India China: Rethinking Borders and Security

Configurations: Critical Studies of World Politics Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, series editor

Titles in the series: Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare: Norms and Practices during the World Wars Nachman Ben-Yehuda Securing the Sacred: Religion, National Security, and the Western State Robert M. Bosco Capital, the State, and War: Class Conflict and Geopolitics in the Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945 Alexander Anievas Britain and World Power since 1945: Constructing a Nation’s Role in International Politics David M. McCourt The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses Ty Solomon Making Human: World Order and the Global Governance of Human Dignity Matthew S. Weinert The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance Ole Jacob Sending India China: Rethinking Borders and Security L. H. M. Ling, Adriana Erthal Abdenur, Payal Banerjee, Nimmi Kurian, Mahendra P. Lama, and Li Bo

India China Rethinking Borders and Security

L. H. M. Ling, Adriana Erthal Abdenur, Payal Banerjee, Nimmi Kurian, Mahendra P. Lama, and Li Bo

University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper

2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1

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ISBN: 978-0-472-13006-1 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-0-472-12220-2 (e-book)

Contents

Foreword vii Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: What’s Not There: India-China 1 L. H. M. Ling

Chapter 1. Trans-Himalayas: From the Silk Road to World War II 20 Adriana Erthal Abdenur

Chapter 2. Borders as Opportunities: Changing Matrices in Northeast India and Southwest China 39 Mahendra P. Lama

Chapter 3. Subregionalizing IR: Bringing the Borderlands Back In 60 Nimmi Kurian

Chapter 4. Dialogue across Borders: Dam Projects in Yunnan and Sikkim 80 Payal Banerjee and Li Bo

Chapter 5. Border Pathology: Ayurveda and Zhongyi as Therapeutic Strategies 102 L. H. M. Ling

Conclusion: What’s Ahead: India-China in the World 127 Borderlands Studies Group

Maps 139 Bibliography 145 Author Biographies 171 Index 175

Foreword

Pta rick Thaddeus Jackson

I am pleased that we are able to present this remarkable project spearheaded by one of the foremost postcolonial IR scholars presently working. Professor Ling has assembled an impressive team for a first-of-its-kind book project in the field of International Relations: a coauthored book that is not an edited volume, but a multiperspectival monograph that tackles a complex situation in a way that can do it justice better than a traditional single-authored book or a multiauthored edited volume could. Here we have a series of voices arranged in a complementary way, operating with the same basic sensibility but exploring different threads, crossing over one another’s contributions in ways that produce a greater whole, and woven together by an innovative scholar whose distinctive voice underpins her seminal contributions to the field. The book is thus procedurally innovative at the same time as it breaks new methodological and empirical ground. Configurations as a series is about using innovative contemporary social theory to produce novel insights about specific empirical cases. Of course, some of the innovations in contemporary social theory might not be new formulations as much as they are the recovery of older formulations, and that is certainly the case here. The authors of this book look to the past for their principal inspiration, tapping the traditions of ancient geography and medicine for their primary analytical tools. These are in turn encompassed in the central model of the project: borders-as-capillaries, which is to say, borders not as discrete divisions between two preexisting things that impede commerce and intercourse between them, but—as Timothy Mitchell might well have said—bor ders as internal to a network of relations, borders as always surrounded and interpenetrated by a series of interactions and ex-

changes far more fundamental and far more quotidian than whatever macro-level aggregates get imposed on them later. Central to the theme of this book are the macro-le vel aggregates “China” and “India,” and central to the approach the authors take is the disentangling of what might otherwise seem like intractable conflicts by recalling the flows and interactions that precede, both analytically and historically, the present zone of conflict. Here are novel insights in droves, generated by a theoretical perspective quite at odds with what exists in most of the field. Ling and her collaborators have ambitions that are not merely explanatory but also transformative: they seek not merely to make sense of an existing conflict, but by diagnosing it in terms of blocked flows and interrupted balances, they seek to envision ways to resolve (or, better, to dis-sol ve) it. If the more typical IR explanatory social-scient ific question would be “why is this India-China conflict as virulent as it is?,” their question is instead “what does the present state of the conflict reveal about how to change things?” The transformative question encompasses the explanatory question and presses it onto novel terrain; call the results “explanation-plus.” The book thus sits squarely in the tradition of reflexive social science, in which the study of the world is inseparable from efforts to alter it; as such, the authors’ own self- locations become a vital part of the methodological grounding of the project, and help to underpin the validity of the results. This is truly critical social science at its best. In sum, this book is a remarkable addition to the Configurations series, and I am delighted to be able to share it with you.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank, first of all, Ashok Gurung, Director of the India China Institute (ICI). Not only did Ashok arrange all our trips to and residencies in three countries (India, China, United States), making sure we met with leading lights at each location, but he also did so with great charm and graciousness. To us, Ashok embodies the spirit of India-China. Our thanks, also, to the staff and institutions that supported us during our fellowship at ICI (2008–10):

• In India, we thank the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and its President, Pratap Bhanu Mehta; Shubhagato Dasgupta served as Coordinator. We also thank Calcutta University and its Registrar, Basab Chandhuri; Rajapopal Dhar Chakraborti, Professor of Economics and Demography, served as ICI’s Principal Investigator; and Sayoni Pandey, as Coordinator. • In China, we thank the Horizon Research Consultancy Group, where Feng Xi facilitated matters for us as Chief Information Officer, and Emma Zeng, Coordinator. At Yunnan University, we are indebted to the good offices of Xiao Xian, Vice-President; Zhao Bole, Professor of International Rela- tions and Principal Investigator; and Yang Hui, Coordinator. • In New York, we thank Grace Hou, ICI Office Manager; Anita Patel Deshmukh, ICI’s representative in Mumbai; and Jianying Zha, ICI’s representative in Beijing. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge all the help and support provided by the incredible ICI team at The New School: Jona- than Cogliano, Christopher Eberhardt, Brenna Foster, Shoshana Goldstein, Sid Gurung, Flora He, Irene Leung, Kefu Li, Michelle Raffanti, Shaun Ran- dol, Kashish Shrestha, Scott Rosefield, Jonathan Stiles, Margi Sullivan, Jose- phine Vu, Marisa Westheimer, Andrea Wise, and Yiwen Wu.

x Acknowledgments

A big note of thanks, also, to Melody Herr at the University of Michigan Press. Melody provided expert advice on how to proceed with our manuscript while maintaining a calm forbearance of our sometimes chaotic process. Christopher Dreyer helped with great efficiency and pleasantness in the production process. Adriana Abdenur would like to acknowledge, in particular, Brazil’s CNPq (“National Council of Technological and Scientific Development”) and its Bolsa de Produtividade program for supporting this research. L. H. M. Ling would like to thank her Research Assistant, Ebby Abramson, for his meticulousness, innovativeness, and ever-pr esent good cheer! In particular, we owe a debt of thanks to Deborah Parseghian for helping us find and design the maps in this book. Nimmi Kurian would like to thank Jayashree Vivekanandan for her care- ful reading of earlier drafts and critical insights. She also wishes to thank Manka Bajaj and Swetha Murali for their excellent research assistance.

Introduction

What’s Not There: India-China

L. H. M. Ling

“Who will win?”1 Today’s media like to blare an unrelenting race between India and China to see which one will reach the finishing line first to “modernity,” “development,” or “first-world status.” As two of the world’s fastest-growing economies2 and most populous societies,3 India and China each flag a promise and a threat. Their current attempts to feed, house, clothe, educate, and employ one-third of humanity impresses but many also worry about the strain they place on the globe’s already limited resources and environment (Bawa et al. 2010; Chellaney 2011; Wong 2013), with possibly destabilizing effects on world markets and other national economies (Rowley 2013). More pointedly, many in international relations (IR) fear India-China’s disruption of the “international community”—as articulated and led by the U.S.-West (Ikenberry and Slaughter 2006; Buzan 2010; Asia Policy 2012). Another challenge disturbs equally from within the region: the 1962 border war. Lasting no more than a month, this breach across the Himalayas has shadowed relations between New Delhi and Beijing for over half a century. Each state has modernized its military, accordingly. China now commands the world’s largest standing army while India has revitalized its presence in the Indian Ocean (Bain 1994; Tellis and Tanner 2012; Stockholm Interna- tional Peace Research Institute Yearbook 2013). The world, as does the region, holds its breath each time an “incident” or “skirmish” flares up between these two giants of Asia (Tenzin 2015). Mainstream analysts shrug: “What else is new?” Ever since the Treaty of

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Westphalia (1648), world politics has consisted of states fighting over borders to ensure sovereignty.4 Winner takes all in Westphalia’s Great Game. The only difference lies in who plays and how; both blood and treasure must spill and over generations, if necessary. Such is the “tragedy” of great power politics (Mearsheimer 2001)—unless, of course, a global hegemon leads the “international community” in managing interstate competition (Kindleberger 1973; Gilpin 1987; Keohane 2005), particularly with “newcomers” like India and China (Ikenberry and Slaughter 2006). No alternative exists since only the United States can do the job (Ikenberry 2008). We dispute this Self-aggrandizing, Westphalian drama. In focusing exclusively on territorially marked states, Westphalia World overlooks all other sources of power including nonstate, transnational social relations. Even with the concept of power, Westphalia World reduces this rich concept to a chess game only.5 Consequently, we lose sight of the full range of what human experience and insight could bring to bear in world politics, transforming it from a “tragedy” of power politics to a more sustainable, global way of life. We begin by presenting borders as “capillaries.” This organic, multidirectional, and life-giving analogy contests a core assumption in Westphalia World: that is, borders are fixed and singular, functioning only as an administrative-military, top-down, capital-directed instrument of state power (Scott 1998). Instead, borders-as-capillaries recognizes a simultaneous flow of power and resources from inside-out, bottom-up, and periphery- center, thereby contextualizing—and consequently decentering— Westphalia World. Borders-as-capillar ies does so, moreover, not with geography alone but also developmentally, culturally, and epistemically. Put differently, borders-as- capillaries has a dual impact: in reinterpreting the physical world “out there,” it also redefines the epistemic world “in here.” These elements pertain to each chapter in this book but with different emphases. Chapter 1, “Trans-Himala yas: From the Silk Road to World War II,” opens our volume with a comprehensive review of the region’s capillaric history and geography. Adriana Erthal Abdenur details how borders-as-capillaries have always given life to India-China through socioeconomic and cultural circulations. Contrary to their physical manifestation as prohibitive, im- movable mountains, the Himalayas have served, in actuality, as amniotic nurture for North, South, and Central Asia. Peoples, goods, memories, and ideas coursed through regional arteries like the Silk Road (first to the fifteenth centuries AD), for example.

Introduction 3

Chapter 2, “Borders as Opportunities: Changing Matrices in Northeast India and Southwest China,” looks at contemporary attempts to revive such capillaric relations. Mahendra P. Lama finds that the Himalayas still ache for ancient flows to resume and that central governments are trying to respond. He identifies how local communities, in collaboration with regional efforts like BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar), could circulate a better life for all involved. Lama also examines the reopening of ancient gateways like the Shipki-la, Lipulekh, and Nathu-la passes and how this will release development in these borderlands. Chapter 3, “Subregionalizing IR: Bringing the Borderlands Back In,” explores the prescriptive and epistemic implications of India-China. Nimmi Kurian suggests another lexicon to capture this relationship: that is, how to rethink territoriality. This subregional discourse has the potential to resitu- ate India-China’s international relations within a larger template of social, economic, and cultural flows that has little, if any relevance, to territory. In so doing, the borderlands become visible to mainstream policy and research while preserving their critical capacity to either subvert or facilitate the statist project. Chapter 4, “Dialogue across Borders: Dam Projects in Yunnan and Sik- kim,” engages precisely in a subregional dialogue. Payal Banerjee and Li Bo characterize it as a cross-bor der, cross-national “chat.” Comparing dam constructions on the Nu River in Yunnan Province, on one side, and the Teesta River in Sikkim, on the other, Banerjee and Li find a need for resonance between policy and people, project and development, local and national or transnational interests in order to achieve sustainable health in the region. Chapter 5, “Border Pathology: Ayurveda and Zhongyi as Strategic Thera- pies,” pushes our capillaric approach to its logical extent. L. H. M. Ling asks: What if we depart from the Westphalian notion of borders altogether? She turns to two medical traditions indigenous to India and China—ayurveda and zhongyi, respectively—and applies them to the 1962 border dispute. Their medical principles and practices offer an alternative method for reha- bilitating the body politic of India-China. In chapter 6, “Conclusion: What’s Ahead: India-China in the World,” the Borderlands Study Group (BSG) identifies some future areas of research that involve, in part, a counterintuitive strategy. In building new connections from ancient geographies and civilizations, we reclaim a lost heritage. For too long, we have allowed received notions of “modernity,” “science,” and “development” to cut us off from local sources of wisdom and learning,

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economies and ways of life. And we do so to our own detriment. Subjected to a world politics not of our own design, we are forced, at the same time, to sacrifice our bodies and minds, our lands and resources, to uphold it. One can reasonably declare: no more. It is time for a change, and this volume begins it. Let us introduce who we are and what we’re about.

The Borderlands Studies Group

We are the Borderlands Studies Group (BSG). This identification came about after two years (2008–10) of conferring, studying, and conducting fieldwork in India and China together under a generous fellowship from the India China Institute (ICI) at the New School. We visited India and China with weeklong residencies in both capitals, as well as sites outside. We met with leading voices of local communities, whether they represented minority communities, local academics and journalists, state governments, or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Five members from five institutions spanning three continents (and a subcontinent) comprised our group:6 Adriana Erthal Abdenur (Instituto Iga- rapé Rio de Janeiro), Nimmi Kurian (Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi), Mahendra P. Lama (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi),7 Li Bo (Friends of the Earth, Beijing),8 and L. H. M. Ling (the New School, New York). Payal Banerjee (Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts) graciously joined us later to augment chapter 3’s focus on dams and development in Yunnan, now extended to Sikkim. We hailed from all corners of the globe, geographically and sociocul- turally: “North” and “South,” “East” and “West.” Trained in different disciplines (ecology, geography, politics, sociology, economics), we brought to bear different areas of expertise (scholarship, activism, policy). None- theless, we all engaged with India-China’s borders and borderlands as our central site of investigation. And within that, we prioritized the people and everyday practices that made and, simultaneously, unmade these boundaries. A common purpose began to unfold. Westphalia’s assertion of borders as fixed and inviolable, we agreed, gave postcolonial states greater assurance of local determination, especially given previous experiences with colonialism. But here lies the catch: the very rigidity and nationalism involved in

Introduction 5

Westphalian border-making heightens a tendency for territorial wars, like that between India and China in 1962.9 To rethink borders, we realized, we needed to reassess the areas that surrounded them: that is, the borderlands. From this basis, we compiled the various papers we had written individually into a single manuscript to present as an alternative reading of India and China. We aimed to cross borders while honoring their borderlands. Our journey together, upon reflection, flickers of magic. In making visible what Westphalia has disappeared, we are transformed and transforming, just as India-China was, is, and always will be. Let us see how.

What’s Not There?

Any critical inquiry, J. Ann Tickner (2011) urges, must consider “what’s not there.” Only by investigating the silences and omissions committed by a hegemonic discourse could we understand why dialogue and participation shut down when and where they do, and at whose cost. As postcolonial and feminist scholars have shown, hegemony ensues when the Self perpetrates a narrative that harms or disadvantages the Other yet succeeds, at the same time, in extracting the latter’s compliance to do so (Ling and Pinheiro, forthcoming). Physical coercion may secure immediate compliance. But, as both Antonio Gramsci (Femia 1981) and Michel Foucault (1994) have reminded us, indoctrination of the mind “naturalizes” hegemony. Intellectual com- plicity accounts for the other side of hegemony. Westphalia World enables such analytical myopia. It stems from the two pillars of principle and practice that define IR, as a field of study, and world politics, as a domain of practice. These are (1) world politics centers on sovereign states with fixed borders and (2) trade and commerce serve as the means to ensure global peace.10 Put differently, Westphalia World slides in a double move: its claim of identical “units” (states) in world politics establishes a public, international system (Waltz 1979) while, at the same time, institutionalizing a series of private, structural asymmetries of Self > Other, West > Rest, hypermasculinity > hyperfemininity (Chowdhry and Nair 2002). A global norm arises, whereby one configuration of race, gender, and culture sets the standard for all Others. Representing the hypermasculine white order, the U.S.-West always knows best (Agathangelou and Ling 2004). We seek to disrupt this kind of hegemony. In examining “what’s not

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there” for India and China, we find ourselves not just proposing new policies or strategies but also reframing the discourse altogether. To begin, we return India-China to India and China. This epistemic commitment brings its own, countervailing double-mo ve: it highlights the complicities and complementarities that bind private, structural asymmetries despite the public conflicts and contradictions that may prevail in interstate relations. From this basis, we may find ways of transforming rivalry into common purpose by acknowledging that difference can exist without producing alienation. We submit, in short, what India-China means. We begin with history.

Missing I: Precolonial, Colonial, and Postcolonial History

Westphalia World rarely acknowledges anything beyond the Westphalian state. For India-China, such inattention incurs a significant loss: specifically, “twenty centuries of civilization interaction and vibrations” (Tan and Geng 2005), including almost a century of India-China solidarity from the colonial mid-1800s to the postcolonial 1960s. Westphalia World, in other words, does not see India-China.

Precolonial Interactions

Some scholars date the cultural exchange between India and China to the twelfth century BCE (Reddy 2002). The parallel philosophies of Samkhya and Daoism arose during this time, producing and reinforcing a common legacy in Buddhism as well as medical practices now known as ayurveda and zhongyi. Merchants and monks passed along these key aesthetic, medicinal, and other technical arts on the Silk Road, linking the Indian Ocean with the Gobi Desert and beyond (Whitfield 1999; Wood 2002; Devahuti 2002; T. Sen 2003, 2006a, 2006b; Tan and Geng 2005; Boulnois 2008; Liu 2010; Hansen 2012). The southern portion of this trade connected southwestern China to northeastern India for almost fifteen centuries; locals knew it as the “Tea Horse Road.”11 Sino-Indologist Tan Chung (2002) refers to India and China as “civilizational twins,” given their common origin in the Himalayas. Along with these structural interactions came a conversant way of being. It speaks to various types of sociality, ranging from awe-inspiring learning from others—

Introduction 7

I have beheld the Ghrirakuta Mountain, worshipped at the Bodhi tree: I have seen traces not seen before; heard sacred words not heard before; witnessed spiritual prodigies, exceeding all the wonders of Nature. (Xuanzang, seventh-century monk who traveled from China to India, and back again, after 17 years in search of Buddhist sutras to translate into Chinese) (Gordon 2008, 17). From them [the Ismailis], he [father] as well as my brother, heard the account of the soul and the intellect in the special manner in which they speak about it and know it. . . . There was also talk of philosophy, geometry, and Indian calculation. (Ibn Sina or Avicenna as he is known in Europe, eleventh- century philosopher and physician, on his family’s interest in education after moving to what is now northern Afghanistan) (Gordon 2008, 43).

