Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century

by Shashi Tharoor

  The strange thing, as I discovered during a recent visit to Taipei, is that these rules don’t apply to China itself. Behind the formal rejection, a thriving and almost incestuous level of contact flourishes. There are 370 flights a week between the mainland and Taiwan; some 3 million Chinese tourists came to the ROC last year. Taiwanese businesses are China’s largest investors, with an estimated $300 million pumped into their economy, and one of the largest trading partners, to the tune of over $110 billion. Some 1 million Taiwanese are either living, working or studying in China at any given time. Chinese officials, up to and including governors and ministers, travel happily to Taiwan, and are quite pleased to welcome high-ranking Taiwanese visitors in return; when I was there, the mayor of Taipei (a crucial post, since the last two mayors became the country’s presidents) was planning a holiday in China. Obviously, Beijing does not recognize the Taiwanese passport, but it is quite pragmatic and flexible when it wants to be: travel by the two sets of citizens uses informal documentation that implies no recognition of separate sovereignty by either side.

  Some think this implies an extended willingness to coexist: rather than the ‘One China, Two Systems’ formula that applies to Hong Kong, this is almost ‘One China, Two Entities’. Others, more cynically, think that what Beijing is doing is enveloping Taiwan in a smothering economic embrace while continuing to isolate it politically, so that Taipei’s dependence will inevitably oblige it to submit to a Hong Kong–type merger with the PRC. And then there are the optimists, who think the increased contact will instead change China, making the PRC more like the ROC. ‘You know what these Chinese tourists do?’ a senior official asked. ‘They enjoy a day’s tourism, have dinner and then sit in their hotel rooms in front of the TV for hours, watching Taiwanese talk shows. They can’t get enough of the cut-and-thrust of our democracy.’ ‘Imagine,’ a mainlander said to me, ‘my taxi driver had an opinion on nuclear policy, as if it had anything to do with him.’ But in Taiwan, unlike in China, the taxi driver gets to vote on who makes the policy, so it has everything to do with him. Chinese citizens are learning that, and going back to the mainland infected with the taste of freedom. Soon, the optimists aver, ‘They will want to be like us. Then Taiwan will have conquered China.’

  It’s a pity that Indians can’t engage more formally with this vibrant land, because China demands that we be more purist than they are. There’s a lot we can do to attract more investment, tourism (just 25,000 Taiwanese a year, from a country that sends 1.8 million to Hokkaido alone!) and educational and scientific exchange. But that means greater and higher-level contact in our dealings with Taiwan, not holding its leadership at arm’s length. Given the PRC’s penchant for needling us on Arunachal and Kashmir, isn’t it time we picked up a Taiwanese thimble of our own?

  This is not just about self-assertion, or even showing China that we have options. It is also, quite simply, about self-interest.

  First of all, Taiwanese companies and government institutions have a lot of money sloshing about, looking for a place to plant itself. Taiwan invests some $300 billion in the economy of mainland China, and many in Taipei wonder whether it is wise to place quite so many eggs in the PRC’s basket. Taiwanese investment in India is a measly $1 billion so far, and the potential for more is considerable. Most of it is currently concentrated in a handful of industries in a couple of states (Tamil Nadu and the bits of Andhra Pradesh that are easily accessible from Chennai). Diversification is clearly on the cards; when I was in Taipei in 2011 I met a businessman who was about to buy 10 per cent of a petrochemical industry in Gujarat, and was open to more. Kerala, with its upcoming Technocity in Thiruvananthapuram and Smart City in Kochi, will want to talk to Taiwanese IT firms about setting up shop in its sylvan environs. There are many other examples. Attracting investment isn’t just about growing GDP; it generates employment, which is vital if we are to benefit from our ‘demographic dividend’ (having a young, dynamic workforce at a time when the rest of the world, including China, is ageing).

