The Pivot State | Book Review — India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present by Shivshankar Menon

A file picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chinese language President Xi Jinping in Ahmedabad (Categorical picture)

It isn’t typically that books reside as much as their effusive blurbs, however the quantity underneath evaluate is an exception to this common thumb-rule. Launched to the reader as “a marvel of historic erudition” and “a magisterial tour d’horizon” as additionally one that gives a “clear-eyed geopolitical evaluation” by three of India’s most credible voices (Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Shyam Saran and Srinath Raghavan) the 370-plus pages are greater than rewarding.

Writer Shivshankar Menon is counted amongst India’s most achieved diplomats and has the excellence of getting served each because the international secretary and nationwide safety adviser. Publish retirement from authorities service, Menon donned the hat of a instructor at Ashoka College the place he launched his college students to Indian international coverage and, as he notes in his introduction, their enthusiasm and curiosity in studying extra about occasions of a earlier century when Indian international coverage was being formed “inspired me to try this e book”.

The creator advises the reader that this e book “shouldn’t be thought-about a piece of scholarship” however one which makes an attempt “to have a look at Indian international coverage with a wide-angle lens”. That lens is geopolitics. Within the chapters that observe, Menon explores Indian international coverage by way of an knowledgeable and empathetic geopolitical perspective “for what it reveals about India’s previous, current, and, probably, future behaviour” towards the backdrop of Asian, and by extension, international geopolitics.

The 13-chapter e book is split into two components—the previous and the current. Whereas extra pages are dedicated to the previous—eight chapters of virtually 230 pages—it’s the current that provides a lot grist for the mill. The final chapter titled India’s duties and the very transient afterword about India’s future leavens all of the earlier strands in a compelling however far too compressed method. Menon locates India as “the last word pivot state” in classical geopolitical literature and opines that within the modern interval, “India should take care of a world and an Asia by which its main geopolitical problem is the rise of China” and the affect of this exigency “on the steadiness of energy within the area and within the rapid neighbourhood”.

This animation in regional and international geopolitics associated to the rise of China is palpable and each the Galwan incident of June 2020, which marked a pointy downturn in India-China relations and the present US-China stress that’s turning into the leitmotif of the third decade of this century, are working example.

Was there an inevitability about discord and distrust being the overriding traits of the bilateral relationship between the 2 Asian giants who had shed the colonial yoke and turn out to be unbiased nations across the identical time—India in 1947 and China in 1949? Menon recollects the main punctuations within the early part of the Sino-Indian relationship and avers that “From 1959 till the battle in October 1962, China and India tried to discover a approach out on the boundary query, with out, nonetheless, understanding the adversary’s compulsions. Each operated on false assumptions.”

This part has many thought-provoking observations whereby Menon recollects the killing of 5 Indian policemen in autumn 1959 on the Kongka move within the western sector by the Chinese language and Beijing’s determination to return the our bodies on November 14—Nehru’s birthday. Suggesting {that a} divided management in China and a PLA loyal to Mao had led to the regular hardening of the Chinese language place on the territorial dispute, Menon concludes: “The actual driver and decider of China’s street to battle with India, by subsequent Chinese language accounts, appears to have been Mao Zedong himself.”

However there have been missteps and hesitation on the Indian facet as effectively, in relation to gauging Chinese language intent that contributed to the deterioration within the complicated and troubled bilateral relationship. Zhou Enlai’s go to to Delhi in April 1960 and Nehru’s clumsy political and diplomatic signalling is touched upon and the anomaly about whether or not or not a ‘bundle deal’ was provided by Zhou is briefly detailed. Was this a missed alternative or did Nehru intentionally reject what was thought-about by Delhi to be cartographic aggression by China?

A decade later, in Could 1970, Mao signalled his willingness to enhance relations with India and conveyed this to the Indian cost d’affairs Brajesh Mishra by way of what’s now known as the ‘Mao smile’ and his message of friendship to then PM Indira Gandhi. Nevertheless India was hesitant to this overture and Menon broods in pithy however import-laden method: “Regardless of the Chinese language motives, this episode of the Mao smile, when India failed to reply meaningfully to China in 1970, should go down within the books as a possibility unexplored, maybe missed.” If solely Menon had not been so very measured and restrained!

One editorial wrinkle right here—pages 111 and 147 consult with the identical Mao-Mishra dialog and the necessity for guaranteeing content material continuity and zero-error copy enhancing by the writer deserves discover.

Concluding that “we reside in a world of problem and contradiction”, Menon places his head on the geopolitical block when he asserts that “neither China nor Asia is prepared but for a China-centred order” and has a phrase of warning for India as effectively. “India is being diminished to a bit participant on the worldwide stage. We now have misplaced 5 years. Our nationwide confidence has been changed by bravado and indulgent statements.”

Exhorting India to put aside ‘dread and hate’ and aspire to be a nation that has common enchantment is sage counsel each for the powers-that-be and GenNext. India’s future can be formed by the alternatives of its youthful demography-symbolised by the scholars who offered Menon the set off pulse for this enriching and considered exploration of the Indian sub-continent and its complicated geopolitics.

C Uday Bhaskar is director, Society for Coverage Research, New Delhi

India and Asian Geopolitics: The Previous, Current
Shivshankar Menon
Penguin Random Home
Pp 406 (with index), Rs 699