• to friendship among strangers:

I felt so sad at heart on account of my loneliness that I could not restrain the tears that started and wept bitterly. But one of the pilgrims, realizing the cause of my distress, came up to me with a greeting of friendly welcome, and continued to comfort me with friendly talk. (Ibn Battuta, fourteenth-centur y Islamic jurist and famed traveler, fearing bandits upon leaving Morocco for Tunis, a safe haven at that time) (Gordon 2008, 99).

• to esteem for their level of technology and sophistication:

[P]aper was used for government documents and diplomas. Afterwards people used paper in sheets for government and scholarly writings, and the manufacture reached a considerable degree of excellence. (Ibn Khaldun, fifteenth- century historian, on Baghdad, Damascus, and other capitals of the Middle East, Persia, Central Asia, and Spain) (Gordon 2008, 42).

• and, of course, recognition of the level of wealth and abundance in the region:

The mountains produce ebony, ch’ieh-lan [a top grade of incense], Kuan yin bamboo, and laka-wood. The ebony is very glossy black, and decidedly supe- rior to the produce of other countries. The ch’ieh-lan incense is produced only on one large mountain in this country [Vietnam], and comes from no other place in the world; it is very expensive, being exchanged for [its weight

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in silver]. (Ma Huan, fifteenth-century translator for Admiral Zheng He [Cheng Ho], who led the Ming explorations of the Indian Ocean) (Gordon 2008, 122).

Certainly, ancient Asia was no paradise. Poverty and hunger, not to mention enslavement and other kinds of cruelty, abounded. Emperors and kings, khans and sheiks also warred in this part of the world as much as any would elsewhere. But what differentiated Asia before Westphalia was a lack of Oth- ering. A twelfth-century Jewish trader from Tunis, Abraham bin Yiju, serves as an excellent example. He relocated to Mangalore to partake in the lucrative spice trade. In a lifetime of letters back home, he tells of dealings with a variety of peoples from a variety of locations—“Gujar atis in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Armenians through Central Asia, Chinese residents in Ben- gal, Arabs in Guangzhou” (Gordon 2008, 104)—but at no time did Yiju fix an identity on others based on religion (e.g., “Christian” vs. “Jew”) or race (“Chinese” vs. “Arab”) or any other binary. Indeed, letters, diaries, memoirs, travelogues, and scholarly texts from the region collected over a millennium (500–1500 CE) reflect the same (Gordon 2008). Only with Europe’s entry into the spice trade did assumptions about race and religion appear. The Chi- nese must be white, a sixteenth-centur y trader from Portugal surmised, since they seem powerful. After all, he reasoned, all powerful people are white and Christian (Gordon 2008, 167).

Colonial and Postcolonial Solidarity

From the 19th to the mid-twentieth centuries, both India and China endured the scourge of Western colonialism and imperialism.12 For India, it came first from the British East India Company in 1757, which was ceded to Queen Victo- ria’s government a century later. For China, a coalition of Anglo-American- European powers in the nineteenth century, joined by imperial Japan in the twentieth, colonized various parts of Chinese territory as well as some crucial governmental functions like China’s Maritime Customs Service. But it was opium that forever entwined India with China.13 The British East India Company harvested and manufactured poppy in Calcutta to export to Canton. Starting in the late 1770s, England suffered tremendous balance of payment deficits with China (Hsu 2000). Only opium could reverse the drain—and to China’s great ruin. With a nation and military addicted to the drug, China became a shadow of its millennial self in one decade. Com-

Introduction 9

missioner Lin Zexu appealed passionately to the E mperor to stop the traffic and received a special dispensation to do so. But when he attempted to con- fiscate the opium, the British Parliament treated it as a declaration of war (Perdue 2011). England considered the act a violation of its sovereignty, even though Lin was attempting to preserve China’s. “Foreign mud,” Lin wrote to Queen Victoria in 1839, was destroying the Chinese nation (Liu 2004). “We have heard that in your own country opium is prohibited with the utmost strictness and severity,” Lin wrote (Liu 2004, 233). Yet Her Majesty allows the trade in the Middle Kingdom, he noted. Lin asked: “What has become of that conscience which heaven has implanted in the breasts of all men?” (Liu 2004, 233).14 The letter never reached Queen Victoria. Somehow, all six copies sent by Lin through various routes and car- riers disappeared along the way. Westphalian trade and commerce, now dubbed the international political economy, had entered Asia. By 1947 and 1949, respectively, India and China had declared independence. They faced tremendous challenges in nation-building domestically while dealing with a U.S.-Soviet rivalry internationally. Yet a sense of third- world solidarity bound India and China. In his usual millennial style, Mao Zedong declared: “India is China’s friend. It has been so a thousand years ago, and we believe it will be so a thousand, ten thousand years from now” (Mao, quoted in Chen 2008, 283). Deng Xiaoping added more pragmati- cally: “If India and China were to develop, then we can say that we have made a contribution to humanity” (Deng, quoted in Chen 2008, 283). India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, no less supported and val- ued China: “Here is a vast country, unified for the first time in history under a strong and stable government, consisting of men who know their minds” (Nehru, quoted in Paula Banerjee 2010, 48). Nehru and Zhou Enlai, China’s first prime minister, led an unprecedented alliance of formerly colonized nations at Bandung in 1955 to herald the Afro-Asian Non-Aligned Movement. Even today, analysts from both India and China routinely admit that improved relations would benefit the two states, the region, and the world (Huang 2005; Zhou 2006; Athwal 2008; Shalendra Sharma 2009; Dai 2012a and 2012b; Acharya 2008). In 2014, when President Xi Jinping visited Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the latter’s home state of Gujarat, the two leaders issued a joint statement to “buil[d] a closer developmental partnership” (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India 2014a). President Xi announced, for instance, that China would now support India’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional, interstate effort of

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economic and military collaboration. The two states also collaborate on a range of issues, from climate change15 to the establishment of a new Asian Development Bank.16 Bilateral trade is booming between India and China. In 2014, economic exchanges reached almost $50 billion (Economic Times, 2 March 2014) compared to approximately $2 billion in 2001–2 (Hindu, 21 May 2013). These indicators prompted the first annual bilateral “Strategic Economic Dialogue” in 2011 (Dai 2012a). Two-ways investments have also continued despite recent slowdowns in both economies. “[T]he Chinese Ministry of Commerce had approved or put on record $725 billion of direct investment from China in non-financial projects in India while Indian companies had actually invested $486 million in 800 non-financial projects in China by [2012]” (Lan 2013). The governments of India and China have even embarked on joint military exercises. These accord with new “political parameters and guiding principles” for the “border problem” set in 2005.17 In January 2012, the two governments institutionalized a “border mechanism” to manage any fric- tions that may arise across the Himalayas (R. Sharma 2012), updated inter- mittently by both governments (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India 2014b). The two governments also announced a Border Personnel Meeting point to open in August 2015 (Srinagar 2015). It will facilitate communication between border patrols across the two sides along the most sensitive areas: for example, the Chushul area of the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. Additionally, a “maritime dialogue,” including joint “naval training,” has started (Economic Times, 2 March 2012; Varma 2014). It will address open-sea piracy and other mutual problems. And yet the “border problem” persists. Just seven years after Bandung’s heady declaration, India and China came to blows.

The “Border Problem”

On 20 October 1962, Chinese and Indian forces exchanged fire in Ladakh and across the MacMahon Line in the Himalayas. Neither country nor its population knows exactly what happened or how, simply that it did. The war “ended” a month later just as mysteriously as it started, leaving both sides seething with distrust, hostility, ambiguity, and estrangement. This condition has lasted ever since.

Introduction 11

Severe domestic, not just international, consequences followed. Nehru’s government interned 50,000 Chinese Indians, primarily from Calcutta, at camps in the desert state of Rajasthan (Ellias 2005; Payal Banerjee 2007). The Chinese government, in turn, expelled all Indian residents, cutting off what had been significant ties with India. These ranged from relations with its poet laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, to M. N. Roy, an important liaison between international anticolonial forces and Mao during his Yenan days. The forced exile of scores of merchants, traders, travelers, and monks followed soon thereafter. Half a century later, a “trust deficit” still festers (Karackattu 2010; Gokhale 2013; Pratyush 2013). India accused China of incursions over the border, in fact, just two weeks before President Xi Jinping’s visit (Pandit 2014). Each side keeps a running tally of national grievances: the disputed borderlands of Arunachal Pradesh and Tawang; China’s support of Pakistan and presence in Kashmir; India’s “Look East” policy (which means, de facto, closer relations with the United States) combined with its unswerving support of the Dalai Lama and his exiled Tibetan community in Dharamsala; modernizing navies and militaries in the Indian Ocean; and, most recently, competition for crucial energy resources in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The “border problem” leaves all on tenterhooks. Neither country nor the region nor the world as a whole can afford to have war break out again between the globe’s two most populous states. Even warlike hostilities are deeply troublesome. A high-alert status especially affects the communities on both sides of the India-China border, causing constant anxieties and frustrations. Neighboring states also retreat into their own corners of national (in)security due to this “border problem.” They remember all too well historical hegemonies from India and China in their own backyards. Playing one giant off the other becomes a familiar, regional strategy (Escobedo 2009; Tellis, Tanner, and Keough 2011; Nambiar 2012; Business Standard, 12 July 2013; India Times, 6 July 2013). No one escapes the “border problem.”

Missing II: Epistemic Emancipation

“Are we not where we started?” a critical reader could ask. “Isn’t this what mainstream IR predicted? What’s the analytical purchase, then, of investigating ‘what’s not there’?” Revisibilizing the disappeared, we respond, enables epistemic emancipation. Not only do we “see” the subject anew but we

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also realize why and what could result. Only by reframing the problem itself can we hope to free ourselves of the thoughts and actions that produced the problem in the first place. Typically, Westphalia World would conclude that either these two countries can settle on a truce or they will blunder into another war. A truce most likely won’t last since war always remains a possibility in an anarchic, competitive interstate system. Hence, India and China would be better off by following U.S.-West leadership. Only it knows best and has the power (hegemony) to exact world order (Gilpin 1987). Any kind of change simply costs too much (Keohane 2005): it would involve reconstituting whole systems, institutions, norms, and practices. Why do so when an “open and rules- based system” already exists (Clinton 2011)? Especially at times of crisis and uncertainty, the status quo better suits all involved. So advises Westphalia World. When we dissect this “common sense,” we discover its frailty. Westphalia World depends not on open and fair rules, as publicized, but on convincing the subaltern that world order needs Westphalian hegemony to ensure global happiness, prosperity, and stability. And if the subaltern ends up supporting this pinnacle of superiority with vast exploitations of land, labor, and other resources from “below,” then it is a small price to pay for humanity. We disagree. Westphalia World may have “rules” but these are not open to the globe’s vast majority. Indeed, as demonstrated by the Opium War, Westphalia World originates from putting the latter at a distinct disadvan- tage. Why, then, should the globe’s majority subsidize its own oppression and exploitation? We refer, in particular, to Westphalia World’s global norm of race, gender, and culture.

Race, Gender, and Culture under Westphalia

How Europeans think about and act in the world, John M. Hobson shows, has molded Westphalia World since the eighteenth century (Hobson 2012). A series of linked asymmetries result, favoring the first term—Self, White, West—over the second—Ot her, Color, Rest. These reinforce the Eurocentric myth that only binaries pertain. Valorization of the Self necessarily delegiti- mates the Other because only the West counts as the “standard of civilization” (Gong 1984; Anghie 2005; Suzuki 2009). Yet all peoples, especially subalterns, have learned “interstitially” across languages, religions, and civilizations to survive over the millennia (Ling 2002, 2014a). To divide and

Introduction 13

rule, Westphalia World demands a public oath of Eurocentric purity even when private practices necessarily mix and match, often messily (Mc- Clintock 1995; Stoler 2002). Race and gender figure crucially in Westphalia’s epistemic conquest. As Ashis Nandy has shown, colonialism and imperialism needed to rationalize hypermasculinity: only real men, colonizers convinced themselves, can con- quer others (Nandy 1988). Edward Said documented how this “civilizing mission” aimed to reproduce little Wests from the geo-cultural womb of the Rest (Said 1978). Note how easily G.W.F. Hegel leapt from race to nation. In his Philosophy of History (1824), Hegel wrote that the Chinese are so incompe- tent they couldn’t even take advantage of their own inventions. For example, Hegel derided, they left an important discovery like fireworks to cele- brate happy occasions only, like weddings, births, and the lunar new year, rather than turn this technology into the world’s first weapon of mass destruction: cannons. The Jesuits had to do it, instead. Clearly, Hegel surmised, the latter showed up the former.18 On the “Hindoos,” Hegel judged in turn, they can only wander in “confused dreams,” rendering them completely ig- norant of what the West considers “intelligent [and] thoughtful.” For colonizers, sex laced the “civilizing mission.” Colonial outposts often served as prostitution hubs (Hyam 1990), just like military bases do today (Enloe 2001). We hear little, in turn, from the colonized. As usual, Westpha- lia World disappears this history as it ill fits claims of “reason” and “rational- ity.” In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon exposes the one-sidedness of colonial race relations. He cites as example why the love of a white woman means so much to a black man: “Now—and this is a form of recognition that Hegel had not envisaged—w ho but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man. I am a white man” (Fanon 1967, 45; emphasis added). Westphalia World engenders the postcolonial state similarly. By hinging national security on borders, Westphalia World normalizes a strategic logic: the more policing of borders, the more secure and, therefore, hypermasculine the state. For any state, however, but especially the recently ravaged postcolonial one, this proposition creates a dilemma. On the one hand, the postcolonial state welcomes the opportunity and ability—at last!—t o secure its borders, given centuries-long violations from Western (and later Japa- nese) colonialists and imperialists. On the other hand, the postcolonial state constantly fears being “unmanned.” (Imperial Japan sought to staunch this fear by colonizing its neighbors.) Yet tight control of borders always eludes,

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given migrations and patterns of trade due to traditional habits now aug- mented by contemporary needs. This dilemma produces another: internal security. Any crossings of physical or figurative borders, especially regarding ideas or identities, become tantamount to a threat to “national security.” Accordingly, the postcolonial state must militarize borders and borderlands of all types to flex its nationalist muscles. Domestic and international audiences alike must know that the state is, indeed, in control.19 Westphalia World thus violates epistemically. It deprives both the “West” and the “Rest” of acknowledging their common struggles with and successes in adapting to and learning from one another (Bernal 1987; Gil- roy 1993; Ling 2002; Hobson 2004). Even the “West,” Hayward R. Akker pointed out, has always experienced contestations and challenges, despite pretensions to internal coherence through capitalism, liberalism, or democracy, or a combination of these three (Alker 1995). Yet Westphalia World’s self-proclaimed access to Truth, History, and Power buries this record of coproduction. In conceiving of itself as a self-enc losed, autonomous system with states as the only actors, Westphalia World justifies Self- interested grabs for power and resources, no matter the damage to Others— and even, ultimately, the Self. “What the United States tastes today,” Osama bin Laden broadcast to the world after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, “is a very small thing compared to what we have tasted for tens of years.”20 Fifteen years after 9/11, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has not only taken over from bin Laden but also escalated his violence. Not coincidentally does Westphalia World echo for world politics what Thomas Hobbes con- jectured for life in the State of Nature. It is, he wrote, “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” We need another way to think and act, be and relate. This book offers one way to do so.

This Book

We present India-China as ancient archives of knowledge and practice, not just territorial containers for the Westphalian state. These archives include a history of hybrid problem-sol ving from the Silk Roads (there was more than one) to the neoliberal, globalizing present. Borders constitute fluid, dynamic, and multidirectional circuits of change rather than Westphalia

Introduction 15

World’s fixed geographical markers. We rename borders “capillaries” to convey their role as life-giving circulations for local communities, national governments, regional partners, and even transnational, transregional stakeholders. With borders-as-capillaries, trans-subjective security and prosperity become, at the same time, locally grounded. Reframing India-China in these terms also redefines race, gender, and culture in world politics. No longer restricted to skewed binaries whereby the first term dominates the second—and the second must accept such dominance to keep the peace—our version of India-China balances the relationship. Borders-as-capillaries makes no hierarchical distinctions between Self and Other, West and Rest, hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity; instead, our concept of borders-as-capillaries shows the mutual, intimate need of one side of the relationship for the other. World politics thus resembles the human body whereby the whole depends on the parts, just as the parts depend on one another as well as the whole. Accordingly, we pry open binaries to show the porous complementarities and complicities that circulate within despite the conflicts and contradictions.21 In this way, we shift from a lop- sided Westphalian interstate system to a more participatory, dynamic, and truly globalized world politics. Four analytical propositions emerge:

1. Ancient ↔ Contemporary. We link ancient ways of thinking and doing, being and relating with contemporary problem-framing and problem-solving. Such linkages involve not just geography or history but also philosophy and episte- mology. To not draw on the vast, ancient archives of knowledge in In- dia and China for problem-solving today would amount to a kind of epistemic self-violence. Not only would it reinforce the Westphalian myth that the West knows best but also that it knows all.

2. Culture ↔ State. We posit that culture underpins the state just as the state shapes culture. Paul Feyerabend’s notion of a “richness of being” applies here to India and China (Feyerabend 1999). The two civilizations exemplify entwined and multiple histories from precolonial to colonial to postcolonial times—all of which coexist simultaneously. In particular, we focus on the interactions among the peoples of India-China into making what India and China are today.

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3. Norms ↔ Policy. We do not divorce norms from policy or the policy-making process. We do not treat policy as something based on an “objective” rational- ity for supposedly nonracialized, nongenderized goals like “national self-interest.” Rather, we believe policy must reflect the context in which it operates to work effectively and generatively. By this, we mean policy must reflect and sustain the common good rather than simply benefit an elite minority. Only in this way, we believe, could India-China move from the current stagnancy of “intractable” problems to transforming the situation as a whole.

4. Development ↔ Power. Similarly, development does not simply follow an “impartial” process of resource allocation through the market or five-year plans. Instead, we see development as another site of negotiations among contending power coalitions. A generative problem-solving strategy, for example, could focus on the linkages between local and global interests, popular and governmental goals, and social and corporate concerns. In this way, all could share in the stakes of both the process and the outcome.

Four substantive proposals follow accordingly:

1. Borders-as-Capillaries. We cannot treat borders as physical markers only. They are also life- giving circulations of practice and process that course through the body politic. Signifying more than geography, economics, or politics, borders also encompass memory, identity, and social relations. Sus- tainable policy in the region must take these factors into account.

2. Generative Security. Security policy must take into account local understandings and the stakes involved, not just what national elites want. Reflecting and shaping both local and regional interdependencies, borders-as- capillaries affirm a larger community of positive stakeholders on both sides of a physical or political divide. These communities can act as pressure groups for cooperation and development, building local

Introduction 17

confidence for broader, more locally oriented debates and policy making.

3. Interconnected, Dynamic Borderlands. With borders-as-capillaries, recognition of borderlands as sites of interconnected dynamism naturally arises. These operate jointly at various levels of time (ancient, present, potential) and production (local, national, regional, transnational), innovating at the interstices of ideas and institutions, society and state, today and yesterday. These borderlands could facilitate an increasing convergence between the national economies of India and China despite their competition for resources.

