By providing China with whenever it wants, we will create an opportunity for Xi Jinping to rectify his policy towards India, said Colonel Anil A Athale (retired).
At the request of Subhas Chandra Bose, then chairman of the Congress Party, a medical team of five doctors led by Dr. M Atal of Allahabad and Drs. Cholkar, Kotnis, Basu and Debesh Mukherjee sent to China in September 1938.
However, Dr. Kotnis returned safely to India. Kotnis stayed and for the next five years continued with the Chinese.
During a long war against Japanese troops in 1940, Dr. Kotnis performed operations for 72 hours of sleep.
He treated more than 800 infantrymen wounded in battle. Even today, his memory is respected in China and is a symbol of the Indochinese friendship of a bygone era.
This is the right time for India to offer its assistance with its vaccines and other experience to face the emergency scenario in China.
India is preferably in a position to offer medicines and skilled labor.
It is time for India to live up to its civilizational motto of “vasudhaiv kutumbakam (the global is a family)”.
The Sino-Indian tensions on the border are more a creation of the Chinese Communist Party with the maximum of indifferent Chinese citizens.
This is different from Pakistan, for example, where part of its population is hostile to India and concepts such as Gazwa and Hind (conquest of India as discussed in Hadis).
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to pay attention to a Chinese professor at Savitribai Phule University in Pune about China’s belief in India. The erudite professor made a very attractive comment.
According to him, 40% of Chinese people practice Buddhism. For this segment of the Chinese population, India has that of the Holy Land related to Buddha.
There is no palpable “anti-Indian” sentiment in China.
There will be no triumphalism of any kind that harms Chinese pride.
This will be the best opportunity for us to bypass the Communist Party, which is pursuing a short-sighted policy of hostility towards India to achieve its global ambition.
Skeptics would possibly doubt the effectiveness of this technique given that the Chinese Communist Party has a stranglehold on the country and controls the media.
The recent riots and public protests over “Zero Covid” measures in China provoke a rethinking of this issue.
Despite its control, protests opposed to covid policy were widespread in China and notoriously effective when Xi Jinping forced the policy to be replaced and restrictions eased.
In the worst-case scenario, the Chinese government would possibly refuse the aid, but we would have made our case.
It is also quite imaginable that this is a component of an internal force struggle in China.
By providing assistance to China whenever it wants, we will create an opportunity for Xi Jinping to rectify his policy toward India.
In any case, Indian aid to China is an initiative that hurts even if it fails.
Colonel Anil A Athale (retired) is an army historian whose earlier chronicles may be here.
Features roundup: Aslam Hunani/Rediff. com