last week’s meeting with Russian and Brazilian foreign ministers while he was giving away India’s sovereign right to develop space weapons to please China.

Unless there is a quick and decisive course correction, the UPA government appears headed for a debacle with China. In reverting to past delusions on China, the Congress’s policy has two strands — proclaim a grandiose global crusade in partnership with Beijing while sweeping under the carpet real bilateral problems. Similar self-deception on China many moons ago ended in a humiliating defeat in 1962. The Congress appears to have learnt nothing from Atal Bihari Vajpayee who confronted China with Pokhran II in 1998, got Beijing to recognise that Sikkim is an integral part of India in 2003, and set the stage for a serious negotiation on the boundary dispute. Unable to play hard ball with China, the UPA government has lost the momentum first on the boundary negotiations and is now in the danger of yielding ground on the Sino-Indian frontier.

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