4. Grassroots Democratization and Institutionalization. Borders-as-capillaries offers previously unanticipated opportunities to establish more inclusive, representative institutions and forms of governance. No longer subject to “radial” control from the national center to direct policy for “remote,” “marginalized” border areas in the name of national security (but really on behalf of elite interests), borderlands can take policy making back to where it should be: the locality.

Let us rethink borders and security. Doing so not only helps India-China but also the world. This book shows us how.

Notes

. 1 See, for example, the 19 August 2010 issue of the Economist. The caption on the cover declares: “Contest of the Century: China v India.” A tagline sums up the article: “As China and India rise in tandem, their relationship will shape world politics. Shame they do not get on better.” The cover image shows two mus- cular male arms locked in an intense wrestling match. On one arm a dragon is tattooed; on the other, a tiger. See, also, how the Economist frames Sino-Indian relations in light of Xi Jinping’s September 2014 visit to India: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/09/economist-explains-11. 2. Though still impressive, economic growth in both India and China has slowed recently. China’s economy has dropped from an average annual high of 10 percent for the first decade of the 2000s to 7 percent in 2015 (Economist, 11

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March 2015); nonetheless, China remains the world’s second largest economy (Krauss and Bradsher 2015). Similarly, India’s economic growth has slowed to 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2014, the lowest in a decade, but it still qualifies as Asia’s third largest economy (Bagri 2014). In the first quarter of 2015, India’s out- put reached 7.5 percent, outstripping China as the world’s fastest growing large economy (Wall Street Journal, 29 May 2015). 3. India and China house 37 percent of the world’s population, with India’s projected to grow further in the next thirty years (Palit 2010). The United Nations (UN) projects India’s population will reach parity with China’s by 2022 at 1.4 billion each, and outstrip China’s by 2030 with 1.5 billion in China and 1.7 billion in India by 2050 (Riley 2015). However, China has outpaced India in providing essential human services such as education, health, nutrition, and sustained employment (A. Sen 2013). 4. Members of the English school (Bull 1977) may claim that international norms and conventions like the rule of law or the Universal Declaration of Hu- man Rights mitigate such cutthroat competition in world politics. Nonetheless, they do not contest realism’s Hobbesian assumptions. In this sense, both liberal internationalists and realists fall under the overall rubric of Westphalia World. 5. Recent applications of “soft” or cultural power do not offer an alternative to “hard” or military power. The former serves the latter. 6. The views expressed in this volume reflect only those of our own and not necessarily our institutions’. 7. At the time of writing, Mahendra Lama was the founding vice-c hancellor of Sikkim University in Gangtok, Sikkim, from 2006 to 2013. 8. Li Bo was director of Friends of Nature when we started. He is now the organization’s secretary general. 9. Sarkees, Wayman, and Singer (2003) demonstrate that though interstate wars involving one or more “great powers” may have declined since the nineteenth century, extrastate wars (e.g., imperial conquests) and intrastate wars (e.g., civil wars) have made up the difference. Indeed, they find a “disquieting constancy in warfare that hint at patterns of interchangeability or substitutabil- ity among the types of war” (Sarkees, Wayman, and Singer 2003, 49). 10. The Treaty of Westphalia sought to end long-time war in Europe, such as the Thirty Years’ War that, in some parts of the continent, had lasted a century or more. 11. “Southern Silk Route: Historical Links and Contemporary Convergences, A Workshop,” organized by Lipi Ghosh, the Center for South & Southeast Asian Studies, University Calcutta, and cosponsored by ICI-K olkata, 2–4 August 2008. 12. The Japanese imperial government tried to add distinctive features such as the Greater East Asia Co-Pr osperity Sphere. But Japanese colonialism/imperialism reflected a second-order version of the Western model. Critics like Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910–77) lambasted Japanese colonialism as “the slave’s progress, its diligence is the slave’s diligence” (original emphases) (Takeuchi 2005, 66). 13. Amitav Ghosh’s novels (2008, 2011b) on the Opium Wars are written from

Introduction 19

the perspective of those victimized and exploited by the opium trade rather than that of state elites pretending to a “great game.” 14. This passage in Chinese is “Shiwen tianliang he zai?” Western missionaries in China at the time translated it as: “What has become of that conscience which heaven has implanted in the breasts of all men?” (quoted in L. Liu 2006, 233). I prefer to translate it more accurately as: “A query, if one may be so bold: where lies Heaven’s justice?” The original Chinese text does not indicate gender of any kind. 15. “India and China Sign Agreement on Cooperation on Addressing Climate Change,” 21 October 2009, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=53317; accessed on 26 July 2015. 16. Leaders at the Fifth BRICS Summit in Durban, South Africa, announced plans to establish a new development bank on 27 March 2013, http://www.brics5. co.za/; accessed on 26 July 2015. 17. See http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/6534/Agreemen t+between+the+Government+of+the+Republic+of+India+and+the+Governme nt+of+the+Peoples+Republic+of+China+on+the+Political+Parameters+and+Gu iding+Principles+for+the+Settlement+of+the+IndiaChina+Boundary+Quest ion; accessed on 26 July 2015. 18. Hegel’s critique of China now takes on a contemporary twist. “Why Can’t China Create Anything?” Time magazine asks on the cover of its 18 November 2013 issue, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2156847,00. html; accessed on 21 July 2015. In the same magazine for its 26 May 2015 issue, 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina claims the same: “Carly Fiorina Says the Chinese ‘Don’t Innovate’,” http://time.com/3897081/carly-fiorina-china-innovation/; accessed on 19 July 2015. 19. Every state links internal and external security, not just postcolonial ones. Note, for example, recent discussions on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border in the U.S. Congress. Nonetheless, I mention the postcolonial state to highlight its particular dilemmas under Eurocentric IR/Westphalia World. 20. Seehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1585636.stm; accessed on 8 February 2015. 21. Seeing the complementarities within contradictions reflects Samkhya/ Daoist dialectics, not Hegelian dialectics. For an explication of the commonality between Hindu (Samkhya) and Daoist philosophies, see Sarkar (1918). For the differences between Daoist/Buddhist/Hindu and Hegelian dialectics, see Cheng (2006) and Brincat and Ling (2014).

Chapter 1 Trans-Himalayas

From the Silk Road to World War II

Adriana Erthal Abdenur

In 2006, the governments of India and China reopened the main overland link between the two countries: the Nathu-la Pass. This stretch of border between China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region and the Indian state of Sikkim has been in dispute since 1962. The pass lies along a narrow track winding down steep slopes, hairpin turns, and deep mountain gorges almost 4,500 meters above sea level, and it was used for centuries by muleteers who carried people and goods across this path as an offshoot of the ancient Silk Road. On 6 July, delegations of high-ranking officials, including the chief minister of Sikkim, the chairperson of the Tibet Autonomous Region, and China’s am- bassador to India watched as soldiers removed the barbed wire and concrete barriers that had been in place for 44 years. For more than four decades, the only people allowed to step over the border had been postmen who exchanged mailbags at the old trading post building. The day of the reopening, officers and soldiers, government officials, and journalists from both sides mingled across the border, posing together for photographs and sharing hot tea in army tents. The reopening of the Nathu-la Pass as a trade route was instantly her- alded in both countries as a new era in relations between India and China—a “thawing” of sorts, signaling a “new camaraderie” (Khanna 2007; R. Zheng 2006). Whether or not the reopening of Nathu-la represented the beginning of a new stage in Sino-Indian relations, this cross-border exchange is by no means an anomaly in relations between societies on either side of Nathu-la. The pass has served as an important nexus of exchange—not just trade but

Trans-Himalayas 21

also the movement of people, their ideas, and cultural practices—between populations otherwise isolated from one another by the formidable physical barriers posed by the Himalayan range. This role dates back at least to the Silk Road, when muleteers began crossing the pass carrying products like tea, horses, and pelts. The importance of the pass varied with time as political configurations changed and as transportation and communication technologies evolved, but the historical and archaeological records show that exchanges across Nathu-la have had a deep and long-las ting impact on borderland areas on both sides. This chapter focuses on one aspect of this impact: the vital role that Na- thu-la has played in fostering interaction between what is now China and India. This chapter analyzes three waves of interconnectivity: the late Tea Horse Road (from antiquity until the twentieth century), World War II and its aftermath, and the reestablishment of overland trade following the reopening of Nathu-la in 2006. Trade along the Tea Horse Road established the capillaric flows between peoples, ideas, and goods across the Himalayas; it wasn’t until the colonial era in the nineteenth century, followed by a world war in the twentieth, that the region became territorialized. And today Na- thu-la must cope with the legacies of both. In keeping with this book’s theoretical thrust, the analysis supports the idea that the current military-security approach to borderland governance peripheralizes these regions. Narrow reliance on the security paradigm leads scholars and policymakers alike to gloss over the actual and potential connectivities crisscrossing borderland regions. In terms of policy, an excessive focus on military-strategic concerns that treats borderlands as remote regions or buffer zones tends to choke key circuits of connectivity and capillarity. Let us begin at the beginning: the Himalayas.

Interactions across the India-China Border

Tan Chung (2002) proposes a “Himalayocentric” view of the region. “The civilizations of India and China,” he writes (2002, 127), “are the twins emerging from [a Himalayan] cradle.” For this reason, they share one of the longest borders in the world (Sidhu and Yuan 2001). Disputed areas comprise some 125,000 square kilometers, mostly in the eastern section of the border (R. Zheng 2006). While the areas adjacent to the disputed border are frequently

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referred to as peripheral, remote, and marginal (Harris 2009), especially by those in Beijing and New Delhi, the Himalayan region has played a central role in the origins and development of both Indian and Chinese civilizations. Archaeological and anthropological evidence, including legend du- plications in southwestern China and northeastern India, Buddhist art and scriptures and records, and other areas of overlap, point to intense cultural interaction across the Himalayan range. This suggests that, though much attention is paid to the arrival of Buddhism in China from India circa 67 AD, this cross-border interaction predated the event by millennia. Despite this long history of exchanges, the tensions, disputes, and conflicts over the modern India-China border have reinforced two assumptions about Chinese and Indian isolationism. The first is that trade in ancient In- dia and China was internal; the second, that this trade was limited to luxury goods. Deng (1997) argues against both of these views, citing passages in the Han Shu (the History of the Han Dynasty) that mention high gross returns from trade between China and the Roman Empire (Daqin), Iran (Anxi), and India (Tianzhu). He finds similarly high rates of return for trade during the Southern Song and Ming dynasties, suggesting that the trans-Himalayan trade was highly profitable. Nonetheless, the view that India and China developed in an isolated fashion remains widespread. This “isolation assumption” tends to focus on the geographic barriers posed by the Himalayan range, and it leads to the conclusion that cross-Himala yan trade was a minor exception. Liu Xinru notes that contemporary understanding of ancient ties between India and China might be distorted by a focus on Western-Eastern relations, to the detriment of North-South ties:

The biases of excavators . . . limit the reliability of archaeological info. When historians were interested primarily in communication between the occiden- tal and oriental worlds, archaeologists working in the east tried to identify objects from the west. But the Silk Road was not simply one route from east to west. Its different extensions passed through many civilizations. Its exten- sion to South Asia not only affected Roman trade but also connected India to China. (X. Liu 1988, 21)

For at least two thousand years, the areas around what is now the China- India border were part of the vast and complex network of trade routes and

Trans-Himalayas 23

nodes commonly known as the Silk Road. Despite the colloquial use of the term, there was no single “Silk Road,” but rather a complex network of trade routes, both overland and maritime, that connected different parts of Asia, Central Asia, and Europe. At its peak (roughly from the seventh to the tenth centuries), this transcontinental network of cities, towns, oases, and desert outposts stretched over four thousand miles, linking Asia to the Mediterra- nean. Caravans of guides, traders, pilgrims, soldiers, and other adventurers journeyed by camel, horse, and mule for months or even years across mountainous areas and vast deserts. The routes linked together oases, towns, and cities that functioned as nodes of exchange and supply depots. Along the East-West axis of the Silk Road, the largest markets were located in the great cities that were the hubs of these routes—Xi’An, Turfan, Samarkand, Bagh- dad, and other cosmopolitan hubs of commercial and cultural exchange. Trade influenced not just the configuration of economic circuits around the Himalayas but also the cultural, social, and political dynamics on either side of the range.1 From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, Chinese sea routes around South Asia were expanded. The enterprising Song and Yuan dynasties used a combination of government and private trade (T. Sen 2006a and b). In the fifteenth century Zheng He, an admiral from Yunnan during the Ming dynasty, commanded fleets that stopped at several Indian ports as well as Africa for both trade and diplomatic reasons (Deng 1997). During this period, neither China nor India was a monolithic entity. At different points, the two regions were territorially subdivided among nomadic and sedentary groups, and under constantly changing power configurations. Borders, insofar as they were thought of as such, shifted constantly and were not systematically demarcated. States that traded among each other were not necessarily con- tiguous, but rather linked through intermediaries, buffer zones, areas of in- determinate control, and disputed lands (Abu Lughod 1991). Thus this network of overland and maritime trade routes was far from static; the importance of particular branches waxed and waned. The connection between trade and the rise and growth of cities along the north-south Silk Road is well documented. As far back as the second century BCE, trade routes linked Chang’An (now Xi’An) and Patliputra in India. Else- where, China and India were linked by different trade routes, some to the west and others along the eastern part of the Himalayas. Coins found at monasteries have permitted scholars to trace the shifting trade routes and to

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track the rise and decline of hubs along the north-south axis of the Silk Road. One key route extended from Kashgar southwestward across the Pamir plateau to Bolor, in Kashmir. But the Silk Road’s north-sout h links were far more complex than these two terminuses. Liu (1988) describes the Sino-Indian trade along Silk Road from the first to the sixth centuries in terms of intense exchanges between two highly sophisticated societies, fueling urbanization in both regions. When trade was interrupted, cities in northern India declined (Thakur cited in X. Liu 1988). Visiting Patliputra in the early fifth century, the monk Fa- hsien (Faxian) described it as the most prosperous city in northern India. By the time Xuanzang visited the area in the seventh century, trade had slowed down, and the city had entered a long period of decline. In the centuries that followed, borderland towns also shrank as trade routes were disrupted (Abu Lughod 1991). Despite the overall network’s decline, the flow of goods and ideas did not end abruptly. The branch of the Silk Road that extended from Taxila (in modern-day Pakistan) to northern India remained more or less operational until Europeans arrived in the region. In the east, muleteers continued to carry goods across the route that ran from Tibet to Sikkim along the Nathu-la Pass until the formation of the modern states of India and China. Even where trade did peter out, the legacy of the Tea Horse Road remained, from Buddhist temples to the terracotta warhorses later excavated in Xi’An (formerly Chang’An). Given this broad historical record of linkages and mutual influence, rather than presupposing isolation, the analysis below treats interconnectivity between India and China as highly variable. It was a capillary in every sense of the word.

T hree Waves of Capillaric Connectivity across Nathu-la

The Late Tea Horse Road

There were two main eastern overland routes between India to China. One route ran from Yunnan and Tibet southwards through what is now Myan- mar to reach India. The other ran from Lhasa through Nathu-la. For hundreds of years, caravans of muleteers carried a variety of products through

Trans-Himalayas 25

the winding paths that led to Nathu-la from either side of the pass, crossing rope bridges slung across deep ravines. There is evidence that this trade dates back to at least the Tang dynasty (618–917). Exchanges intensified under the Song (960–1 279), which procured warhorses from Tibet and other areas of Southwest China, in addition to tea from Yunnan and Sichuan. In the following centuries, these exchanges came to include a variety of products— among them coral, pearls, glass vessels and beads, incense, and perfume from India as well as sugar, salt, and silk from several parts of China. These products were valuable because they were relatively scarce on the other side of Nathu-la. Communities of traders who could withstand the difficult crossing thus benefited from the physical divide of India and China through the price differentials. This exchange became a key concern to the Chinese imperial center in part due to the growing demand for horses from the Qinghai plateau. At the peak of the Tea Horse Road, roughly from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, the Song Court established a Horse and Tea office to oversee trade in these products, as well as several town markets dedicated to those goods (Smith 1991). During the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), when the army coveted the sturdy horses from the Qinghai plateau and surrounding areas, over 20,000 warhorses were exchanged for tea along this route. And because the trade in horses was so deeply intertwined with that of tea, silk, and goods from India, this had a deep impact beyond the borderlands immediate to Nathu-la. About half of the tea produced each year in Sichuan—30 ,000,000 jin, equivalent to 15,000,000 kilograms—ended up in Tibet (Jia 1993). Some of this tea was then carried across Nathu-la into what are now Sikkim and West Bengal, and then beyond them, to Calcutta and Delhi. Colonial rule deeply affected ties between India and China (Thampi 2005). In India, the British used the old maritime links between India and China to take opium—especiall y the highly prized Bengal-g rown variety— into China, while annexing Sikkim, Nepal, and Bhutan. In 1873, the deputy commissioner of Darjeeling issued a report on the strategic importance of the Himalayan passes between Sikkim and Tibet, and the rulers of the two territories officially opened a trade post at Nathu-la in 1894. In 1904, the British commissioner to Tibet, Major Francis Younghusband, led an expe- ditionary force across Nathu-la to capture Lhasa in an effort to prevent Rus- sia’s imperial army from interfering in Tibet. The British reached Lhasa, effectively taking control of Tibet. The expedition had a near immediate impact on trade across the pass. British soldiers set up British trade agents

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at Gyantse and Yatung in central Tibet and in Gartok, in western Tibet. That November, Britain and China officially approved trade between Tibet and Sikkim (McKay 1997, 1992). The British presence also affected the types of products carried across the pass. After the tea plantations in West Bengal and Sikkim began to flourish, Chinese tea decreased in value and lost its historic place in Nathu-la. In the eighteenth century, after Qing rulers restricted the importation of horses, the horse trade across the pass declined, but other products continued to be exchanged. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the route from Lhasa to India went through Yadong, the last town in China before Sikkim, across the Nathu-la Pass, and past a number of Sikkimese villages on to Gangtok, which until the 1970s was the seat of the Chogyal rulers. From Gangtok the products were transported to the hill stations of Kalimpong and Darjeeling in present-day West Bengal. From there, traders dispersed the goods to other parts of India. Chinese products ended up as far as Calcutta and Delhi. From the Indian side, the Tea Horse route had a number of offshoots. But the most frequently traveled path led from Nathu-la to Lhasa, with trading posts in key cities—including Zhongdian, Dali, and Lijiang—all the way to Sichuan. These urban or quasi-urban nodes thus contributed to a more or less continuous overland exchange of goods, people, ideas, and religious practices over at least two millennia, though the relative importance of certain cities and towns varied with time as configurations of trade and other modes of exchange changed. In effect, the Tea Horse route “plugged” the primary structural hole of the region—that is, the physical barrier of the Himalayas—with muleteers that ferried goods across Nathu-la to the market cities of the borderlands and beyond. At a time when maritime trade was at best a complement to overland exchanges, this key link between the urban networks of India and China was a vital conduit, injecting new people, goods, and ideas into places that otherwise had little contact. On either side of the pass, the function and character of cities changed as the movement of people and goods waxed and waned across the Himalayan divide. The historical account from the Tea Horse Road shows that, as in the broader case of the Silk Road, urban and quasi-ur ban nodes were vital to the capillaric prosperity generated through trade, and vice versa. On the Chi- nese side, towns like Lijiang and Dali developed sophisticated markets where goods from India were traded. On the Indian side, Chinese goods likewise

Trans-Himalayas 27

reached far beyond the hill stations of Sikkim and West Bengal. Thus trade along Nathu-la fueled urban growth near and far from the pass. The record also shows that variation in flows across the pass shaped the character of those towns and cities: spatially, culturally, and politically. Cit- ies that were able to connect (by providing trade outposts and markets) distant regions benefited from the accumulation of wealth as well as the diversity of the populations that inhabited them, permanently and temporarily, as a result of interconnected states. The traders—w ho included Tibetan aris- tocrats, Lamas, commoners, Sikkimese kasiz, Newar traders, Ladakhachi caravaners, and Marwari merchants—carried not just goods but beliefs and ideas across the pass. To borrow the language of social capital, their villages, markets, and towns represented overlapping nodes in otherwise disparate urban networks, thus benefitting their inhabitants by spanning the structural hole.

