…China has always been uneasy about the augmentation of India’s stature since it under-mines its position as the Middle Kingdom surrounded by subservient states. While India went out of its way to advocate China’s inclusion in the UN in the fifties, Beijing cannot dream of backing India’s claims to a Security Council membership since it will add to its status.

Jawaharlal Nehru belatedly realised his folly of harbouring a romantic illusion of Sino-Indian friendship in a post-colonial world. As B N Mullick, intelligence chief at the time of the Chinese incursion, wrote in his book, The Chinese Betrayal, Nehru said: “It was wrong to assume that the Chinese undertook this aggression only because they wanted some patches of territory… The real cause was something else… China did not want any country near her which was not prepared to accept her leadership; so India had to be humiliated”.

That humiliation was inflicted when both India and China had begun their long climb to great power status. Now, Beijing perhaps feels the need for a further flexing of muscles because India is seemingly outrunning her in some respects. For one, its democracy and multicultural society are earning widespread admiration while totalitarian China evokes more fear than respect. For another, while the world has begun to understand the complexities of the Kashmir situation, especially in the context of Islamic terrorism in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, all the material improvement in Tibet can no longer hide the prevailing discontent there. Clearly, China believes that it cannot afford to lose ground to India either in the race to be a major power or because of the opprobrium it faces over Tibet. Hence, the reassertion of its claims to Arunachal Pradesh and the stoking of tensions in Sikkim.

In this tussle for supremacy, India is at a disadvantage because China can count on whatever support it can receive from its friends in India. …The CPM has even been candid enough to admit that one of its reasons for opposing the deal is that the resultant proximity to the US will enable America to encircle China with India’s help.

…Moreover, as anyone who interacted with the “Left” communists in that period would know, it wasn’t only the territorial claims of the Chinese which influenced the Indian comrades, but also the standard communist belief in proletarian solidarity which transcended international borders. It is by no means certain that such feelings no longer prevail among at least some of them.

…Apart from the mainline communists, there are also the Maoists, whose loyalty to proletarian unity is even more explicit. China, therefore, has a fair number of admirers in India.