Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Handle With Care: India-China Relations!

CNN-IBN has a knack of surprising its viewers. They talked to Saurav Ganguly about his reaction to Baichung Bhutia's decision of not carrying Olympic Torch as a way of showing support to Tibetan movement. I wondered aloud, how the heck does Ganguly come into picture here! Bhutia hails from Sikkim and he said he is a Buddhist and wants to show his support to Tibetan movement. Ganguly is not a Buddhist, he doesn't belong to Sikkim or anyother state that has issues with China (unless you consider Left's Chinese infatuation!) and what's more he was not going to carry the torch!

However I think, had someone asked foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee his opinion about Bhutia's decision, he might have said 'Baichung Bhutia is a respected player of India and we would continue to offer him all hospitality but he should not do anything that will adversely affect Indo-China relations'.

He might have added that newspapers which publish stories about Chinese intrusions in Indian territory or Chinese building bunkers and road along India-China border and LAC (Line of Actual Control) are respected media houses but they are adversely affecting India-China relations.

I don't know if he called up Indian envoy to China Nirupama Rao to tell her that even if Chinese external affairs ministry keeps on calling her at 2 am she should happily go else it may 'adversely affect Indo-China relations'.

But I think he would not be losing sleep over German Chancellor Anjela Merkel's decision to not attend Beijing Olympics opening ceremony or French President Nicholas Sacozy's threat of France boycotting the games since that may not 'adversely affect Indo-China relations'. Also Pranab da should be terribly happy with his colleague Shivraj Patil's ministry which has downplayed Chinese threats to India and protrayed China as a superpower with a great impact on this region politically, economically and militarliy. This would have enforced India-China relations to a great deal!

I hope I won't be told now to stop writing something that 'adversely affects Indo-China relations'!

(If you are wondering what is this about read here)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Well the chinese policy is DO and never explain...

The Indian policy is keep thinking and discussing but never DO !

Till we get out of that mentality our Ambassador will be called up at 2 AM for discussions....

Waterfox said...

Very well said 'Do and never explain'!
I don't know why Indian Government is behaving in such a shameful manner!