Mr. Rajiv Gandhi said in the Rajya Sabha on Monday that China was unimportant in Indo-Soviet relations. This is an extraordinary statement, regardless of whether it refers to the past or the future. As for the past, facts speak for themselves. To begin with, the possibility of reasonably cordial relations between India and China was one reason for the Soviet overtures to India, which incidentally began under Mr Malenkov whom Stalin had personally groomed for leadership, that is before Mr. Khrushchev emerged as the top leader. Subsequently, when Sino-Indian relations began to sour in the latter half of the fifties, Indo-Soviet ties grew strong precisely on that count, at least partly. In 1961, India sought and the Soviet Union agreed to provide one squadron of MiG-21s, because both wanted to give an indirect warning to Peking that it must not push New Delhi on the border issue. At the time of the Chinese aggression in 1962, Moscow did not come down on the side of India, mainly because it could not, in view of its confrontation with the United States over Cuba, which occurred at the same time. But soon afterwards, it became evident that Soviet sympathies were engaged on the side of India. In 1965 India, having been turned down by the United States, sought and secured hardware from the Soviet Union. Since then, Moscow has been New Delhi’s principal arms supplier, despite the latter’s attempts to diversify its sources. In 1971, India concluded the treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in order to be able to ensure that China kept out of an armed conflict with Pakistan, which the then Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, regarded as unavoidable.
As for the future, there can be littledoubt that China will continue to be a source of anxiety for this country, even if there is a visible improvement in their relations, for the simple reason that the Chinese see themselves as being entitled to a pre-eminent role not only in south-east Asia, but also in South Asia. Remember that in 1972, they forced president Nixon to acknowledge that they had “legitimate” interests south of the Himalayas. And Pakistan is too convenient a surrogate for them to give up for the sake of friendship with India. So unless we are willing to fool ourselves into believing that we are about to move into an era of goodwill and harmony in our neighborhood, we have to be vigilant in respect of China. It does not, of course, follow that we need Sino-Soviet hostility in order to look after our interests vis-à-vis China. But it does follow that China will remain a factor in Indo-Soviet relations, for, if the Kremlin becomes indifferent to those interests, these relations must suffer and New Delhi has to look elsewhere to make up for the loss of support in Moscow. Geography has made the Soviet Union, China and India neighbours and ties between any two of them must have a bearing on the third country’s relations with those two. We are doubtless moving into a more fluid world than we have experienced in the last four decades. But a fluid world is not a peaceful world or nonviolent world, to use the phrase Mr. Gorbachov has picked up from us.