Monday, Oct 14, 2002
Monday, Oct 14, 2002 |
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News Analysis
By C. Raja Mohan
This strange marker is about a road that exists but lies unused. From the border fence at Nathu La, you can see it slithering down the edge of the mountains into the Tibetan plateau. On this side, the road goes down to Gangtok, and on to Kolkata barely 600 km away. But no civilian has moved across the border for more than four decades. The Sino-Indian war in 1962 shut down the historic gateway between India and Tibet. The breathtaking Nathu La pass once connected Lhasa to Kolkata; it is now an impregnable military barrier. Indian and Chinese armies maintain a tight round-the-year vigil at Nathu La. But the atmosphere is now relaxed thanks to the improved Sino-Indian ties over the last decade. Men on both sides talk to each other freely and shake hands; they exchange international mail twice a week, and officers meet frequently. For nearly three years, the Indian Army has been allowing small numbers of tourists to come up to this spectacular windswept pass at a little over 14,000 feet. There are rising hopes in Sikkim that the Silk Road between India and China can be revived. On the other side of the border in Lhasa, the capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, officials told visiting Indian journalists a few weeks ago that they were very keen to resume border trade with India at Nathu La. Lhasa has upgraded infrastructural facilities at Yatung, that was once the hub of Tibetan trade with India, Nepal and Bhutan. In Gangtok, there are still Indian traders who fondly remember their days in Yatung. They are rearing to go again. * * *
If both Sikkim and Tibet are keen to reopen the Silk Road at Nathu La, where is the problem? For New Delhi, it is China's refusal to recognise Sikkim as part of India. Sikkim was an Indian protectorate until 1975 when it integrated into the Union as the 22nd State. Beijing has often hinted that once trade begins and customs posts are set up on both sides, it will imply a de facto Chinese recognition of Sikkim's union with India. De jure recognition could follow later. India wants it the other way around. There apparently is a quiet conversation on between New Delhi and Beijing in recent months on Sikkim. Officials on both sides are tight-lipped and no one is betting that the dispute can be sorted out before the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, goes to China in the coming months. * * *
There are pragmatists in Beijing and New Delhi who see the immense mutual benefit from reopening Nathu La. China loses nothing by acknowledging Sikkim to be a part of India. And why should New Delhi hanker after a formal recognition from China when Sikkim has already "emotionally integrated'' with India, as its Chief Minister, Pawan Kumar Chamling, insists? But there is resistance too. A lot of geopolitical baggage has been accumulated by India and China through decades of distrust and rivalry across the Himalayas. The trick, the Chief Secretary of Sikkim, Sonam Tenzing, told us lies in thinking differently about the Himalayas. "There are two ways of looking at the Himalayas. One is the idea of a watershed that divides India and China. The other is to see the great mountain range as a passage between two great civilisations and markets,'' Mr. Tenzing says. In a globalising world, why is it difficult to imagine trade and prosperity on the Sino-Indian border? If there can be buses plying between Delhi and Lahore and Kolkata and Dhaka, why not a transport link between Lhasa and Gangtok? Can we not return the Indian Consulate to Lhasa that New Delhi shut down in the early 1960s and establish a Chinese trade mission in Sikkim? Sikkim is enthusiastic about the prospect of pilgrims, tourists and traders crossing a bustling Nathu La. It is also eager to reopen the Jalep La pass further South East that connects Tibet to Kalimpong in North Bengal via Sikkim. But it is only New Delhi and Beijing that can let a thousand businesses bloom across the Himalayas.
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