The Red Alert?

Despite the Doklam border standoff, both India and China are on the same side in their intention to boost trade relations.

- Manish Kumar Jha

 

A LITTLE MORE THAN one-third of humanity is going about its way of life and their leaders across borders are engaged in making sense of the dynamics of modern times and their varied complexity. Challenges are so huge across borders that one cannot provide solutions in isolation. After all, we are truly in the globalised world characterised by interconnectedness, and are so entwined not only in terms of trade and capital movement but also in flow of the culture, ideas and so on. And yet, the problem is the inevitability of conflicts between nations that threaten to destroy the very narrative.

The Doklam standoff is just the latest of many irritants dogging relations between the world’s two most populous nations — India and China. As Sanjay Baru, Senior fellow at the Centre of Policy Research, puts it, “China has not made a secret of seeking Asian hegemony”.

Fractured Chinese Jingoism

Doka La is the Indian name for the region, which Bhutan recognises as Doklam, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region. Of the 3,488 km India-China border from Jammu & Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, a 220 km section falls in Sikkim, situated across Dokalam. The land they are currently arguing over spans 269 sq. km on a sparsely populated plateau in western Bhutan, which has no diplomatic ties with China and coordinates its relations with Beijing through New Delhi.

It was the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan that sounded the alarm — Chinese soldiers had arrived with bulldozers and excavators, and were building a high mountain road near India’s border in an area the two nuclear-armed giants have disputed over for decades. India responded to the call by sending troops in July to evict the Chinese army construction party from the Doklam plateau.