Nathu-la during World War II

By the early 1900s, trade through the Nathu-la Pass accounted for 80 percent of total cross-border trade between China and India (China Report 2007). But the role of the pass changed once again—this time, rather dramati- cally—in the mid-tw entieth century. Two factors affected linkages across Nathu-la: political shifts, including world war and the establishment of independent states, and technological improvements in transportation and communications that allowed some trade and investment to bypass overland routes, and hence the towns and cities along them. Before World War II, a number of trading companies from Yunnan had been active in India, relying on two routes: one stretching from Fuhai through Rangoon to Calcutta, and the other from Kunming via Lhasa through Nathu-la, following the ancient Tea Horse Road. After the war broke out, the Japanese army occupied coastal China and Burma, blocking the Burma Road, which had provided an overland route from Kunming to Cal- cutta. Since linking northern India to southern China became crucial to supply Allied efforts in China, the Tea Horse Road became once again a vital link across the Himalayas (Goullart 1955). Over 1,200 trading firms along the road relied on some 25,000 mules and horses to transport goods and supplies across Nathu-la Pass. There were two other Himalayan passes—the 5,200-meter high Shipki-La Pass, in Himachal Pradesh, and the 5,334-me ter

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high Lipulekh—but crossing these was so hazardous that Nathu-la remained the most valuable pass. To counter the Japanese presence in Asia, including China and Burma, the Allies needed to supply the Chinese and American forces in China with supplies and personnel. The Japanese cut off the Burma Road, and Nathu-la posed dangers as well as limitations on the amount and speed of personnel and supply transport. To overcome this, the Allies worked to set up an air route directly over the Himalayas, from Assam and Calcutta to Kunming. China Airways collaborated with the American Volunteer Group, nick- named the Flying Tigers, to set up the air route. From June 1942 to September 1945, the two groups carried tens of thousands of officers and soldiers as well as hundreds of tons of supplies over the range. The hazards were also considerable: the airplanes had to fly over a section of the Himalayas that included the Santsung Range, up to 4,600 meters high, which gave the route its nick- name: “the Hump.” Pilots struggled to get their planes, laden with heavy car- goes of personnel, fuel, and supplies, through severe turbulence and winds, thunderstorms, and icing, all while under threat of enemy fire. Due to poor visibility, blind flying was often necessary, and the planes frequently lacked adequate instruments; on the ground, the monsoon flooded landing strips. The route successfully supplied Chinese and American forces with urgently needed personnel and materials, but the link came at a high human and material cost; 1,500 pilots were lost, and 514 planes crashed (Tunner 1964; U.S. Air Force 1944). There were also continued efforts to establish and maintain alternative land routes. In 1942, U.S. General Joe Stillwell—the commander of the Allied forces in China, India, and Burma—ordered the building of a road from Ledo, in Assam, India, through the Pangsau Pass on the India-Burma border and on to Kunming. The Stillwell road—flanked by two fuel pipes—was in- tended to overtake the Hump as the main supply route for Allied forces in southwestern China. Despite optimistic predictions about its capacity, the tonnage and personnel transported across the Stillwell Road never surpassed that of the Hump (Xu 2001). These routes—overland and airborne—did more than allow the transport of military personnel and supplies: they also facilitated trade between Yunnan and northern India and spurred some infrastructure development, with significant impact on the economies of cities on either side. Trade boosted demand for consumption goods. A variety of products flowed from Yunnan to Calcutta via Rangoon, including medicines, tung oil, and walnut

Trans-Himalayas 29

oil. Kunming, an Allied military command center for Chinese, American, British, and French forces fighting in Southeast Asia, became a key center of communication. Towns along the overland route, including Chuxiong and Xiagan, expanded in size and population. The Flying Tigers built an air force base in Baoshan, which had prospered for centuries through Tea Horse Road. Jun (1992) notes that there was vast new construction in these borderland cities, including not just new homes but also banks, post offices, shops, res- taurants, and inns. Trade, whether or not related to the war, changed the character of urban nodes on both sides of the Himalayas. After the war, the transportation of military supplies all but ended— although, starting in 1950, the U.S. Army sent caravans of muleteers over the pass and into Tibet with supposed “surplus” ordnance from the war in what might have been part of covert operations in the region (Ali 1999). The Indian government began restricting transportation and travel due to insurgencies; the Stillwell Road fell into disrepair, and the Hump air route was shut down. Nathu-la once again became the main overland route between India and China. Trade continued across the pass: in the late ’40s, over 700 traders used around 1,000 mules to trade wool, pelts, yak tails, clothes, tobacco, soap, small manufactured goods such as watches, and even secondhand cars. In the 1950s, a variety of dignitaries used the pass to cross from Tibet to Sikkim, and vice versa. In 1956, the Dalai Lama crossed Nathu-la to attend the 2,500th birthday of Gautama Buddha in India; Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and Sikkimese officials crossed Nathu-la to visit Bhutan in 1958. For a while after India and China became independent states (in 1947 and 1949, respectively), bilateral relations were characterized by goodwill. Indians marched to support Chinese independence, and the government quickly recognized the founding of the People’s Republic of China. But militarization of the borderlands had also started as national security concerns were redefined. After Sikkim agreed to become a special protectorate of India, the national government began to patrol the region, including the areas around Nathu-la. Once China took over Tibet in 1950, tensions mounted; China sent troops to Tibet. The introduction of troops on either side of Na- thu-la affected cross-bor der trade almost immediately; movement across the pass all but disappeared. A few dozen traders still carried goods from Gang- tok to Lhasa, bringing goods such as silk and wool, gems, precious metals, and medicinal plants back to India. However, the volume of trade was minimal compared to World War II and its aftermath.

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In 1959, the Chinese suppressed an uprising in Tibet, forcing the Dalai Lama to take up asylum in India. He had fled with tens of thousands of fol- lowers to Dharamsala, exacerbating tensions with China. In the aftermath, Tibetan refugees used the passes between Tibet and Sikkim to cross into In- dia. A series of violent incidents along the border ensued. After the 1962 border war, Nathu-la was sealed shut. Soldiers blocked the narrow road connecting Gangtok to Yadong with concrete barriers and barbed wire. Nathu-la was sealed shut for the next forty-four years. The closing of the pass had an immediate impact on the towns and cities on either side of the border. India dismantled its trade agencies in Yadong, Gartok, and Gyantse; China withdrew its trade representatives from Kalim- pong and Calcutta (Maxwell 1970). Cross-bor der trade came to a sudden halt, and markets emptied out. Many Indian traders in Tibet were given twenty-four hours to leave the country and had to abandon their shops (Har- ris 2009). Their Chinese counterparts were also ordered to return home. Al- though some of the flow of goods between Tibet and India was diverted through Kodari, in Nepal, the volume of trade was a fraction of what it had been through Nathu-la. The economies of Sikkim and Tibet, and the cities that had prospered through the cross-border trade, had to “turn inwards” and find ways to develop by investing in other sectors, including tourism. Governance of those regions became dominated by military-strategic considerations, and for decades infrastructure development on either side became closely intertwined with the establishment and provision of military bases and outposts. World War II and the establishment of the modern Indian and Chinese nation-states radically altered the geopolitics of the region. And the role of Nathu-la changed repeatedly during this period—at first serving as the primary nexus between India and China, next as mere adjunct (to war efforts), and finally as a military outpost along a fortified disputed border. This last phase temporarily disrupted all of the gateway roles—t he capillaric flows of economic, cultural, and social bridging—that Nathu-la had played for centuries as a nexus between Chinese and Indian networks of exchange. Geo- politics superimposed onto the physical barriers of the Himalayan range a structural hole shaped by border conflict and national security concerns, cutting off traders, communities, and cities from one another. The total interruption of these movements—the termination of direct overlaps between the Indian and Chinese urban networks—deepl y affected both the function and character of cities and towns of the borderlands on either side of the

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pass, and it transformed the borderlands from zones of connectivity into true “no man’s lands” where even local shepherds feared to tread.

Reopening of the Nathu-la Pass

In the late 1960s and 1970s there were further border skirmishes between India and China. In 1975, following a referendum, Sikkim became the twenty-second state in the Indian Union, to the displeasure of the Chinese government. However, starting in the 1970s, the governments of China and India also launched a series of initiatives (agreements, summits, and official visits) to address the border dispute. The two countries exchanged ambassa- dors in 1976, and three years later Indian foreign minister Atal Bihari Va- jpayee visited Beijing. In the 1990s, India and China signed two key agreements, which included provisions for force reductions and restrictions on military activities along the border area (Sidhu and Yuan 2001). There were also bilateral trade agreements and symbolic gestures toward cross-bor der trade in the 1990s, with two minor passes (Shipki-La and Lipulekh) reopening for trade. However, in part due to the difficulties of crossing these passes, movement and trade across them has been minimal; in 2007, only nineteen Indian traders applied for passes to trade through the Shipki-La. In 2003, India recognized Tibet as an autonomous region of China, and in exchange China recognized Sikkim as part of the Indian Union. In 2004, the Indian defense minister visited China in preparation for the formal opening of Nathu-la. There was optimism on both sides of the border. A report published by a government-sponsor ed study group in 2005 predicted that the benefits of a reopened Nathu-la would extend far beyond Sikkim to include adjoining states like West Bengal and the Indian Northeast. The report envisioned Sikkim as a “dry port” and Siliguri, in West Bengal and a major gateway to Sikkim, as a major trading center. The report estimated that providing Chinese firms long-sought access to ports in the Bay of Bengal (Calcutta and Hadia) would cut the costs of maritime transportation, greatly increasing the volume of trade between India and China (Nathu-la Trade Study Group 2005). In preparation for the reopening of the pass, India set up the Sherathang trade post in Changgu, some five kilometers from the border, with parking lots, post facilities, and custom offices all supplied with power and telecom- munications, and the Chinese implemented similar infrastructure at a trade market at Renqinggang, some sixteen kilometers from the pass. After a brief

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delay due to construction, Nathu-la was formally reopened on July 6, 2006. In addition to dignitaries from both sides, delegations of one hundred In- dian and one hundred Tibetan traders attended the ceremony. Soldiers removed the barbed wire fence and replaced it with a ten-meter wide stone- walled passageway. For now movement across Nathu-la is restricted to local merchants from Sikkim and from the Tibet Autonomous Region. Yadong’s Commerce Bureau reported that, in 2006, Renqinggang market hosted 574 traders from India, and that Changgu received 1,217 traders (Xinhua 2007). Trade is permitted four days a week—Monday through Thursday—starting in March of each year and ending at the end of November, when snowfall makes the Nathu-la impassable. There are also restrictions on the types of goods that can be traded. As of 2009, Indian traders can import fifteen types of goods from China, including silk, yak and sheep pelts, and horses, and they are allowed to export twenty-nine types of goods, including tea, rice, vegetables, and herbs. Partly because of these restrictions, in 2008 the pace of trade was described as “sluggish.” There is hesitation on the part of national governments to expand the flow, given ongoing security concerns, but locals and associations on either side continue to push for expansion of trade. The Sik- kim Chamber of Commerce has called on both governments to expand the list of items to include local beer, medicines, jam, processed food, flowers, and horticultural products. Like the products already being traded across Nathu-la, these goods are produced in areas near the border—mostly Sikkim, West Bengal, Tibet, and Yunnan. In addition to some hesitation on the part of authorities, one key reason behind the slow trade through Nathu-la is that current transportation and communication allows trade and investment between the two countries to easily bypass the cities and towns of the borderlands. Before the reopening of Nathu-la, over 90 percent of Sino-Indian trade took place through sea routes. For many products, it is still easier to ship through maritime trade than to undertake the difficult, slow, and expensive crossing of Nathu-la, where inadequate infrastructure and trade restrictions limit the amount of goods carried over the border. Nevertheless, efforts to enhance exchanges between the two countries have had a deep impact on cross-border exchanges. China-India trade had stagnated around U.S. $250 million in the 1990s, but it reached nearly U.S. $13 billion by 2008 (Khanna 2007). While the absolute numbers are still

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small, this represents a dramatic increase.2 And although the trade volume across Nathu-la is still only a fraction of the total trade between India and China, these exchanges have already begun to affect the borderland areas— economically, socially, and culturally—on both sides. So far, the impact of the overland trade has been relatively localized. But history shows that the economic and cultural impact of trade across the pass can quickly percolate through networks of traders and towns that traverse these regions and beyond. With improved infrastructure, for instance, the reopened pass can provide Chinese firms with access to the port of Calcutta, where they can reach a much wider market. Likewise, Indian goods can find fast-growing markets on the other side of Nathu-la, especially given China’s policy of developing its western regions. The range of products allowed for trade was expanded in 2012, when five new items were added to India’s import list (and tagged for customs exemption). By mid-2012 there was talk of opening Jelep-La for trade. Like Nathu-la, Jelep-La was once a precarious pony track, but now a 575 kilometers motorable road from Kalimpong to Lhasa via the Chumbi Valley and Yadong in Tibet would make it a natural follow- up to the Nathu-la experiment. Both China and India have been working to improve the roads and related infrastructure in the region. The Sikkimese government has been push- ing for bus service linking Gangtok and Lhasa. The Chinese government, which completed a railway from Xining in Qinghai to Lhasa in 2005 and opened it for service in 2006, has announced that it plans to extend the railway from Lhasa to Yadong. In 2006, a report by China’s Ministry of Trans- portation issued plans to build two highway stretches in the area—one from Kangmar to Yadong and the other from Yadong to Nathu-la. Both countries also plan to open up the pass for tourism, which will allow not just sightseers but also pilgrims to cross overland to visit important monasteries and natural landmarks like Mount Kailash and Manasovar Lake in Tibet. Thus, the reopening of the pass has promise not only for trade between the two countries but also for further cultural exchange.3 By permitting the movement of people and things overland across the border, the pass may play a key role in spanning the structural divide imposed on the region for four decades through political conflict and technological change. China’s drive to mod- ernize its west and south coincides with India’s domestic drive to boost the external orientation of its Northeast, including Sikkim (Kurian 2007); the reopening of Nathu-la is perfectly positioned—ph ysically and function- ally—to strengthen the overlap.

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In addition, Nathu-la may also help to span a broader, regional structural hole: South Asia is the world’s least integrated region, from a trade perspective, and it is estimated that trade among countries in the region accounted for less than 2 percent of their combined GDP—compared to 20 percent for East Asia as a whole (World Bank 2007). Overland trade might play an important role in spanning this gap, for instance through a revival of the Burma Road, which would facilitate linkages between overland routes and maritime routes. Efforts for regional integration already under way include the Kun- ming Initiative, an attempt to build on the old Stillwell Road and enhance economic ties between China, India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation, launched in November 2000, aims to enhance cooperation in tourism, culture, and education and to develop an east-w est corridor and a trans-Asian highway linking India, South- east Asia, and eventually China (Uberoi 2008). Nongovernment groups have also pushed for greater regional integration. The Confederation of Indian Industry, for example, has pushed for expansion of cross-border trade, investment, and tourism, including along Nathu-la. The success of such efforts will depend in great part on the quality of bilateral relations between India and China. Within India, different groups of “experts” (with different institutional ties) hold divergent views of the border conflict with China, from proponents of the “China threat” policy whose views are aligned with a realist understanding of borders, to moder- ates with pragmatist orientations, to globalists who push for resolution of the border dispute (R. Zheng 2006). There are likewise hard-line, liberal, and moderate views among their Chinese counterparts. The ability of groups that view the border as at least somewhat permeable to shape bilateral relations and to engage in constructive dialogue with their counterparts across the border will be a major determinant of the revived gateway function of Nathu-la. However, political obstacles remain. Although China officially gave up its claim over Sikkim in 2003, it still disputes a large part of Arunachal Pradesh. Lingering disagreement over border demarcation elsewhere, as well as tensions over Chinese relations with Pakistan, threaten to slow down or even reverse the loosening of restrictions along Nathu-la. The closing of Nathu-la choked the historical circuits of people, goods, and ideas that had flowed across the Himalayas for centuries. Exchange networks that had overlapped and indeed depended on one another for centuries were cut off, altering once again both the function and the character of markets, towns, and villages that existed largely due to the exchanges along

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the Tea Horse Road. The reopening of the border allowed for a very limited interaction to be reestablished, and the burgeoning overland movement across Nathu-la has begun to change the borderlands in India and China in novel ways.