  If India is skittish about opening its arms nationally to Taiwan, why not take advantage of our federal system to allow our states to deal directly with the island nation? In an economy which is already witnessing considerable competition between states for investment (remember the offers flooding into Tata after the Nano pulled out of Bengal?) I see no reason why we shouldn’t encourage Kerala and Gujarat to sell their wares to Taiwanese investors. In the end, it is India that will benefit.

  Another obvious area of cooperation is educational and scientific exchange. Taiwan is host to some of the best universities in the world, especially in the areas of science and engineering. Degrees earned there are recognized worldwide (even in India). They are also more affordable than university courses in the United States or the United Kingdom, and of comparable quality. There’s only one catch: for the most part, the medium of instruction in Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese. But Taiwan is also the best place in the world outside Beijing to learn that language, mastery of which will count for more in the world as China acquires superpower status in the next few decades. So encouraging Indian students to both learn Chinese and undertake advanced study in Taiwan is potentially of double benefit. The Taiwanese minister of education recently came to India, accompanied by twenty-two university presidents from his country. He and his colleagues are keen on opening their portals to young Indians. There are currently 500 Indian students in Taiwan; the minister, and his country’s energetic representative in Delhi, Philip Ong, would like to see that figure change to 2000 within two years. The potential is for 10,000, Ong says, in five years. The word just needs to get out.

  If we send you students, I joked to the Taiwanese, please send us your tourists! India has been receiving just 25,000 Taiwanese visitors a year, a negligible figure from a country of affluent travellers. As the birthplace of Buddhism, the majority religion in Taiwan, and as a country that has much to offer the East Asian tourist, India should be doing a better job of selling its attractions to Taiwan.

  Alongside the development of this relationship, we would need to increase official-level contact between our two countries, encourage journalists and scholars to travel to and write about each other, establish connections between our smarter think tanks, and get parliamentarians to meet to exchange their experiences of fractious democracy in action. Political leaders from various parties could also be welcomed in each other’s countries.

  All of this, of course, immediately begs the question, won’t China object? Will such overt engagement with a ‘pariah state’ incur Chinese disapproval? It might, but I believe we should stand our ground. No country needs to apologize for doing something that is unambiguously in its own national interest, and that is not gratuitously offensive to the other. So we should stop short of doing anything that implies treating Taiwan as a sovereign state; no prime ministerial namaste for the Taiwanese president, for instance, which would naturally rile Beijing. But inviting an ex-president of Taiwan to deliver a lecture in India, or getting a presidential candidate to familiarize herself with New Delhi before entering the electoral lists, should be possible, indeed desirable.

  And we should do it. In addition to the intimate and direct contact China already has with Taiwan, it has also made important international concessions, notably permitting the International Olympic Committee to admit a separate Taiwanese team, albeit under the name ‘Chinese Taipei’ and without flying the Republic of China’s flag. Recently, Taiwanese delegates were allowed to participate in the World Health Assembly, the global gathering of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), though China ensures they are not treated on a par with governments. If ‘one country, two entities’ is a viable formula in those two places, it can be contemplated carefully elsewhere.

  So let us not be, as the French put it, plus royaliste que le roi, placing restrictions on ourselves that the Chinese have long ceased to observe (but insist on imposing on others). After all, China too has its own interests in preserving a good relat
ionship with India—a gigantic market for its products and project exports, and a trade balance weighted hugely in Beijing’s favour. The onus should not always be on us to bend over to accommodate their concerns. As long as we draw the line short of political recognition, India should deal enthusiastically with Taiwan. On its own merits—and for our own sake.

