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Jairam Ramesh’s little boast about Indians being better at English than the Chinese recalls the old tale of the Indian delegate who leant over to his Chinese neighbour at a diplomatic dinner and said patronizingly, “Likee soupee?” The Chinese smiled without replying. After a while the Indian was startled to find the Chinese on his feet delivering a brilliantly witty after-dinner speech in flawless Oxford English. Sitting down amidst resounding applause, the Chinese smiled kindly at the Indian and asked, “Likee speechee?”
With global economic activity shifting to Asia, Sino-Indian relations in this 60th year of diplomatic ties “warrant initiatives in public policies”, quoting Y.V. Reddy. The relationship is as important as India’s ties with Pakistan or the United States of America and cannot be reduced to banality. Ramesh’s betters in his party regularly reiterate that the world is big enough for India and China to grow together, but that cannot happen if the Chinese conclude that Indian foreign policy is up for grabs by smart-alecky operators afflicted with severe foot-and-mouth disease.
Of course, Palaniappan Chidambaram and his ministry can be criticized. But it’s for S.M. Krishna to take up the usurpation of his functions with the prime minister and Sonia Gandhi, not for a minister of state for the environment who may be angling for South Block to make snide remarks. Nor is the foreign correspondents’ club in the capital of a country whose president (Liu Shao-chi) is remembered for saying that “China was a great power and had to punish India once” the place for even the most irresponsible politician to wash domestic dirty linen. If some of the quoted remarks were made in confidence, that too is a sign of immaturity. As John Kenneth Galbraith says in one of his novels, anybody can have an opinion but officers of State have a position.
English in China is not a mangled lingua franca peppered with indigenous words, prefixes and suffixes. Only 0.77 per cent of the Chinese speak the language against India’s 21.09 per cent, but those few are remarkably proficient. A linguistic expert attributed the impressive diction and vocabulary of mainland Chinese members of Oxford’s Asia-Pacific Society to being taught English as a foreign language which, apparently, minimizes infection from the mother tongue, as in Hinglish or Singlish. Also, Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou have replicas of Dulwich College, alma mater of the creator of Bertie Wooster, the quintessential Englishman.
Not that language matters all that much in this age of instant translation. In fact, the English cite the story of Madame de Gaulle saying she wanted “a penis” and being corrected by her husband (“I think, my dear, they pronounce it ’appiness!”) to warn foreigners to stick to their own tongue. Atal Bihari Vajpayee did just that on public occasions, including his United Nations address, though perfectly easy in English in private conversation.
As for the supposed “negotiating skills” that “bailed out” the Chinese at the climate talks, it may be impolitic to recall that Beijing upstaged New Delhi at almost every turn of the Sino-Indian negotiations from 1947 to 1962. Bandung allowed Zhou Enlai to establish a reputation for skilful propaganda at Jawaharlal Nehru’s expense. Every global contretemps from Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia to the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s hesitation over endorsing India demonstrates China’s ability to mobilize world opinion without revealing its hand. India lost out over Myanmar’s oil reserves. Its ‘Look East’ policy has to contend with the economic links that Deng Xiaoping established with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The recent South Asian summit in Thimphu saw Wang Guangya, China’s vice-foreign minister, persuasively arguing for a Chinese role in the region. If the Chinese sometimes seem to be under American pressure, that only further corroborates the “watchful waiting” that was Mao Zedong’s refinement of Sun Tzu’s strategy in the world’s oldest military treatise. They know that the US is mortgaged to them.
Reports suggest that his listeners in Beijing lapped up some of Ramesh’s indiscretions while treating others with amused contempt. They could afford to let the presumptuousness of his claim that “Chinese leaders now regard India as a crucial partner in the global arena” pass. However, the “now” is intriguing. Did this halcyon era in bilateral relations with a China dazzled by India’s linguistic and negotiating finesse and hoping that both will guide it through the thickets of world affairs start with Ramesh’s visit?
It might be unfair to attribute his championship of a Chinese telecommunications corporation seeking an entrée in India to any special interest or hidden agenda. It’s just that our politicians cannot help courting instant popularity. Ramesh’s on-the-record denigration of Indians (all talk and no work while the Chinese work without talking) must have been music to Chinese ears. Lal Krishna Advani’s Pakistan visit, when he suddenly reneged on everything he and his party had stood for until then, provided an example of the same weakness. Nor was that the first instance of playing to the gallery. Shankar Dayal Sharma caused a stir by addressing Mayo College alumni as “Your Highnesses”. Later, the vice-president, as he then was, explained disarmingly that having fought and vanquished the princes, especially his former suzerain, the Nawab of Bhopal, he could afford to show them magnanimity. Someone who knew Sharma better added afterwards that standing on the rostrum facing the princes, he just couldn’t help saying what he knew they craved to hear. As Oscar Wilde might have said, politicians can resist everything except temptation.
Perhaps the frailty is not confined to politicians. Perhaps it’s a national characteristic, witness the Indian in A Passage to India who readily acceded to the Englishwoman’s wish to visit him on a particular day he knew he wouldn’t be there. He thought it impolite to put her off, not being farsighted enough to realize that being found out when the woman called would damage his credibility much more. India’s political and diplomatic representatives on the international circuit long ago gained a reputation for duplicity when, poor things, they were just trying to be nice.
A more serious explanation for Ramesh’s comments may have been the calculation that they would be noted in New Delhi and remembered when the time came for re-nomination and promotion. The Chinese must be familiar with such durbari tactics. China’s 15 accredited correspondents here (including six representing the Xinhua news agency, three for People’s Daily and two from China Radio International), to say nothing of unofficial conduits, keep Beijing well posted. The Chinese are so indefatigable about information that someone from Beijing’s Caixin media turned up when I was speaking in London on India and Southeast Asia, explaining that her “purpose was just to deepen (her) knowledge on the geopolitical issues around South-east Asia”.
India has only four journalists in China and they probably don’t know Chinese. In any case, the tone of debate here is set by domestic reporters who periodically report clashes and intrusions and help maintain a state of tension in the public mind. Some of these reports are officially denied but the damage is done by then. Some, like the picture of a boulder in Indian territory that the Chinese ideograms on it claimed as Chinese, continue to inflame opinion. No one took notice of China’s defence that the picture doesn’t indicate the boulder’s location and that the inscription reads “Middle Section of Yellow River” which is 1,000 miles from the border.
The “historic need” for India and China to work together (Manmohan Singh’s words) is not best served by someone who lives up to his own definition that “Indians talk and talk and keep on talking”. This combination of a joker in the ministerial pack and sloppy or tendentious reporting ensures that China need not take India seriously. That would be as big a setback for Asia as Bomdila.