C onclusion

This chapter has examined the changing configuration of capillaric flows in the region near what is now the India-China border. The Nathu-la Pass has functioned at different historical points as a source of circulation across the Himalayan divide by enabling the movement of people, goods, and ideas. The analysis of three periods shows how different modes of connectivity (and the interruption of these circulations) affect the broader borderlands. Past and present waves of interaction show both discontinuity and continuity. As technology changes and geopolitics alters the governance of borderlands, routes of exchange have changed, as have many of the products being traded. Maritime routes overtook overland roads, and more recently air transportation began to substitute for some of the old route functions. Nevertheless, what is remarkable about the links between China and In- dia is the extent of continuity. As Khanna (2007, 64) notes, seen in light of the trade on the Tea Horse Road, “the closing of the Sino-Indian border—not the border’s reopening—is the anomaly.” The waves of connectivity examined in this chapter did not take place independently of one another—each built on and modified routes and practices established during previous eras, while incorporating new technologies, products, and geopolitical forces. Moreover, each wave of connectivity left its imprint on the borderlands. Some of these legacies continued to flourish and develop along parallel trajectories even during eras of scant exchange. The Nathu-la has permitted traders to span the Himalayas, and the closing of the border and the sealing of the pass in 1962 emptied markets, uprooted merchants, delinked traders, cleaved religious communities, and caused social groups on both sides of the pass to “turn inwards,” relying on internal markets rather than cross-bor der exchanges. Nathu-la was di- vested of its historic gateway/bridge functions as nodes of interconnectivity were transformed into “remote outposts” by geographically distant centers of power. The reopening of the pass thus represents an opportunity to once more

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span the structural divide at different scales. At the level of individuals and communities, the pass will allow traders whose families were engaged in trade across the Nathu-la Pass to reestablish links to counterparts across the border. At the level of towns and cities, resumed trade will allow urban markets on either side to reemerge and reconnect, which will also reinforce urban-rural links. At the level of the nation-s tate, the reopening of the pass renders the border more porous, helping to thaw relations between the two countries; at the level of the region, the reopening may contribute to spanning the structural holes across the nation-states even beyond India and China to include neighbors such as Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Burma. This analysis suggests that frameworks of power and of scholarship that portray borderlands as “remote,” “marginal,” and “peripheral” must be questioned from an analytical as well as policy perspective. The notion of borderlands as peripheral emerges out of a spatially centralized conception of power; if administrative, military, and other forms of power are concentrated in a particular place, then geographic distance from that particular place will, on the whole, tend to enhance the (perceived) peripherality of “distant” regions. Yet the historical record, both ancient and more recent, shows that the Indian and Chinese borderlands have depended to a large extent on the movement of people, goods, and ideas across the pass, and that the legacies of these movements extend deep into both their territories. Historically, these borderlands might have been geographically distant from imperial and national centers of power, but they were by no means “peripheral.” Rather, the peripherality of these borderlands has been imagined, reified, and imposed by the centers of power. Insofar as borders, in the sense of territorial demarcations instituted by modern nation-states, outline the very edges of national territory, cities in borderland regions will be viewed as remote outposts from the perspective of the center. This view of borderland cities as peripheral tends to ignore the historic function that many such cities have served, either as past centers of power or as gateways between territorial units. The function of cities that occupy the interstitial spaces between territorial units will change according to the relations between those units. But the varying modes of connectivity between urban nodes in and near borderlands tend to get overlooked and minimized when governments approach borderlands through a narrowly military-security lens—a lens that has become preva- lent in many parts of the contemporary world, including the territories disputed by China and India.

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Recognizing the impact that this revived overland trade has on the borderland regions of both China and India—and even deeper within their geographies—suppor ts the critique of the narrowly military-strategic framework that has characterized governance of these areas on both side of the borders. Analysis of these three eras of interconnectivity through Nathu-la reflects the potential and actual linkages that get ignored, underplayed, and muffled by the orthodox discourse on border military security and the policies and practices associated with it. The introduction to this volume makes a distinction between radial governance (conventional governance that ra- diates outward from a fixed center to its peripheries) and capillary governance, which flows and circulates in all directions. Understanding the role that urban networks have played in the borderland regions should help toward a shift from radial to capillary governance of those areas. Enhancing this grounded understanding of urban and quasi-urban networks in borderlands will require analysis on how the flow of people, goods, and ideas across Nathu-la and other passes along the border impact towns, cities, and their relationship to the countryside, which after all is the point of origin of most of the products being exchanged. Studying the trajectories of specific commodities might shed light on how particular industries are changing (and to what extent) as well as the effect these are having on cities, the countryside, and the relationship between them. Hopefully, when Na- thu-la is finally opened up for human transit beyond local traders, researchers will be able to trace their paths and their impact on societies on either side of Nathu-la, near and far from the border. With its gateway functions thus fully restored and perhaps even enhanced, the name of the pass— “Listening Ears”—may resume its historic significance.

Notes

. 1 Traveling between key cities, towns, and oases of the Silk Road in the tenth century, the Arab geographer Muhammad ibn Hawqal (Kramers 1967, 57) noted, “You cannot see any town or stopping place, or even desert, without a convenient inn or stage-house for the accommodation of travelers.” Those far-flung posts fea- tured infrastructure and institutions devoted specifically to accommodating travelers—the caravanserai where traders stopped to rest, the marketplaces where they could negotiate their wares and commodities, the middlemen and local entrepreneurs who supplied them with the travel paraphernalia required by the difficult voyages along those routes. 2. Investment across the two countries has also grown, but this too is no longer restricted to borderland regions. Indian companies like the automobile firm

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Mahindra has acquired an assembly plant in southeastern China (Nanchang), and the Chinese software company Huawei has set up a branch in southern India (Bangalore). 3. The speed of development has raised some alarms, even locally; the 2008 Sikkim Development report expresses concern about the environmental impact of reopening the pass, given the fragility of the ecosystem and the imperiled resources of the area (India Planning Commission 2008). There is also concern with historic preservation of the old stops along the Tea Horse Road. A few of the ancient towns along the route—among them, Lijiang and Dali in Yunnan—are undergoing dramatic transformation due to rapid tourism development, raising alarms about sustainable development amid breakneck transformation.

Chapter 2 Borders as Opportunities

Changing Matrices in Northeast India and Southwest China

Mahendra P. Lama

“Borders-as-capillaries” can help redefine the geopolitics of India and China—if they are smart and farsighted. Indeed, the two major states in the region now increasingly recognize that taking advantage of historic ties in the Himalayan borderlands makes sense not just economically and politically but also logically. This becomes much more beneficial and effective if jointly extended to neighboring states like Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Ban- gladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. This chapter begins where the previous one ended. It focuses on developments on the ground and in the moment across the “Himalayan cradle” of the Northeast region of India and Southwest China. These include recent moves toward regional economic integration and political cooperation through initiatives like BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar); the South Asia Growth Quadrangle, also known as Bangladesh-Bhut an-India- Nepal (BBIN) (Lama 1999 & 2002); the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi- Sectoral Techno-Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) (CSIRD & ICC 2009); the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; and the reopening of local gateways like Shipki-la and Lipulekh in the western Himalayas along with Nathu-la in the Eastern Himalayas. These developments have taken a long time to emerge and are fast demonstrating an unfurling new regionalism. In the context of the emerging discourse on the shift from “borders” to “borderlands” and the “new regionalism,” the renegotiation and reopening

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of these traditional trade routes have acquired a huge transborder dimension, linking institutions, policies for cooperation, connectivity, and socio- commercial exchanges. China’s announcement of a “Silk Road Economic Belt” and a “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” adds a new direction and fresh impetus to initiatives in the borderlands. It could take India and China to even deeper collaboration.

Bordering India-China

Britain’s colonial legacy had made the Himalayan border a Laxman rekha (“mythological line which must not be crossed”). It turned the states of India and China increasingly into lakir ka fakir (“a hermit who believes this exact line should not be transcended under any circumstances”). And with the 1962 border war, this legacy hardened into a protracted impasse to Sino- Indian relations. Physical borders became the core of disputes and national discourses on both sides, determining national interest pronouncements and foreign policy actions. Along with bilateral disputes over territories, for example, China had refused to recognize Sikkim’s inclusion as a constituent state of India until 2005 (Coelho 1971; Basnet 1974; Chung 1987; G. Chaturvedi 1991; Lama 1994; J. Singh 1996; Mansingh 1998; Deshpande and Acharya 2001; Frankel and Harding 2004a and b). (Sikkim remained a protectorate of India from 1947 until it became a full-fledg ed province of India in 1975). In the process, two countervailing situations emerged. First, the border areas became deeply securitized: as a source of national insecurity, they required protection from the military only. And second, the borderlands un- derwent systematic dismantling when they had previously sustained the region’s cultural ecology, political economy, biodiversity, and environmental flows. Securitizing and dismantling the borderlands also sidelined the centuries-old human security practices and cross-bor der exchange aspects of this region. Today, orthodox military thinking dominates the region—and this is reflected in its strategic, social, political, and economic infrastructure and more so in the nature of highly restricted cross border exchanges. When an Indian reaches Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, Bangladesh’s Grameen phone says, “Welcome to Bangladesh.” When she arrives at Pashupati Nagar in Dar- jeeling in eastern India, Nepal Cell says, “Welcome to Nepal.” And when she

Borders as Opportunities 41

reaches the upper ridges of Nathu-la in Sikkim, Chinese mobile towers signal their presence. There are no Indian mobile connections in the area’s tough ridges and rugged terrains. An exclusively “no-no” policy prevails. And yet, as chapter 1 demonstrates, the region has always maintained a history of “yes-yes” interactions. However, this situation is changing and unfolding rather fast. Border- land communities in the Himalayas hope to enjoy new opportunities given their old connections. The region is experiencing a fresh new enthusiasm spurred by cooperation and integration.

New Opportunities, Old Connections

Recent developments focus specifically on the border areas. As mentioned in chapter 1, the reopening of the once-versatile Nathu-la trade route in 2006 between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) after forty-four years has enabled a critical source of reconnection in the borderlands. Today the route is being used for the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage or yatra. The government of India has also decided to pave a two-lane highway up to Na- thu-la and a railway line to Rangpoo in Darjeeling District–Sikkim border. Against these drastic improvements in connectivity, it would be particularly naïve to expect traditional items like yak tails and goat skins to dominate the trade exchange through the Nathu-la route. Even Tibet is no longer a market for religious/cultural items alone. The region is becoming a growing market that absorbs cement to cars to Yartsa Gunbu (a parasitic fungus known as “winter worm, summer grass” in Tibetan expression) to tulips. The composition of products could in fact be more varied than that which exists at the bilateral national level. This route could cater to very specific needs and demands in a much quicker and cheaper manner in a region that stretches from India’s Arunachal Pradesh to West Bengal and Bihar and China’s Yun- nan to Tibet and Sichuan Provinces. It will be a mere historical negation and impractical assumption to think of this trade as limited interactions among the communities that inhabit the borders. This was the assumption in the border trade between Nepal and Ti- bet at Khasa and India and Myanmar at Moreh (Manipur). However, the actual volume, composition, and direction of trade on these routes have far surpassed the local communities and their products. Restrictions have only encouraged the illegal and surreptitious aspects of the commerce. However,

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given the level of infrastructure on the Indian side and the wretched condition of the road, particularly the 50.6 kilometer stretch between Gangtok and Nathu-la, it would be highly unrealistic to expect brisk trade instantly. Officially, India maintains foreign policy as an exclusive domain of the federal government. Even for commercial activities like foreign trade and investment, the Union government only “consults” relevant constituent states. Despite its “Look East” (now “Act East” policy), the Union government is still trying to cope with the notion of “local engagements” where translocal actors make the key decisions. However, the center can no longer ignore or discount such initiatives. This is pertinent as seventeen out of twenty-nine states in India have international borders spread over 15,106 kilometers and the Northeast region has over 98 percent of its borders with neighboring countries and roughly 2 percent with the rest of India. The colonial legacy of treating federal units just as transit points and entrepôt to reach out to the neighbors and inherently designing the federal capital as the center of wisdom, canon of knowledge, centrifugal force of authority, and bestowing in it all decision making may no longer be effective. These federal units have the potential of turning into core stakeholders and the people of this eastern fringe in India as pivotal actors. In turn, they could act later as a potent pressure point or interest group to influence national policy. This has already been noticed in the assertive position taken by provinces like Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, and Tamil Nadu in considering and promoting their local interests when accepting In- dia’s foreign policy decisions. For instance, the state of West Bengal and other states in the Northeast region of India played a critical role in the negotiations and signing of Indo-Bangladesh Water Sharing Treaty in Decem- ber 1996 and in the historic ratification of the demarcation of the land boundary between India and Bangladesh and related matters in 1974 and the 2011 Protocol on the same issue signed by the prime ministers of India and Bangladesh on 6 June 2015. In view of these newer vistas of assertions at the state level and to accommodate the changing aspirations of constituent states, the present National Democratic Alliance government has vigor- ously launched “cooperative federalism” initiatives. Its impact on redefining the role of India’s constituent states in their dealings with neighboring countries is worth examining. Indeed, regional political parties today have more influence on the structure and composition of the national polity than ever before (Lama 2013).

Borders as Opportunities 43

For the past several years, the government of Sikkim, for example, has urged the government of India to support this kind of development. Reopening trade along the Nathu-la would retrieve the region’s lost heritage and bring substantial economic and social benefits to the people on both sides of the border. The business community and other civil society groups have also been raising these issues off and on. Since the 1990s, the government of In- dia has allowed limited access to tourists to visit Changu Lake and the Na- thu-la Pass in the eastern district of Sikkim. Though heavily regulated by the army, this development signifies improving relations between India and China.

China’s Role

Since the late 1980s and more openly in the 1990s, China has sought better relations with its South and Southeast Asian neighbours. In September 2013, China announced a “Silk Road Economic Belt” and a “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” initiative.1 With India’s membership in the China-ini tiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a multilateral development bank, this collaboration may unfurl borderland cooperation of an unprecedented variety. China and Pakistan have also been planning an economic corridor for the past several decades (Fazil 2015). The China-P akistan Economic Corridor received a major boost in April 2015 when Chinese president Xi Jinping pledged $46 billion to build a network of roads, railways, and energy projects that will link Pakistan’s deepwater Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea with Chi- na’s far-western Xinjiang region. This region will benefit further when Nepal and China agree to bring railway lines and highways to Khasa and Rasuwaga- dhi in the Nepalese highlands as well as to Shigatse and Chumbi Valley nearby Sikkim in India and Bhutan (Telegraph, 9 April 2015). China also seeks membership in the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC).2 A regional grouping of eight South Asian countries established in 1985, it offers an opportunity for deeper engagements with other regional initiatives like the Kunming Initiative, now formally called BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar), which started in 1999, and its BCIM Economic Corridor project.3 A huge jump in India-China trade volume has resulted, rising from a mere $40 million in trade in 1990 to over $65 billion in 2013–1 4 (Economic Survey 2014–2015, Minstry of Finance, Government of India, New Delhi).

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These figures indicate how these two countries have quietly decided on pragmatic exchanges and adopted an attitude of “business over boundary” (Krishnan 2014), despite keeping alive serious disputes over border issues. These policies emanated partly from China’s realization that its reforms and growth, key to halting and preventing domestic political turmoil, needed a larger playing field. Deng Xiaoping remained doubly convinced that economic modernization needed a favorable international environment. For this, a sharp improvement and revitalization of relations with zhoubian guojia (countries in the immediate periphery) emerged with the mulin zhengce (policy of congenial relations with neighboring countries), thereby introducing and ensuring another dimension to national security and foreign policy (Lama 2005a and b). For a country with “diverse international regions,” it meant a “good neighbourly policy to cope with the changes that challenged China’s understanding of its relations with neighbouring countries” (Yahuda 2002, 106). Deng Xiaoping and his reform- oriented colleagues proclaimed China’s defensive interests only: that is, it sought to remain “a regional power without a regional policy” (Yahuda 2002, 106). The Chinese Communist Party started consciously to design a clear regional policy based on wending zhoubian (stabilizing the periphery), accelerated by the ending of the Cold War in the 1990s. The Chinese Com- munist Party’s guiding strategy aimed to assert China’s centrality as both an economic powerhouse and a flag bearer of the emerging “new Asianism” with its “prospect of a Pacific century.” Negotiations regarding a number of disputes with neighboring countries increasingly reflected the mulin zhengce. Integrating China’s own peripheral provinces, mainly those in the western region, into national development served as another impetus for opening border trade. Not only economic but also politico-mili tary benefits would accrue from this new thinking.4 The country’s western region covers two-thirds of its territory, with a population that comprises nearly 23 percent of the national total, in nine provinces and autonomous regions. This region has plenty of land and natural resources including oil and gas. Now that eastern China’s 14,000 kilometer long coastline has brought good for- tune and dividend in the past two decades, the western region with its 3,500 kilomter land frontier lines offer another golden opportunity for development (Chow 2002; Fu 2001). Nonetheless, national trade by administrative divisions indicates Chi- na’s uneven development. In the mid-1990s, Guangdong alone accounted for about 40 percent of China’s total exports and imports. China’s seven

Borders as Opportunities 45

coastal divisions—Guangdong, along with Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Ji- angsu, Shandong, and Liaoning—handled 75 percent of national exports, more than 90 percent of all processing exports, and 67 percent of imports (International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO 1995). In the late 1990s, Tibet and Gansu not only had the lowest per capita rural consumption but also just half of the national average per capita income (Chow 2002). Similarly, from a total foreign direct investment of $229 billion made in China during 1987–1997, the inland provinces (western region) received only about 12 percent in contrast to 71 percent in the coastal provinces and 16 percent in major cities like Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai (Yang 2002). Put differently, a transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented one has helped to reduce poverty; however, it has also led to an imbalance in regional development (Riskin 1993; Cook, Yao, and Zhuang 2000). The politically volatile nature of the western region has compelled the Chinese Communist Party to adopt legislative and financial measures to promote cross-border trade.5 “Their variations in terms of geography, competitive advantage, economic priority, and demand from the centre, political ideology and cultural policy as determinants” have played a crucial role in unfurling provincial identities (Hendrischke 1999, 6–7). Premier Zhu Rongji’s report for the Tenth Five-y ear Plan identified “eight important tasks” for the 2001–5 period (Zhu 2001). These included developing the western region for regionally balanced economic development and deepening reform for the open-door policy. “After the eastern provinces become rich,” Zhu declared, “they should help promote western development” (Zhu, quoted in Chow 2002, 171). Indeed, the Chinese government had already started a “develop-the-west” campaign in 2000. Under this initiative, a number of preferential policies including capital input, better investment climate, internal and external opening up, development of science and education, and human resources were offered to the western region (Chow 2002). The Chinese government also liberalized labor policies to accelerate development in the area (Xinhua, 14 July 2000).

Decentralized Development

Decentralized policy making in China helps to foster border trade. Provincial governments no longer restrict their activities to administration only and have increasingly adopted economic functions. This comes from a willingness on the part of China’s central government to reduce its role in the process.

