When debating with Indian friends over the right approach that India should take towards China, I first try to find common ground by asking a simple but crucial question:
Does India have independent agency when it comes to dealing with China?
In other words, can India make its own choices that can have significantly different outcomes, or is it just a helpless player forced along a certain path by forces of history, powerless to choose how to view and approach other countries?
You, the reader, should probably ponder this question and answer it for yourself before reading further. But before I talk about the answers I have heard in response to this question, I would like to reach back into Indian history to discuss some interesting tidbits.
Friends and enemies of the kingdom
Around 300 BCE, there lived an Indian scholar and thinker called Chanakya or Kautilya, who was an advisor to two emperors of the Maurya dynasty. His well-known treatise on statecraft called Arthashastra (literally “Economics”) contains sage advice to rulers on how to recognise and deal with adversaries. In this respect, the treatise can be considered India’s answer to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Machiavelli’s The Prince.
Kautilya had a rather cynical view of a kingdom’s friends and enemies. As he saw it, any kingdom that shared a border with one’s own was a natural enemy and hence a threat. The only allies of a kingdom were to be found on a neighbouring kingdom’s other borders, or in other words, “an enemy’s enemy is a friend”.
If one applies Kautilya’s reasoning to present-day India, Pakistan is a natural enemy for the simple reason that it shares a border with India. India’s allies are then to be found on Pakistan’s other borders, such as Afghanistan and Iran.
In similar fashion, China is India’s natural enemy on account of the two countries sharing a border. India’s allies are to be found on the “other” side of China, such as Japan, the US and Australia. If Kautilya were around today, he would probably have approved of The Quad. That grouping reflects classic Kautilyan thinking.
Subjects of the kingdom
Fast-forwarding to the mid-16th century CE, we find the Mughal empire of Emperor Akbar dominating the Indian landscape. Adjoining his colossal empire were two small kingdoms. One was Mewar, ruled by the Rajput king Rana Pratap Singh. The other was Amer (or Amber), ruled by another Rajput king, Raja Man Singh. Akbar approached both kings seeking their cooperation in his federalist vision. His vassals would support the Mughal empire, which in turn, would protect them from their enemies.
The two Rajputs made opposite choices.
Rana Pratap’s pride would not allow him to become a Mughal vassal. He chose to fight Akbar’s empire.
Raja Man Singh allied with Akbar, even giving his sister in marriage to the emperor. He became one of Akbar’s trusted commanding generals in many campaigns, including one against Rana Pratap.
Indian history textbooks glorify Rana Pratap as a brave patriot who fought an invader. Raja Man Singh is barely mentioned.
What is interesting to consider is the fate of the subjects who lived in these two kingdoms.
The subjects of Mewar suffered the expected tribulations of a long war, as their king was first defeated and later fought his way back to some of his lost territories in a series of guerilla campaigns.
The subjects of Amer lived in relative peace and prosperity. Amer fort is just outside the modern city of Jaipur, and I had the opportunity to visit it. An interesting architectural feature of the fort is the Ganesh Pol, a huge archway built in the (Muslim) Mughal style, but with a picture of the Hindu god Ganesha at its crest. It indicates that Raja Man Singh was not forced to convert to Islam, but that he and his subjects continued to practise their religion even though they were a vassal state to a Muslim empire.
Fast-forward again to the 19th century, when the British were extending their rule over India. The kingdoms of Jhansi and Baroda provide a similar contrast in terms of the choices they made in dealing with the British empire.
Jhansi’s queen, Rani Lakshmibai, is the heroine of Indian history textbooks. She died fighting the British when they attempted to annex her kingdom.
Baroda’s king Sayyaji Rao Gaekwad III did not openly defy the British. He agreed to be a vassal king (although he had his own passive-aggressive ways of thumbing his nose at his British overlords). Indian history textbooks rarely mention him.
One can imagine what the subjects of Jhansi went through as a result of their queen’s choice. When Jhansi finally fell, the British spared no one, not even women and children. A British army doctor, Thomas Lowe, wrote, “No maudlin clemency was to mark the fall of the city.”
Baroda’s citizens, in contrast, enjoyed the modernisation ushered in by their king under the peace he had negotiated with his British suzerein. In many ways, Baroda enjoyed a far more advanced society and lifestyle than the rest of British India.
History celebrates plucky and defiant rulers as heroes, and contemptuously ignores those who reach an accommodation with a superior power. Yet the lot of the common citizens of those rulers may have been quite the opposite of what the headlines of history mislead us into believing. (The plight of Ukrainians today under their indomitable leader President Zelensky is a topical example of this. Would ordinary Ukrainians have been better off if Zelensky had reached some sort of understanding with Russia instead of choosing confrontation?)
Agency, or the lack of it
Returning to the subject of agency, Kautilya’s model of statecraft admits of no choice at all on the part of a nation in deciding its enemies and allies. Geographical and political boundaries are held to determine these, and the rulers of a nation are mere receivers of a situation that is laid out for them.
If Indians accept the Kautilyan model of statecraft, then they implicitly acknowledge that India has no agency in determining who its enemies and allies are! In that case, continuing down the path of using the Quad to defend against China is an unavoidable strategy, no matter the consequences.
This argument is an uncomfortable one for many Indians, who like to have their cake and eat it too. They are proud of Kautilya for having given them a homegrown treatise on geopolitics and statecraft, but also insist that their country has independent agency!
OK, so let’s explore that angle as well. If India does have independent agency, then it has to choose how to deal with a much more powerful neighbour that expects deferential allyship. In many ways, India can see China as similar to Akbar’s Empire in terms of the deal it offers its neighbours — prosperity and internal autonomy in exchange for alignment and non-defiance. Should India defy this power, or seek an accommodation with it? In other words, should the Indian government act like Rana Pratap or Raja Man Singh? Like Rani Lakshmibai or Maharajah Sayyaji Rao Gaekwad? Accommodation does not have to mean surrender or appeasement, but the ability to negotiate a deal that wins autonomy for oneself while offering a non-threatening and cooperative relationship to the other.
As a democracy, it would be good for India’s government to make such a decision based on the likely outcome for India’s people. Defiance, as we have seen, often leads to hardship for common people. Accommodation, on the other hand, can result in peace and prosperity.
In sum, these would seem to be India’s choices today as it deals with an ever more powerful and assertive China — (1) accept the Kautilyan view that antagonism with a neighbour is inevitable (no agency), (2) exercise agency and choose defiance, or (3) exercise agency and choose accommodation.
As an ordinary citizen, which of these approaches would you like your government to take?
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