  Though I have laid out a lot of both good and bad news, no serious decision-maker in either Beijing or New Delhi wants the bad news to prevail. There are manifest opportunities for cooperation which India should seize, including involving Chinese companies in the mammoth infrastructure-building tasks needed in our country over the next two decades (though sensitivity to security concerns may continue to limit Chinese involvement in telecom equipment, port building and some kinds of software services). International cooperation is also an obvious win-win, though India should be careful not to let such cooperation mire us in shared responsibility for Chinese policies that are not ours (for example, on climate change, it is odd that India, which has 17 per cent of the world’s population but generates only 4 per cent of its emissions, should make common cause with China, which has 17.5 per cent of the world’s people but generates nearly 20 per cent of its emissions). There are certainly issues on which cooperation suits both countries, including on anti-piracy, keeping open the sea lanes of communication across the Indian Ocean, progress on fair and free trade at the World Trade Organization (WTO), or the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions. In other cases, India might well be advised to wait and watch while others take the lead in pushing Beijing; this could result in issues being resolved to our advantage, such as the re-evaluation of the yuan or the effective pushback from the East Asian countries to China’s assertiveness. We should join issue with China only on matters which directly affect us, whether it is the border, the offensive Chinese practice of issuing stapled visas to some Indian nationals, responsible sharing of river waters or the need to reduce the trade deficit. Here our policy has to be deliberate and finely calibrated, and must involve a palette of options, ranging from conciliation to firmness to the judicious development of our strategic relations with other countries.

  Deep disdain for India in Beijing has transformed into grudging admiration in recent years, especially as we have also withstood the global economic recession, despite our chaotic democracy. We need to ensure that complacency does not once again set in in China, by taking proactive steps of our own to strengthen our border infrastructure (woefully deficient by comparison with China’s on the other side) and to deepen our maritime capabilities in the Indian Ocean while China is still focused on the northern waters closer to its shores. Such naval capacity building could usefully be buttressed by diplomatic engagement with maritime states in our region, including building up a network of security cooperation arrangements with them. This does not (and should not) imply any belligerent intention; on the contrary, its motive should be purely preventive, for as the old maxim has it, ‘if you want peace, prepare for war’. New Delhi’s own diplomatic messaging should make it clear to Beijing that it has no hostile intentions in attending to its own security perimeter.

  In his book Rivals, Bill Emmott quoted an unnamed senior Indian official as saying, ‘both of us [India and China] think that the future belongs to us. We can’t both be right.’ Actually they can both be right—it’s just that it will be two very different futures. And there can be room for both: the world is big enough for India and China, together and separately, to realize their developmental aspirations.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  India’s ‘Near Abroad’: The Arab World and the Rest of Asia

  During my brief stint as minister of state for external affairs, I had the privilege of being responsible in the ministry for India–Arab relations. It was a welcome challenge. The Arab world constitutes an integral part of India’s extended neighbourhood and is a region of critical importance to India in political, strategic, security and economic terms. It accounts for 63 per cent of our crude oil imports, trades with India to the tune of $93 billion and plays host to 6 million Indian expatriate workers who remitted over 65 per cent of the $57 billion that India received in 2011 in inward remittances. Yet, for all its significance, it cannot be said that the full potential of our relationship with the Arab world has yet been explored, let alone fulfilled.

  My personal contacts with the Arab people have left me with a deep sense of appreciation of the historic, cultural and civilizational ties that bind India and the Arab countries. As a student of history as well as an ardent believer in the importance of history in shaping our destiny, I am conscious of the extent to which our ties pre-date our emergence as nation states. Not only did Arabs and Indians know each other before the advent of Islam, but it can be said that the Arabs played a crucial role in the emergence of the very notion of ‘Hindustan’ and even in giving a name to the religion of Hinduism. We can argue about whether it is to the Arabs, the Persians or the Greeks that we owe the concept of the ‘Hindu’—the people who live across the river Sindhu or Indus—but there is no doubt that the people of India were referred to as Hindus by the Arabs long before the Hindus themselves called themselves Hindus.