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Provincial governments can now take up economic activities and issue their own policies. Even the inland provinces are moving in this direction (Hen- drischke 1999). In 1995, for example, the state transferred one of its key powers, grain (food-security) policy, to the provinces (Keng 1999). Granting such authority to the provinces has affected China politically and economically. A circular of the State Council on the relevant issues of border trade stated that “These policies and measures to effectively promote the economic development of China’s border areas, to strengthen national unity, prosperity, stability in border areas, and consolidate and develop the good neighborly relations with the surrounding countries, has played a positive role.” Border trade now constitutes a significant portion of China’s total foreign trade (Rizvi 1999).6 The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co- operation (MOFTEC) and China’s Customs General Administration have supported this policy with a comprehensive policy document, “Provisions of Administration on Border Trade of Small Amount and Foreign Economic and Technical Cooperation of Border Regions” (1996). It guides China’s border trade policies and agreements with trading partners, resulting in major policy instruments that penetrate local, subregional, and regional economies. Examples include the Lipulekh Pass trade route in the central Himala- yas. It connects Dharchula-Pi thoragarh, Uttaranchal, in India with Taklakot in Purang County of the TAR in China, and the Shipki-la Pass that connects Namgya-Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, with Jiuba in the TAR’s Zada County. Difficult and rugged terrains surround both of these trade routes; consequently, trade is highly seasonal and rather limited in volume and content. As for the Nathu-la Pass, a significant section of India’s policy echelon considers its reopening as mere symbolism. However, Chinese policymakers regard the reopening as a vital economic entry into the 1.4 billion people market of South Asia. In terms of feasibility, Nathu-la is the shortest route (roughly 590 kilometers between Gangtok in Sikkim and Lhasa in Tibet) and connects the ever-burgeoning middle classes of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal, on the one hand, and various provinces in China including Sich- uan, Yunnan, and the TAR, on the other. China has invested in transregional transportation as well. It completed the 1,142 kilometer railway from Golmud City in Qinghai Province to Lhasa in 2006, and the 253 kilometer railway line linking Lhasa with Xigaze (Shiga- tse), the second-larg est city in Tibet, in 2014; proposed construction of a railway line connecting Lhasa with Nyingchi in the east near to Arunachal Pradesh in India and Xigaze with Gyirong County close to Nepal and Yatung

Borders as Opportunities 47

County near Sikkim and Bhutan; and refurbished overland access through the Sichuan-Tibet Highway. The latter could transform the entire physical accessibility between mainland China and Tibet, nearby provinces, and neighboring countries. Such overland transportation would also drastically reduce the tortuous sea routes to these markets. The Chinese government aims to use this trade to trigger major development in what appears to be a backward and frigid hinterland. In turn, this policy may help the Chinese government deal with pockets of discontentment, especially in Tibet. For In- dia’s private sector, these new transportation infrastructures could open access to business centers besides Lhasa, particularly in the western, eastern, and southeast coastal regions of China. These developments build on historical ties that also highlight burgeoning relations between China and Southeast Asia.

Chinese Trade in Southeast Asia

Historically, Singapore has served as a base for China to tap the markets of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even as far off as Australia. Hong Kong, too, provides a launching pad to export Chinese goods to European and American markets. Toward these ends, the Chinese government has actively sent delegations of trade, development, and investment experts, from both the state and private sectors, to Southeast Asia. On the other hand, delegations from Yunnan Province, mostly visit the eastern states of India, including West Bengal and some of the eight northeastern states. Their single-point agenda is to establish trade and investment linkages with the region’s vast untapped markets as well as to harness its natural resources. These delegates often signal to their Indian hosts that they have a “free hand” to negotiate with local partners. Indeed, Yunnan Prov- ince contributes over one-fourth of China’s total border trade (Hu 2014). The “Kunming Initiative,” started in 1999, has now evolved into the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Regional Cooperation Forum. It intends to further China’s decentralization strategy of 1979. The party Cen- tral Committee at that time allowed the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian to adopt “special policies and flexible measures” through Special Economic Zones, particularly with regard to investment and trade. Yunnan Province now extends its Special Economic Zones to other subregional partnerships such as the Greater Mekong Sub-region. China Daily reports that “Kunming now has air links to Yangon and Mandalay in Myanmar, Dhaka in Bangla-

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desh, and Kolkata in India” (Hu 2014). Delegations from Kunming have also actively promoted reopening the Stilwell Road (see chapter 1). Built by Chi- nese and U.S. armed forces during World War II, this double-tr ack, all- weather road connects Assam (61 kilometers fall under this province of In- dia) in India with Kunming (632 kilometers) in China via Myanmar (1,033 kilometers). It has remained unused for the past five decades. China has similar trade and investments arrangements based on subregionalism with other regional partners. These include the South China Growth Triangle, comprising Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Fujian Prov- inces; the Greater Mekong Basin Growth Triangle, consisting of Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos PDR, southern China, Vietnam, and Indonesia; and the Golden Quadrangle, covering Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and southern China. The northern Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Xinjiang, and In- ner Mongolia have spearheaded border trade with Russia and other Central Asian republics.

Bridging Ancient Passes

These new initiatives build on ancient ties in the borderlands between India and China (Rizvi 1999). Whereas the previous chapter recounted the exchange of goods, people, and ideas in the Himalaya region, this chapter focuses on the specific history played by borderland gateways: particularly, the passes of Shipki-la, Lipulekh, and Nathu-la.

Shipki-la7

Before India’s independence, Tibetan traders used to frequent Rampur, a small princely kingdom, located about four hours from Shimla now in Him- achal Pradesh, for trading purposes. Trade used to peak during the Lavi mela (fair).8 The Hindustan-Tibet Road, developed during 1854–58, was later abandoned due to the opening of the road to Tibet via the Chumbi Valley via Nathu-la in Sikkim and Jelep-la in Darjeeling District. The Hindustan-Tibet Road was only a bridle path until 1950. National Highway No. 22 now connects Shimla from Kalka and extends to Kinnaur. It enters Kinnaur near Chaura (162.40 kilometers from Shimla) and runs up to Wangtu for approximately 34 kilometers, from which the highway ascends and passes a village called Kalpa. The distance from Tapri–Sh yaso Khad is about 93 kilometers.

Borders as Opportunities 49

The highway connects most of the villages on the right bank of the Sutlej at an average elevation of 2,740 meters. From Shyaso Khad, the highway passes through Hango and Shipki-la before entering Tibet. In 1992, India and China agreed to reopen the Shipki-la Pass in Himachal Pradesh. The Shipki-la Pass trade route caters to people living on both sides of the border, with markets located in Namgya village9 in Kinnaur District10 in India and Jiuba in Zada County in the TAR, China. Local people, commodities, and vehicles enter and exit through Shipki-la. Identified as a “trade mart,” Chhupan is two kilometers away from Shipki-la (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India 1993) and covers an area of approximately 14 bighas (8,000–10,000 square meters).11 Except for certain prohibited items, all goods can be traded through this route. The Central Customs Act does not charge a duty on daily items of trade. Unless otherwise notified, these items will continue to remain free of tariffs or taxes. This trade is open to all Indian citizens on fully convertible currencies as well as a barter system. Trade volume, though, has trended er- ratically and does not reflect national patterns. Rampur and Shimla in Him- achal Pradesh mostly export utensils and silverware for religious use to the Chinese side. Traditional religious items from Kalimpong in Darjeeling district still seem in high demand.12 Paradoxically, Chinese traders have responded tepidly to this trade despite its active promotion by both governments. Mostly “one-sided trade” has come from Indian traders. No official account of visits by Tibetan traders has been recorded on Indian soil from any of the trading points. In an interview with a local trader conducted in April 2004, he quipped that “the Chi- nese do not encourage Tibetan traders coming into India for fear of them divulging their military secrets.” However, many traders do mention that there is no proper structure and mechanism in place on the Chinese side to issue trade passes. In such a situation, the Tibetan traders are apprehensive about harassment from Indian authorities, particularly of those who visit the Indian side without proper documents. For the first time, this route recorded a trade volume worth Rs. 14 million ($220,000) from September through November 2012.13

Lipulekh

The India China Agreement of 1993 resulted in another border arrangement (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India 1993). It opened the Lip-

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ulekh Pass, at 5,200 meters in Uttaranchal. The Lipulekh Pass trade route connects Dharchula in the Pithoragrah district of Uttaranchal with Taklakot in Purang County of the TAR. The governments of India and China14 agreed to establish border trade at Pulan in the TAR and Gunji in the Pithoragarh District in the state of Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand) of India. Border trade would take place during mutually agreed times each year. Lipulekh Pass (Qiang La) would facilitate visits by persons engaged in border trade and their exchange of commodities. Trade along Lipulekh has steadily increased from Rs. 0.4 million ($6,000) in 1992–93 to Rupees Rs. 6.9 million ($100,000) three years later. But this trade was not and still isn’t easy to manage. Shortly after Lipulekh reopened in July 1992, for instance, a Kalimpong-based businessman, D. C. Khati, went to the TAR to study the export-im port potential of the two countries. He recounted that in order to reach Taklakot from Dharachula in India through the Lipulekh Pass, he had to walk about 100 kilometers from Gunji village in Uttar Pradesh. There was a motorable road between Dharachula and Gunji, but from Gunji onward he had to follow a narrow mule track through unin- habited mountain terrain. The risky trek, along a route at heights ranging from 4,500 to 5,200 meters and facing high winds at Lipulekh, took ten days. Goods for trade had to be carried by porters, as well as mules and jub- boos (male yaks) (Chaudhuri 2003).

Nathu-la

As mentioned in chapter 1, trade reopened in 2006 between China’s TAR and India’s Sikkim through the Nathu-la Pass after almost half a century (Lama 2005a).15 Many expected this agreement to significantly alter India’s economic exchanges through the borderlands due to Nathu-la’s access to a larger geographical scope and the extent of goods and services involved. The 2005 Nathu-la Trade Study Team Report projected that, on the lower-trade scenario, trade from Nathu-la would reach Rs. 4.46 billion ($104 million) by 2015.16 Furthermore, many believe that this trade would build on historical exchanges that were widely practiced between Tibet and India and other countries mainly through the port of Calcutta before Nathu-la was closed in the early 1960s. Institutions like banks, post offices, and customs points that were set up on a cross-bor der basis remained functional for many years. However, the post-2006 trade volume has remained dismal. In fact, it has never taken off as expected. For instance, there were no imports from the

Borders as Opportunities 51

Chinese side in 2010–11 while the export from the Indian side has been in- crementally increasing to reach over Rs. 160 million ($3 million) in 2014. It has mainly consisted of tea, blankets, clothes/textiles, snuff, flour, utensils, copper items, cigarettes, vegetable oil, canned food, spices, processed food, dry fruits, incense sticks, textiles, coffee, jute sacks, tobacco,gur (molasses), and handloom products. Table 1 shows the trend in trade exchanges between Sikkim in India and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. This lack of trade stems mostly from restrictions on tradable items, poor road conditions, inadequate and unattractive infrastructural facilities, limited tradable items, and lukewarm attitudes from policy makers. The imports have been barely Rs 10 million ($160,000) in 2014, consisting mainly of yak tails, sheep’s wool, quilt, blankets, readymade garments, borax powder, China clay, salt, and carpets. Nonetheless, this trade route could drastically reduce the tortuous sea routes. Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal can in the long run use this route through the Kakarbhitta-Siliguri, Phulbari-Siliguri, and Phunsholing-Siliguri corridors. The Nathu-la Trade Study Group recommended a timetable for development, with every five years marking a specific goal:

• 2005–10: Existing and additional infrastructures should reinforce trade on both sides. Construction of wider and deeper infrastructural facilities should take place. • 2010: Trade on a larger scale should begin.

Table 1. Sikkim-T AR Trade via Nathu-la, Volume of Exports and Imports Export Import Year (Rs in millions) (Rs in millions)

2006 2.787 0.688 2007 0.887 1.083 2008 5.8 0.135 2009 13.5 0.296 2010 40.254 Nil 2 011 37.886 Nil 2012 59.881 10.141 2013 77.556 11. 670 2014 160.443 10.253

Source: Commerce and Industries Department, Government of Sikkim, 2015. http://www.sikkimindustries.in/.

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• 2012: Tourism integrates trade with package tours. During 2012–15, only Indian and Chinese tourists are permitted to cross the border through Na- thu-la on a package tour basis. From 2015 onward, open tourism for both Indian and Chinese tourists can take place with package or individual tours. • 2015: Freights to and from neighboring countries should be included. Ban- gladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal could begin to use this route. • 2018 onwards: SAARC tourism should be integrated with activities of third countries in the region including Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. All tourists can cross the border. • This route should also be used for the pilgrims going to Kailash Mansarovar from India. • Given the monsoonal vulnerability of the 50.6 kilometer road between Gangtok and Nathu-la, and the pivotal role played by Kalimpong in the Darjeeling District of West Bengal, which was the focal point of all trading activities in the eastern Himalayas until 1962, the most viable option would be to reopen the Jelep-la trade route that connects North Bengal and the Northeast with various Chinese trading centers.

China has assigned Renqinggang (a village in Yatung County, 31 kilometers from Nathu-la) as a trade mart and infrastructure center. The trade mart will cover an area of approximately 20,000 square meters. The main mart building will house all the relevant government departments, as well as 200– 500 shops. Adequate storage and warehousing space will be provided, including an area specifically demarcated for parking and packaging, totaling an area of over 5,000 square meters. Tourism would be a major source of income and exchange for the borderland communities. Most of the scenic sites and tourist spots in Tibet are now open to domestic as well as international visitors. In fact, tourists are keen to observe how trade actually takes place between India and China at Sher- athang and Renqinggang, respectively. In the last couple of years, the Nathu- la Pass itself has been a major tourist spot with hundreds of people visiting the border and enjoying the “pleasure” of shaking hands with Chinese soldiers. On 18 September 2014, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and China’s president, Xi Jinping, agreed that China would facilitate the annual Kailash Manasarovar Yatra (pilgrimage) through Nathu-la in Sikkim, a route that would reduce the hardship and journey time for Indian pilgrims. This

Borders as Opportunities 53

was operationalized during the yatra season beginning in June 2015. Indeed, trade in this area has historically followed yatra routes (Clarke 1997). Himalayan regions have a long history of trade routes. In most cases, pilgrimage triggered their opening. Later on people used the infrastructure created by trade routes for easier access to pilgrimage sites. They consolidated and integrated the region, the borderlands even more so. Kalidasa wrote that the waters of Lake Mansarovar are like “pearls” and that to drink them erases “the sins of a hundred lifetimes.”17 The first batch of yatris to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar in China, via one of the oldest pilgrimage and trade routes through the Nathu-la Pass in Sikkim, was flagged off from Gangtok on 18 June 2015. For decades, pilgrimage by Indians to Kailash-Mansarovar mainly took place either through the Nepal-China border town of Khasa (Ta- topani) or by a difficult trek through the Sino-Indian pass from Taklakot on the Uttarakhand border. The Nathu-la route reduces both physical hardship and journey time. The maiden pilgrimage reached Mansarovar at an altitude of 15,157 feet on 26 June 2015. It included acclimatization, nature watch, and rest and rec- reation over an approximately 1,650 kilometer-long journey. Nathu-la will become one of the most magnificent ecotourism routes, making deep inroads into biodiversity hotspots and offering a glimpse of glaciers and water towers. The initiative finally reconnects the cultural heritage of two civilizations that have now started working together toward rebuilding an Asian confluence. A large number of tourists also come from other parts of the world. This is likely to increase with the Kathmandu-Lhasa bus service, started in 2005. Hotels and other tourism amenities along the way will themselves generate a huge source of income for the borderland communities, as evidenced by the Solokhumbu region of Nepal, which has a close physical proximity to Mount Everest. More recently, Tibet has become a center of ecotourism, integrating well with activities in Sikkim, Bhutan, and Nepal. In this context, a fascinating venture will be the cross-border Buddhist circuit. Sikkim and Bhutan could be a hub that connects all the major Buddhist destinations in India and neighboring countries—Bodh Gaya in Bihar, Rumtek in Sikkim, Ghum and Dali monastery in Darjeeling, Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, Lumbini in Ne- pal, Taktsang in Bhutan, and Jokhang and Potala in Lhasa. Most of the Hima- layan regions will benefit directly from this new intervention, enhanced by

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proposed air links between Bagdogra in Darjeeling and Sikkim with Kath- mandu, Thimphu, and other Indian cities. Druk Airways of Bhutan is already flying between Bagdogra and Bangkok. Also of interest to the people of the TAR will be the health and educational facilities available in the Sikkim-Darjeeling belt. It boasts of fine educational institutions that cater to the huge demand for English-speaking in- struction. Moreover, the TAR has long been sending students to various Indian educational institutions in places like Darjeeling. In sum, the following measures could be undertaken to enhance the level of trading at Nathu-la and other border points:

• Make this trade based on the most favored nation treatment principle rather than the existing restrictive border trading practice; • Drastically revise the list of exports and imports with a limited negative list so as to match the market realities on both sides of the border; • Put in place the most modern physical infrastructure including roads, transport corridors, bridges, hotels, and communications, as well as trade- facilitating measures including customs, banking, warehousing, and insur- ance; • Steadily enhance the infrastructural facilities so as to accommodate the trading activities of the neighboring states in India and the neighboring countries; • Reorganize the trading season from the present June to September to a period that covers May to October; • Remove trading limits per trader per day; • While putting in regulatory mechanisms for both trading and tourism operations, open this route for tourism purposes to China, India, and other South Asian countries; • Constantly monitor the likely impact of trading activities on smuggling, the environment, social interactions, and other security parameters; • Allow regular visits to China’s TAR and western region by businessmen and entrepreneurs to study market and investment opportunities; • Declare this route as one of the instruments of promoting India’s Act East Policy and China’s “one belt, one road” project with a view to getting access to the other Asian countries by India and its South Asian eastern neighbors; • Institutionally link all sectors including tourism, education, health, and other services sector with the TAR and neighboring provinces in China;

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• Prepare the Northeast region of India for the sale/export of huge surplus power likely to be generated in the next few years to neighboring provinces in China.

C onclusion

The more local the integration, the softer (more capillaric) the border becomes. As the borderlands become more vibrant economically, intellectually, and socially, the physicality of borders becomes secondary. Orthodox military-centric treatment of borders would also decrease steadily, transforming the region into myriad opportunities that, in turn, could lead to resolutions of many political imbroglios. Borders-as-capillaries create their own interest groups, pressure agencies including civil society formations, and array of institutions that promote multiple cooperation, development ventures, and multilayer integration. The challenge is to reframe borders that nurture, circulate, and strengthen the borderlands. In this way, natural resources, culture, societies, trade and commerce, tourism, water towers, technology, roads, and communications can resume their traditional and natural interactions and exchanges. Bor- ders become more interactive, making economic integration and people-t o- people contacts more prolific. If India’s burgeoning economic growth is to be shared by its South Asian partners, it would happen primarily through borders and cross-border linkages. This is where borders become opportunities and transform into “smart borders.” As usual, there are status quo-ists with insurmountable mind-sets. Their arguments against reviving this traditional trade route vary from security sensitivities to the influx of Tibetan refugees to Chinese cheap goods flood- ing local markets to environmental concerns. This same mind-set has marginalized India from Myanmar where India once had unparalleled historical strongholds, a political and social constituency, and substantial economic influence. India should have long ago harnessed these huge cross-bor der opportunities. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s acclaimed plea for cross-border infrastructure projects in the SAARC Summit in Dhaka in 2005 belatedly yet definitely recognized this clamor for lost opportunities (Lama 2006). Indian prime minister Modi’s emergence as one of the most popular leaders in the whole of Asia heralds a new dawn for redesigning, reposition- ing, and reconsolidating an architecture of regional cooperation and inte-

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gration in South Asia. There is widespread hope, deeper confidence, and high expectations that Prime Minister Modi’s openness, grassroots experi- mentation, and penchant for engaging the neighborhood with innovative and bold projects could give a new fillip to the entire borderland project. A fast-developing India, moreover, has started to change many of its traditional policies and strategies. Unlike the past, Delhi now thinks of borders and frontiers in more comprehensive and inclusive terms. The security- centric view about borders must change as a rising India grapples with issues and opportunities related to markets, resources, investments, services, and access to energy markets and tourism potentials. This is further accelerated by the way the Chinese are building infrastructure alongside their borders both with India and other neighboring countries. Partly because of such developments, India has now decided to connect all the border areas, particularly in the hills and mountain areas, with highways, railway links, and green-field airports. This will, on the one hand, help India to easily access its own border dis- tricts and ensure some semblance of human security in the borderlands. On the other hand, it will help neighboring countries, including Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar, China, Bangldesh and Pakistan to access Indian markets and through them the markets of neighboring countries. The likelihood of deeper regionalism has increased in South Asia due to an increased willingness on India’s part to work with Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Nepal on aspects that are regional and subregional rather than purely bilateral. This has been topped by an increased capacity to implement projects, such as through state, private, and nongovernmental organization capacity. In sum, borders-as-capillar ies offer a broader, deeper meaning for borders and security. We place both within a historical context filled with the hopes, aspirations, desires, and demands of local stakeholders who are concrete physical actors on the ground and capable of enacting, as well as transforming, the prevailing forces of our time. Our definition of security also recognizes the multifaceted and multilayered role of the state, its institutions, and agents. Military concerns, accordingly, cannot dominate. Though important, they constitute only one part of our consideration of security. As In- dia’s well-known strategist K. Subrahmanyam (1972, 7; emphasis added), notes, security should empower. He calls for looking at a “pattern of amity and enmity” that reflects contending political, social, economic, and ecological factors. Attention to these patterns necessarily shifts our attention from purely military matters to larger ones concerning governance (Subrah-

Borders as Opportunities 57

manyam 1998). This includes the balance between prosperity and inequality, as well as other sources of change and insecurity: for example, economic exchanges, cultural bonding, social interactions, tourism, natural resources management, energy and technology transfer, development cooperation, and shock-absorptive institutions during times of crisis. Much work, though, remains to be done. As the other chapters in this volume will show, substantial responsibility lies with a renewed sense of the vigor of India and China reoriented to inclusive relations.

