Beijing the Bully Chinas refusal to grant visa to Gonesh Koyu, an IAS officer of the Arunachal Pradesh cadre who was among a 107-strong delegation of IAS officers set to visit China for training at the prestigious Beijing National Academy of Administration, has come at a time when India is leaving its past behind and moving with diplomatic pragmatism to cement its ties with the neighbouring giant. Mr Koyu was denied visa on the grounds that China still considers Arunachal Pradesh a part of its own territory and not Indias, and that the disputed status of Arunachal Pradesh obviously prevents Chinese diplomacy from effecting a visa regime for people from its own territory. This is a total perversion of the fact of the day. India, on its part, did the right thing by cancelling the proposed trip of IAS officers. In this lies the Indian assertion that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India, and just that. In this is also manifest the unfolding of a resurgent India refusing to be cowed down by Beijings bullying tactics. While Beijing may have stormed into the dynamics of free-market economics and dictated terms to set new global trends, India does not lag behind either, despite a plethora of problems. A global player in the making and recognized by the international community today India cannot remain a mute spectator to the overtly aggressive Chinese design on Arunachal Pradesh. It would be reassuring indeed if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself had straightaway sent a message to his Chinese counterpart conveying Indias downright rejection of the Chinese claim on any part of Arunachal Pradesh. The message should also have it that as long as China cherishes Arunachal Pradesh as part of its expansionist design, there cannot be any pragmatic move towards resolving the vexed issues between the two countries; and that recognition of each others well-defined territories with settled populations, leaving the phantoms of the past behind, is the only way out of the impasse. On the flip side of it all, one wonders whether China realizes that India has come a long way from the Nehruvian era reminiscent of that meek psychological surrender of 1962 when Jawaharlal Nehrus heart went out to the people of Assam as the Chinese forces rampaged through Arunachal Pradesh. Today the Indian Prime Minister will definitely not surrender in that characteristic Nehruvian style. It is high time Beijing realized this Indian politico-diplomatic metamorphosis. More important, as Beijing strives to set new global trends by economic miracles, it would only make a laughing stock of itself and its people by eyeing an integral part of its neighbour, India, no less powerful and economically buoyant. We understand that there is no likelihood of any war between India and China on Arunachal Pradesh; so what does China want to prove by harping on Arunachal Pradesh? That it can still bully around without being scoffed at? http://sentinelassam.com/ --------------------------------- Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more.
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