  The Arabian Sea, which washes the shores of both our regions, and whose trade winds have carried vessels across since the days of antiquity, has played a crucial role in the cultivation of our relations. India’s cultural links with West Asia can be traced to the early years of recorded history. There is evidence, for instance, of trade links between the Harappan civilization and that of Dilmun in the Gulf. In pre-Islamic times, Arab traders acted as middlemen in trade between Bharuch in Gujarat and Puducherry and the Mediterranean through Alexandria, and even (as evidenced in archaeological finds of Roman coins and artefacts in southern India) as far south as through the Palakkad gap in Kerala. Ongoing excavations in and around the Red Sea coast continually produce fresh evidence of even older links. The idea of India has long flourished in the Arab imagination: it is no accident that so many distinguished Arab families in many different Arab countries bear the surname al-Hindi, or that ‘Hind’, as a term connoting beauty and desirability, is still a name given to many Arab women.

  Indian learning was another factor that brought the civilizations together. Indian numerals reached the world through the Arabs (and so became known as ‘Arabic numerals’). Islamic scholars from the turn of the eighth century CE to al-Baruni in the mid-eleventh century have, in their writings, documented Indo-Arab cultural links, including Indian contributions to Arab thought and culture. Translations of Indian works were sponsored by the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad where, especially under the legendary Caliph Harun al-Rashid, Indian concepts in secular subjects ranging from medicine to mathematics and astronomy were absorbed into the corpus of Arab scientific writing. (Algebra, for instance, was an Indian invention perfected in the Arab world by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Working at Baghdad’s House of Wisdom around 825 CE, al-Khwarizmi wrote a book entitled The Book of Addition and Subtraction according to the Hindu Calculation extolling the virtues of the Indian decimal system that used the zero. He went on to expound the system we now know, in a transmutation of his name, as algebra.)

  Indians discovering the new religion of Islam helped develop its philosophies and jurisprudence; some scholars trace Indian studies on the hadith to the early days of the arrival of Islam in India in the South in the seventh century and in the North in the eighth century CE. Scholars have also documented the compilation of a large number of Indian works in Quranic studies over the last 500 years as also in Islamic jurisprudence over a slightly longer period. Perhaps less remembered today is the contribution of Indians to Islamic scholarship in the medieval period. Among notable scholars was Shah Waliullah of Delhi and his descendants. Indeed, so important were these contributions from India during the centuries of Arab decline that the Lebanese scholar Rasheed Rada observed:

  If our brothers, the Indian Ulema, had not taken care of the science of hadith in this period, the [had
ith] would have disappeared from the Eastern countries, because that branch of knowledge had become weak in Egypt, Sham (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine), Iraq and Hijaz since the 16th century A.D. and it [had] reached its weakest point at the beginning of the 20th century A.D.

  Travellers between India and the Arab world were the vehicles not only for scholarly exchanges but also for cultural interaction at a popular level. Much of the Sufitradition is the result of Indo-Arab interaction and Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, whose shrine at Ajmer is visited by people of many faiths, was himself an Arab. Over centuries, stories from the Hindu classic the Panchatantra have been retold across the Arab and Greek worlds, blending with the Fables of Aesop and stories from Alf Laila wa Laila or the Arabian Nights. Some Arab travellers to India, such as the Moroccan Ibn Batuta, occasionally found themselves elevated to positions of power by their hosts; Ibn Batuta was, for a while, made the Qazi of Delhi, even though he was unfamiliar with the school of Islamic jurisprudence used in India. Many Arabic words can be found in several Indian languages, particularly in Hindi and Urdu but also in Malayalam and Gujarati.

  The adventures of seafarers who have ridden the waves and tides of the Arabian Sea on their dhows are the stuff of legend. I have even heard the story that it was an Indian seafarer who regularly travelled between Kerala and the Arab settlements on the east coast of the African continent who might have guided Vasco da Gama to the Indian coast at Kozhikode. It is for scholars to debate the accuracy of this tale, but what is not debatable is that these ties have hundreds if not thousands of years of history behind them and are responsible for the civilizational intermixture that all Indians have inherited and thrived in.