Notes

. 1 “Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st- Century Maritime Silk Road,” issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce of the Peo- ple’s Republic of China, with State Council authorization, 28 March 2015. 2. It has been given observer status along with the United States, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, and others in SAARC in 2006. 3. The BCIM Forum originated from a meeting in Kunming in 1999 where institutions from Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar decided to deepen regional cooperation to hasten development in the region, to foster people-to- people exchanges, and thereby contribute to stability. Centre for Policy Dialogue (2002), Report of the Third BCIM Conference, Dhaka. The Yangon meeting held in February 2015 was the twelfth and completed the third cycle of the BCIM Forum. A Joint Statement between India and China during Prime Minister Narendra Mo- di’s visit to China issued on 15 May 2015 stated that “[t]he two sides welcomed the progress made in promoting cooperation under the framework of the BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar) Economic Corridor. Both sides re- called the second meeting of the Joint Study Group of BCIM Economic Corridor, and agreed to continue their respective efforts to implement understandings reached at the meeting.” See http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents. htm?dtl/25240/Joint_Statement_between_the_India_and_China_during_ Prime_Ministers_visit_to_China; accessed 4 August 2015. 4. China’s 27 provinces are divided into four regions: Northeast (3): Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang; Middle (8): Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Guang- dong, Guangxi, Hainan; Eastern (6): Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Shandong; Western (10): Sichuan, Gansu, Guizhou, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Yunnan, as well as Chongqing Municipality. 5. Some of the major examples include (a) “Measures concerning the Supervi- sion and Favorable Taxation for the People-to-P eople Trade in Sino-My anmar Border,” 25 January 1992, Office of Customs, PRC; (b) “Notification concerning the Further Opening Up of the Four Frontier Cities of Heihe, Shuifenhe, Hunc- hun and Manzhouli,” State Council, 1992; (c) “Notification concerning the Fur- ther Opening Up of the Five Frontier Cities and Towns of Nanning, Kunming,

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Pingxiang, Ruili, and Hekou,” State Council, 1992; (d) “Some Favorable Policies and Economic Autonomy Authorized to the Frontier Cities of Heihe and Shui- fenhe,” Heilongjiang, 1992; (e) “Resolution of Some Issues concerning the Exten- sion of Open-Door and Promotion of Economic Development,” Inner Mongolia, 1991; (f) “Notification of Promoting Trade and Economic Cooperation with Neighboring and East European Countries,” Xinjiang, 1992; (g) “Resolutions concerning the Further Reform and Opening Up to the Outside World,” Tibet, 1992; (h) “Provisional Regulations concerning the Border Trade,” Yunnan Province, 1991 (S. Singh 2005). 6. China is a mountainous country with two-t hirds of its total land area covered by mountains, hills, and plateaus. It has a land border of 22,143 kilometers bordering 14 countries: Korea in the east; Russia in the northeast and northwest, Mongolia in the north; India, Pakistan, Bhutan, and Nepal in part of the west and southwest; Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam in the south. It also has borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. 7. The government labels Shipki-la a “no man’s land.” It is fenced on both sides of the border by the respective governments and manned by sentries and border patrols. About three kilometers away from Shipki-la, on the Tibetan side, lies the first Tibetan village of Shipkee. Kew gaon (“Q”) is the next village from Shipkee and is located twelve kilometers further down the same hillside. Kew onward is a military outpost with a double lane (approx. 40 ft. dirt and paved road ahead). This road connects to major army outposts; it also goes to Lhasa, which is reachable by road and takes over five days. The local population registers at 450 persons, of which 80 are traders (data collected during field visits, 2004). 8. Rampur, Himachal Pradesh, is a major trading route for India. Lavi mela (fair) is largely popular for trade and exhibitions of special goods and products. Rampur served as the entrance gate to routes toward Kinnaur, Tibet, Ladakh, and Afghanistan. Even now, many goods, such as wool, dried fruits, and other products, are bought and sold through this trading destination (Festivals of India 2013). 9. It is more specifically in Chhupan, which is ten kilometers along the old Hindustan-Tibet Road (mule track) and six kilometers by motorable roads. 10. Kinnaur District is in Himachal Pradesh. 11. The entire area is in a geographically hostile location and hence does not permit any permanent settlement. Police monitor both trade and immigration at this “trade mart.” Plans are under way, however, to establish a customs office, army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police security posts, bank counters, a small market complex, and a post office. These have yet to materialize. 12. This includes, for instance, the “chuba” or traditional Tibetan attire from Kalimpong. It is famous for the quality of its fabric and workmanship. 13. This included Rs. 9 million ($140,000) worth of exports to Tibet and Rs 6.2 million ($97,000) worth of imports from Tibet (Makhaik 2012). 14. “Memorandum between the Government of the Republic of India and the

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Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Resumption of Border Trade,” signed in New Delhi on 13 December 1991. 15. “Memorandum between the Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Expanding Border Trade,” signed on 23 June 2003 during Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to China. 16. As per the Nathu-la Trade Study Group Report, the Scenario I higher projection showed that trade flow through Nathu-la will be $48 million by 2007, $527 million by 2010, and $2.84 billion by 2015. The Scenario II lower side projection showed that the trade volume passing through the Nathu-la route will be $82.28 million in 2010, $104 million in 2015, and $133.79 million in 2020 (Lama 2005). 17. Kālidāsa (circa 5 CE) was a Classical Sanskrit writer, widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language.

Chapter 3 Subregionalizing IR

Bringing the Borderlands Back In

Nimmi Kurian

The subregional moment in IR promises to be a bittersweet one, bringing in its wake a highly contested discourse but one laden with possibilities. Statist discourses today are shepherding a new narrative of territoriality and borders with the potential to problematize the Westphalian idea further toward interesting pathways. The idea of subregionalism has gained increasing recognition in discourses of development and envisages geographically proxi- mate constituent units of two or more countries as important sites of transnational cooperation. Subregional community-building has been growing robustly in Asia, as is evident from the thicket of growth triangles and subregional economic zones.1 This chapter looks at concurrent state-led initiatives in India and China that seek to recast the border region from geopolitical outposts to metaphors of globalism. I argue that the subregional discourse on rethinking territoriality has the potential to raise interesting questions about the politics of space and place while situating India’s and China’s international relations within a larger historical template of social, economic, and cultural flows that have little, if any, relevance to territory. This can in the process render the borderlands visible to the mainstream policy and research gaze and recognize its capacity to either subvert or facilitate the statist project.

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The Subregion of India-China

The India-China subregion comprises a shared neighborhood that is little known or studied (Kurian 2014a). The eight states that constitute Northeast India account for almost 8 percent of the total geographical area of the country, with a population of 44 million that makes up almost 4 percent of the country’s population. The region is home to immense ethnic diversity with an estimated 160 Scheduled Tribes and over 400 tribal and subtribal group- ings (Bhaumik 2007). China’s western region, too, has a high degree of ethnic diversity—113.8 million people or 8.5 percent of the population according to China’s 2010 census (China Daily 2011)—with fifty-five officially recognized ethnic minority groups besides the dominant Hans. Ethnic minorities concentrate largely in the twelve western provinces, particularly the five autonomous provinces of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Ningxia, and Guangxi.2 The small percentage, however, makes up for a substantial geographical presence, inhabiting 64 percent of the country’s total area, mostly along international borders (Lai 2009). For Delhi and Beijing, the border region has always been a security periphery. It is easy to comprehend why. The external dimension is a particularly salient factor for India and China given their long territorial borders. While China shares more than 22,000 kilometers of land boundary with fourteen neighboring countries, India shares 15,000 kilometers of land borders with seven countries.3 Not surprisingly, then, order and stability have historically been the “frontier fetish” of the state in India and China. Their respective governments have sought to constantly negotiate between often- competing goals of assimilation and autonomy. There are an estimated seventy-nine active armed insurgent groups in Northeast India and transborder linkages among these groups have compounded the security challenges facing the Indian state. If there is a single symbol of the Indian state’s relationship with the border regions, it is a law called the Armed Forces Spe- cial Powers Act (AFSPA). Passed by the Indian Parliament in 1958, AFSPA grants the armed forces legal immunity for its actions and authorizes its right to “use force . . . even to the causing of death” with a guarantee of “no prosecution, suit or other legal proceeding” (Ministry of Home Affairs, Gov- ernment of India 1958). The consequent crisis of legitimacy that confronts the Indian state stands for a troubling abdication of its responsibility toward the border citizen (Kurian 2014b). Rights Activist Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast unto death since 2000 to demand the abrogation of the Armed

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Forces special Powers Act, has been forcibly fed via a nasal feed by prison authorities for the past fifteen years. The state has responded by placing Sharmila under arrest on charges of “attempting to commit suicide.” Concerns relating to national unity, order and stability, and border defense have also found a prominent place in debates surrounding China’s Western Development Strategy.4 These fears were further stoked during the incidents of interethnic violence in Lhasa and Urumqi in 2008 and 2009, respectively.5 The Soviet Union’s disintegration in 1989 set a bad context for these fears. In the aftermath of the interethnic violence in Lhasa and Urumqi, Ma Rong warned that “the largest threat that China currently faces is break-up of the country’s territory” (Ma 2013, 23–24). 6 Economic policy may have become increasingly decentralized, as mentioned in the previous chapter, but territorial control by the center remains paramount. This apparent contradiction has led to a highly polarized debate over the future of Chi- na’s ethnic policy, in general, and preferential policies, regarding interethnic conflict and social unrest, specifically.7 China’s ethnic minorities have enjoyed a range of preferential policies such as housing, healthcare and education subisides, personnel training, tax breaks, and exemptions from the one- child policy. But the contemporary notion of the border as a securitized space strips the border of the multiplicity of meanings that it embodies. Historicizing the borderlands can help contextualize and locate each border region within its own political, economic, social, and cultural specificities.

Historicizing the Borderlands

The borderlands of India and China have always looked outward, the ethnic makeup of its peoples reflecting centuries-old processes of commingling and migrations within the neighborhood. What comes through these historic trans-Himalayan exchanges is evidence of high levels of integration and interdependence, effectively putting paid to notions of India and China as “self-contained nation-states with equally contained economies” (Harris 2013, 145). Both during the six hundred-y ear reign (1228–1826) of the Ahoms and prior to it, Northeast India had close trade ties with Bhutan, Tibet, and Myanmar (Misra 2005, 49). Brisk trans-K arakoram trade saw yarn from Yar- kand, Xinjiang, being woven in Punjab; pashm (or pashmina) from Tibet pro-

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vided the raw material for Kashmir’s bustling shawl industry; and brocades from Benaras made their way to markets in Central Asia (Rizvi 2004). Similarly, Cooch Bihar in India’s West Bengal minted money for Bhutan. Meanwhile, Bhutanese horses, wool products, and musk found a ready market in North Bengal and Assam while it imported spices, tobacco, and cotton (Pommaret 1999). Tashigang in Bhutan served as an important node on the Tibet-Assam route, and these interconnections allowed the Khampas of southern Tibet to dominate the trade on the Assam-Bhutan route. The towns of Leh, Kargil, Yarkand, Kashgar, and Samarkand were important nodes in the regional mercantile networks linking South to Central Asia and beyond. China’s southwestern province of Yunnan was historically an “interaction zone,” maintaining linkages with India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia. The ancient Tea and Horse Road began from Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces in Southwest China and traveled along two spurs to reach India. Yunnan contributed to this traffic by providing horses and silver, two products of immense value to the regional economy. Horses were of considerable commercial and military value, particularly for kingdoms in southern China caught in the throes of resisting northern invasions. They were exported to mainland Southeast Asia as well as to India; the ability to obtain horses often played an important role in shaping domestic power struggles (Chakravarti 1999; Bin 2004). Bullion movements during the late thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries from the Shan states of Burma and Yunnan also constituted part of the southern Silk Road regional trade flow (Bin 2004, 305). This route also carried local mountain produce such as sugar and salt traded between Sichuan and Tibet. Commodities such as gold, silver, cloth, and salt served dual functions as commodity and currency both. Commercial trade was often woven around quasi-religious missions, mo- tivating long-distance trade between Tibet and Ladakh. The Treaty of Tingmosgang of 1684, signed between Ladakh and Tibet, established the Lopchak, a biannual mission to offer tribute to the Dalai Lama as well as the Chaba, with annual caravan trade from Leh to Lhasa (Bray and Filibeck 2009). The trade in silk brocades from Benaras to Leh commanded a religious value in monasteries reflected in the Dalai Lama’s reference to it as the “fabric of our religion” (Ahmed 2002). We know of the religious, cultural, and economic links Bhutan had with Cooch Bihar and Kamrup (Assam) during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Though Bhutan followed a policy of isolation toward much of the world during this period, historical accounts

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point to unbroken exchanges with its immediate neighbors. Hajo in Assam emerged as a pilgrimage hub for Tibetans in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, its popularity aided no less by the ease of access via the oldest and only road then connecting India and Tibet, subverting the Monyul corridor east of Bhutan and directly through Bumthang and Devan- giri (Huber 2008). Recalling these capillaric flows and their networks usefully alerts us to the limits of sovereign control, especially over frontiers. It becomes evident that the state had to acknowledge and accommodate actors whose compliance was valuable for the pursuit of its political agenda at the frontiers (Ku- rian 2014a). These processes also bring out the role of actors who played crucial intermediary roles. For instance, the Lhasa Newars created important links with South and Central Asia; they were influential expatriate traders and artisans from Kathmandu with historic trade links with Tibet. The pastoral nomad, too, brought “peripheral civilizations to come into contact with one another” (Cosmo 1999, 3). Good relations with the pastoralist communities often was critical for the Silk Road since caravans bearing riches needed access to safe passage through the steppes. The Silk Roads also connected South Asia’s agrarian worlds with Inner Eurasia’s pastoral steppes (Christian 2000). High-v alue commercial relationships controlled and man- aged by powerful merchant groups coexisted with the more subsistence- based barter trade in essential commodities traded by villages on either side of the border. While at the village fairs of Gartok in Tibet and Patseo in the Indian montane state of Himachal Pradesh, for instance, nomadic herders exchanged wool, meat, and dairy produce for food grains and other commodities (Arora 2007). Looking beyond an exclusively non-state-centric reading thus allows one to situate India-China beyond bilateral and national conceptual grids.

Remapping Securitized Spaces

The Indian and Chinese states are today seeking to transform securitized spaces into metaphors of globalism, projecting their borders as dynamic gateways. The idea of subregional cooperation has been raised to the highest levels of rhetorical importance by both governments. Two key bilateral agreements between India and China have laid the basis for both to set aside the border dispute and explore areas of cooperation, setting the tone for

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functional cooperation between the two countries at bilateral and international levels. The Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India China Border Areas serves as one example. Signed during Indian prime minister Narasimha Rao’s visit to China in September 1993, both countries agreed to resolve the border question through peaceful and friendly consultation; to refrain from the use or the threat of use of force against each other; to strictly respect and observe the LAC; to jointly check segments of the LAC where differences exist on its alignment; and to keep military forces along the border to the minimum level. This was followed by the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the military field along the LAC in the India China Border Areas that was signed during Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s visit to India in December 1996. Under this, both sides agreed to the following measures: to not use their military capability against each other; to seek a mutually acceptable settlement of the border dispute and pending a final settlement to respect the LAC; to reduce or limit their respective military forces and major categories of armaments within mutually agreed geographical zones along the LAC to mutually agreed ceilings; to avoid large-scale military exercises involving more than one division; to prohibit flights of combat aircraft within ten kilometers of the LAC without prior notification; to prohibit firing, blasting, and hunting within two kilometers of the LAC; and to hold regular flag meetings between the border commanders at specified border points. A massive state-led developmental thrust is today resulting in an enhanced physical, economic, and strategic presence along the India-China borderlands. This involves a two-pronged strategy of large-scale infrastructure construction internally as well as cross-bor der road and rail linkages. India’s recent steps involve redressing the decades-long neglect of infrastructure along the border with China. It was a case of neglect by design, born of a deep-seated fear of the tactical advantage that border roads would likely provide China in the event of any future military confrontation. Sustained underdevelopment and abandoned border infrastructure thus virtually become a de facto strategy of territorial defence. This explains why, while China has set up roads running right up to the border, on the Indian side forces have to walk for days to reach the border (Dholabha 2009). This defensive mind-set is witnessing a distinct but gradual shift with the decision to build “operationally critical infrastructure” all along the border with China. In 2006, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security took a critical policy deci-

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sion in this regard by approving the construction of a 608 kilometer-long network along the India-China border. At present, only three of the eight state capitals, namely Guwahati (Assam), Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), and Agartala (Tripura) are on the railway map (Kashyap 2014). Another ambi- tious rail construction program of $48 billion aims to integrate the border region with the rest of the country (India Transport Portal 2013). Indeed, In- dia’s central government has announced plans to connect the capitals of all states in Northeast India with a national railway network by 2019. China is also plowing huge investments into a vast network of rail corridors in the border areas. Long-distance buses as well as trains link Lhasa with Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shanghai, Chongqing, Xining, and Lan- zhou. Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, is being developed as a key regional hub connecting the province with existing rail networks to Southeast Asia. The last piece of the rail link was completed in 2012. The 141 kilometer Yuxi-Mengzi railway line that links Yuxi in central Yunnan to Mengzi in southern Yunnan forms part of the eastern line of the Pan-Asia railway network (Kurian 2014a). Additionally, China is putting in place several cross- border infrastructure projects. To expand its rail network across Asia and beyond to Europe, China has negotiated with 17 countries. In 2007, it had international road transport links at more than 60 border gates with 140 routes for freight and passenger traffic with neighboring countries (Liang 2007). India is also seeking to close the “infrastructure gap” with China by developing its own cross-border transport corridors in the subregion. These corridors include construction and restoration of road and rail links between Northeast states and border areas in Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myan- mar (Kurian 2014a). Many of these state projects that overtly claim to transcend territoriality are predictably tailored to suit statist objectives. For instance, there is clearly a discernible security subtext to India’s moves to strengthen ties with its immediate neighborhood. Interstate cooperation to combat a range of nontra- ditional security challenges such as drugs and human trafficking, small-arms proliferation, HIV-AIDS, and other epidemics continues to be a major challenge in the subregion. Northeast India and Southwest China are both con- duits as well as consumers of drugs; these factors significantly increase the challenge of combating this threat.8 The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports a spike in production spurred by high demand and facilitated by a nexus of transnational crime networks.9 Interstate cooperation to combat these crime networks, however, remains limited. Part of the problem

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has been that states tend to see drugs and human trafficking as “nontradi- tional” security issues that do not require the same urgency or attention as “traditional” military ones (Emmers 2004).

