The Chinese Connection
by ravi prakash on Jan 20, 2007 02:30 PM
It is important to highlight the differences in the approaches when interacting with the Chinese. Was it not in India that the Buddha preached his philosophy and the Chinese adopted it. We have made the Buddha a God but the Chinese follow his teachings in particular to setting one's goals and attaining them with utmost patience. If a goal demands walking a large number of steps then one has to go along on those, no matter how far or how long it may take. The Chinese do not lose sight of their goal but we begin to lose our directions, willing to concede, changing our goals and get impatient in the process. We end-up getting nowhere but move further away from our goal. We are keen to resolve our border dispute.We ended up ceding more territory to the Chinese. We provided an asylum to the Dalai Lama on humanitarian basis but did not take up the issue with the Chinese on the Tibetan border, we ended up with the Tibetan influx into India and even allowed a Tibetan Govt in Exile but we have not mustered courage to confront the Chinese nor take it to the world body inspite of being the affected party. We did not hesitate to take military action when Bangladeshi refugees flooded India. Why then do we accede to any overtures of China in the name of peace and friendship. Our engagements with China smacks of fuzzy thinking and lack of clearly defined goals. We are easy meat for the Chinese, they can do anything, reduce our space for negotiation and at will deny us the peace that we sorely need at their time and place of choosing.