Bringing the Borderlands Back In

The problem with a state-led subregional imaginary is that the idea could end up being little more than a series of intergovernmental bargains. Such a model continues to implicitly presume that the national level will drive subregional integration processes with little to suggest any devolution of decision-making authority to the subnational level. These constraints also present cross-border governance dilemmas that arise as Susan Clarke (2002, 2) notes, when “interdependent, complex, loosely linked actors and institutions with shared purposes but no shared authority” are required to coordinate their efforts. The fact that many of these challenges are experienced at the local level will, as Brian Hocking (1993) argues, make “localization of foreign policy” a compelling reality. Local frames of agency would contribute toward a broadening of foreign policy as local-level participation becomes both possible and necessary. Can some of these questions be framed in ways that create institutional entry points for a set of missing issues that currently are invisible to the mainstream policy and research gaze? The answer depends on two constituent capacities: the willingness to initiate evidence-based policy learning as well as cross-disciplinar y engagement and learning processes.

Evidence-Based Policy Learning

Evidence-based policy learning processes will be contingent on India’s and China’s willingness to initiate a meaningful subregional debate on questions of benefit sharing, trade-offs, risks, and burdens. The India-China subregion is richly endowed with an immense wealth of biodiversity, which emanates from and thrives upon traditional ecological knowledge and has economic, social, cultural, and ethical dimensions. This ecosystem diversity offers a multiplicity of knowledge systems that are steeped in a distinctly mountain way of life. The kind of specialist knowledge that members of mountain communities acquire in the course of their lives constitutes an oral knowl-

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edge base that is almost unique and without parallel. For instance, in the Garhwal region of India, local women were able to identify 145 varieties of plant species that had been lost to mining and logging whereas national for- esters could only identify 25 (Denniston 2002). Such specificities tend to get overlooked in top-down approaches to sustainability and conservation. The problematic assumption of reducing resources to being “just an economic matter” has also meant that interventions that do not respect the supply potential of mountain ecologies are bringing in their wake interlocking webs of environmental and socioeconomic vulnerabilities. A case in point is the jhum control program intro- duced by the Indian government in the Northeast. It sought to replace the practice of shifting cultivation with permanent agriculture. This has had far-reaching implications for predominantly agrarian economies where jhum constitutes the dominant land use system, particularly in the upland areas of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland. The program has had disappointing results, not least due to the fact that it has shown little understanding of how culturally embedded the practice has been in mountain ecosystems. In the name of greater efficiency, industry has called for a “fast track” assessment regime. This means shifting from a qualitative assessment of a project’s environmental impact to a quantitative exercise, thereby minimizing rates of rejection. Rhetoric for this policy frames precautionary clauses as “hurdles” and “impacts on the poor and the environment” as “collateral ca- sualties.” Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli (2009, 21) note that this approach would “effectively turn the process of seeking environmental clearance to a clearinghouse.” Across Northeast India, traditional wood and mud structures are giving away almost completely to roller-com pacted concrete, with high-rises seen as more “modern.” Multistory structures now litter the hill regions, with construction guidelines often left in the breach. Nowhere is this irony brought out more starkly than in the fact that the High Court building in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, is housed in a twelve-story building. A sense of baffled public outrage and erosion of public trust in institutions of law and governance runs deep. As a perplexed citizen wondered, “Earlier, we could go to court against illegal constructions. Now, how can the lordships who sit in such a building be expected to respond to our pleas?” (Chauhan 2002). The growing pace of forest fragmentation, land conversion, and habitat loss directly impinges on the rural poor’s livelihood chances. Of all the effects of these multiple stresses to the ecosystem, its social impact on the lives and

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livelihoods of local communities that depend on a range of ecosystem services will be the most serious. Notwithstanding the growing recognition of the need for subregional cooperation by India and China, there have been limited collective learning opportunities to share information and experiences and forge sectoral and cross- sectoral linkages. The environmental costs that get generated through the use of natural resources in a shared basin between riparian nations thus raise the potential for conflict since costs and benefits tend to flow unevenly downstream (Kurian 2013). Climate change is exacerbating the spatial and temporal variations in water availability with the annual runoff in mega deltas such as the Brahmaputra and Indus projected to decline by 14 percent and 27 percent, respectively, by 2050. The health of Tibet’s waters and the manner in which these are used upstream are increasingly causing political ripple effects across Asia’s international rivers such as the Mekong, Salween, Indus, Irrawaddy, Sut- lej, Salween, and Brahmaputra.10 There are serious downstream concerns in India that a series of cascading run-of-the-river projects would require storage of large volumes of water for power generation. China is said to have thirty- nine run-of- the-r iver projects on the Yarlung Tsangpo and its tributaries as per a report by the Inter-Ministerial Expert Group, which called for closely monitoring the projects (Kumar 2013). Changes in the hydrology of the glacier-fed river also raise fears of flash floods and dam safety. In the geo-dynamicall y active Himalayas, devastating earthquakes are an ever-pr esent danger with a recorded history going back to the thirteenth century. This is a particularly valid concern given the large and densely populated areas that are likely to be affected. The Himalayan plate boundary generated three great earthquakes in the last century including the Assam earthquake of 1950 (Rajendran 2013). The epicenter of the 8.6 magnitude Assam earthquake was in Rima, China, but it was the Brahmaputra Valley that bore the most extensive damage. The earthquake blocked several tributaries of the Brahmaputra and created a “wall of water” measuring 30 feet high, destroying several villages in its wake. As Angus Macleod Gunn (2008, 417) notes, the 1950 Assam earthquake, despite its devastating impact, “was not an In- dian earthquake.”

Subregional Cogovernance Platforms

These challenges in the borderlands make it evident that one needs to think beyond conventional scales of governance. It is also evident that no single institutional level can effectively cope with the nature and scale of these gov-

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ernance particularities. For instance, given the highly diffused nature of resources, scalar synergies are not easy to achieve, posing significant challenges to both top-down and bottom-up approaches to resource governance. Linear models of natural resource management fail to recognize the organic linkages between sustainable conservation and the sustainable livelihoods of local people, thereby inducing a social exclusion challenge. The community-based approach, on the other hand, while it prioritizes the community as an innovation actor, is confronted with the sobering reality that the community is almost never the only stakeholder in natural resource governance. These shortcomings call for more inclusive institutional frames encom- passing the subnational, national, and transnational levels. Governance arrangements have to not only jump levels but also make the conceptual leap toward cogovernance regimes. Since most environmental goods are by their nature common pool resources, effective governance arrangements will prove critical to deciding questions of access and setting limits to their use. Institutional prescriptions that fail to take into account the multilevel nature of such systems end up with limited adaptive capacity. As Ostrom (2008) argues, a one-size-fits-all policy structure where a single governing authority frames rules over use of common pool resources for the whole country becomes highly ineffective in responding to regional and local-level variations. Such a system is also ill-equipped to gauge and correct contradictions in the system and stem the scope for rent seeking and graft. If rhetoric seeks conversion into reality, such an imaginary has to consciously look at cogovernance models that create incentives for ownership both domestically and bilater- ally. Innovative frameworks will be particularly important for addressing challenges in the subregion regarding such critical matters as water management, climate change, and biodiversity. Subregional cogovernance platforms also need to start identifying and plugging gaps in the knowledge base. Strengthening nonstructural risk reduction measures could be a potential area of cooperation within the subregion. More effective risk identification techniques can go a long way toward reducing loss of life and the uncertainties that climate change and extreme weather events bring in their wake. Strengthening local innovation systems within the subregion will be key, too, to the success of many of these measures, since the kind of specialist knowledge that mountain communities acquire in the course of their lives constitutes an oral knowledge base that is almost unique and without parallel.

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Subregional Capacity Building

Strengthening capacity building within the subregion needs to be prioritized as a strategic requirement with a focus on the rural poor and the direct involvement of the local community as partners in the management of resources. Enhancing citizen contributions to biodiversity science could also be an important tool of public policy. Citizen biodiversity monitoring systems can help track variations as well as provide accurate assessments of the state of biodiversity within the subregion for improved decision making and more effective implementation. Grassroots-based disaster preparedness programs are effectively using community risk assessments as a means to reducing vulnerability and enhancing coping capacities (Couvet 2008). Studies in the Yunnan region have shown that in order to better monitor changing land use, a more subnational scale of analysis has replaced national-le vel monitoring (Melick et al. 2006). Of course, building these baseline databases at subregional levels requires cooperation among all stakeholders. An ongoing experiment in cogovernance at the grassroots level is the Communitisation Initiative in India’s Northeast (Kurian 2013). Based on an essentially simple institutional design, the government handed over, in a phased manner, the ownership and management of health care, rural drink- ing water supply, and biodiversity conservation. The program has improved the performance of grassroots-level public utilities across the state of Naga- land. These processes have brought all-round benefits ranging from significant upgrades in service delivery to greater checks and accountability over government funds and an overall enhancement in the quality of rural governance. These have also led to an overall increase in the awareness levels of the average villager to entitlements under various government and development schemes. In recognition of its successes, the Nagaland government won the United Nations Public Service Award for innovative use of social capital in 2008. Several empirical and epistemological takeaways result. Institutional innovations can respond to serious public frustrations with a dysfunctional delivery system in key social sectors. Governance has the potential to inter- act with and provide for inbuilt feedback loops and information sharing among policy nodes. Such horizontal links can create an enabling policy space for institutional learning and change to take place (Dowsley 2008). The conventional focus on formal domains has tended to overlook, margin- alize, or erase informal innovations (Scoones and Adwera 2009). Recogniz-

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ing reciprocity in actor interactions can go a long way toward building trust and strengthening overall system legitimacy and success. The degree of the “nestedness” of actors will hinge, in turn, on the capacity of cogovernance arrangements to create entry points for diverse actors to voice their prefer- ences. Indeed, the complex nature of these multilayered processes is increasingly bringing diverse actors into successful cross-border governance arrangements. The United States and Canada, for example, collaborate on such cross-border issues as immigration, transportation, and security. Institutionalizing robust iterative interactions across borders will decide the quality of citizen engagement and empowerment. If citizenship is to be imbued with effective agency, it needs to be located within the same frame as notions of accountability, representation, and agency. Direct involvement from the local community as partners can produce a level of public ownership of the process that will be invaluable. A process that seeks public engagement and scrutiny before policy is formally adopted can create the scope for more rigorous accountability measures (Newell and Wheeler 2006). These processes will be particularly valuable in situations, such as securitized borderlands, that are marked by high levels of public alienation and resistance to linear modes of problem solving. Such measures also nudge our understanding of accountability from ex-pos t to ex-ante constructions. Top- down moves by institutional actors to enhance accountability only capture the formal legal-technocratic arena of responsiveness. To be viable, these efforts need to be seen in conjunction with bottom-up, societal-push factors, and the role played by associational groups in incentivizing state institutions to be more responsive. Decentering governance toward “multiple systems of rule making, interpretation and enforcement” can significantly reduce the scale of failure and the costs that the collapse of a centralized resource regime will entail (Andersson and Ostrom 2008). Multilayered governance arrangements will focus on power sharing between levels of government and a blurring of traditional jurisdictional boundaries. This will help to problematize the notion of the state as a unitary actor and move toward a multiactor framework wherein the state cohabits and shares policy space with actors in the private and voluntary sectors. There are nascent efforts at transnational institution building in the subregion that are beginning to plug gaps in the knowledge base and bring together local, national, and regional stakeholders. Note, for example, transborder environmental networks. These networks focus on various aspects related to environmental protection such as the Asian Environmental Com-

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pliance and Enforcement Network, South Asian Biosphere Reserve Network, Asian Network of Sustainable Agriculture and Bioresources, Freshwater Ac- tion Network South Asia, Himalayan Conservation Approaches and Tech- nologies, and South Asian Network on Environmental Law, among others. There is also considerable potential for India and China to upscale cogovernance models from the subnational to the transnational level. For instance, the Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Initiative brings together India, China, and Nepal to develop a framework for improved management of shared biocultural landscape issues.11 The goals of the Initiative are the “long-term conservation of ecosystems, habitats, and biodiversity while en- couraging sustainable development, enhancing the resilience of communities in the landscape, and safeguarding the cultural linkages between local populations” (ICIMOD 2012). Climate change and other environmental challenges increasingly threaten the local population’s livelihoods. Techni- cal training and sharing of data and lessons across these borders would benefit communities in all four nations. Strengthening such evidence-based policy learning will need to be com- plemented with steps to advance cross-disciplinary engagement and learning.

Cross-Disciplinary Engagement and Learning

Advancing cross-disciplinary engagement and learning will be contingent on moving away from a tendency to privilege any single discipline and move toward multiperspectival inputs. Such disciplinary crossings could, as Barry Buzan and Richard Little (2001, 22) argue, position IR to become “a kind of meta-discipline, systematically linking together the macro-sides of the social sciences and history.” A subregional turn in IR could bring forth a new lexicon for theorizing space. The subregional shift is a significant one since the scale of reference moves beyond the hitherto conventional national and regional to the micro- regional level. While regional trading blocs and arrangements have been a common phenomenon, both the bilateral and the regional levels have tended to bypass the subregional level with its local governance particularities and stakeholders. These processes are also calling into question conventional assumptions of a linear progression of regional integration based on the European experience to accommodate less formal and more diverse patterns of regional flows and formations. Asian regionalism, as Peter Katzen-

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stein (1996) reminds us, has been characterized, on the one hand, by dynamic market institutions, and weak formal institutional structures, on the other. The Southern China Growth Triangle is a case in point where there were no formal interstate agreements between the member economies.12 These entrepreneurial relationships, as John Kao (1993) notes, operated as an “open architecture” with overseas business networks constituting a valuable source of information and entry point to overseas markets, besides providing a critical impetus to regional economic integration through heavy infu- sions of capital into the Chinese mainland. These emerging processes could be a reality check for IR to reconsider its disciplinary borders and rethink the “relations of wholes and parts” (In- ayatullah and Blaney 2004, 3). Peeling away some of the celebratory rhetoric can help us to question whether the subregional idea marks a shift from fixed notions of territorial space toward more dynamic understandings of “interrelated territorialities.” Such an engagement has the potential to rethink many of IR’s “problematic spatial and territorial premises” (Lapid 1999, 895). Dissident writings that seriously interrogate spatial and territorial assumptions (Ashley and Walker 1990a and b; Walker 1993; Weldes et al. 1999; Booth 2005; Appadurai 2006; Varadarajan 2010; Jones 2011; Bilgin 2012) now overlap with inquiries in political geography, border studies, and ethnic theory on the state, identity, and difference (Middleton 2013). Many of these cross-disciplinary insights have helped to problematize IR’s “fixed representation of territorial or structural space” and underline the spatially and socially constructed nature of borders (Agnew 1994, 55). The field of border research has also covered much ground over the decades, with itinerant inquiries stepping away from the reductionist logic of conceiving borders as territorial dividers and bringing with them a whole new lexicon of approach- ing these spaces as dynamic and socially constructed (Kurian 2014a).

Toward a New Discursive Language

The subregional turn in IR has the potential to position the borderlands beyond being just a tangential dimension of India-China relations. It opens up a much-needed discursive and policy space with the potential to shift the focus to local sites and issues (Kurian 2015a). This has a direct bearing on those living in the borderlands since the neighborhood of India and China has always been a transnational one, with locations across the border having

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an immediacy that impinges on daily consciousness in a manner that cannot be captured within territorial frames. But any subregional discourse on rethinking territoriality needs to distinguish between two parallel narratives at work. These narratives juxtapose the more familiar and contemporary notion of subregionalism as a state-led project with a more textured, bottom-up, and place-dr iven understanding of subregionalism (Kurian 2015b). Success for a subregional turn depends on its capacity to reduce the gap between top-do wn and bottom-up governance in meaningful ways. New frames need to be developed for understanding borderland areas generally and not just for India-China specifically. No one claims an end to statist imaginaries. These imaginaries will continue to view borders through a geostrategic lens; subregionalism cannot lead to an immediate or fundamental questioning of spatial and territorial assumptions. But it bears reiteration that no subregional integration blue- print can hope to succeed if the state continues to be delegitimized domestically. Unless the compact between state and society is repaired, security and development will continue to tread parallel tracks. What makes the emerging discourse on rethinking borders in India and China problematic is that it runs parallel to and often as a direct counter to a highly extant and entrenched securitized narrative on borders. This tension at the heart of the discourse on rethinking borders has been a virtual conceptual chokepoint, holding it back empirically as well as epistemologically. And as long as the statist discourse refrains from foregrounding this central tension it will lack the incentive to depart from a prepared geopolitical script and ad-lib in any meaningful way to produce a new discursive language.

Getting the Language Right

At the outset, a transformative discourse will call for a new lexicon that consciously steps away from parachuting mainstream imageries thoughtlessly. As Thomas Princen (2008, 2) argues, “getting the language right” is critical and metaphors can be powerful conceptual tools that we work with to order the world around us. A related issue that needs to be addressed will be to explore if we can arrive at a common language of dialogue. Can we as scholars for instance work toward what John Dryzek (1997, vii) refers to as “a particular kind of language when talking about events, which in turn rests on some common definitions, judgements, assumptions, and contentions”? The starting point for such dialogical processes thus has to be a shared need for a

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new agenda. Much of this thinking has to come from within the region, particularly within local frames of thinking about the subregion. It also depends on the extent to which scholars from within the region are able to speak to a common set of issues that they have hitherto looked at within national and statist frames. A related issue that needs to be addressed will be to explore if we can arrive at a common language of dialogue. Can scholars work toward a common understanding on certain basic norms and values? For instance, the repeated invocation of rigid notions of territoriality clearly stands to unravel the scope that alternative border discourses hold to transcend this logic to mutual benefit. These two contradictory norms hold out two vastly different futures for the border. While the logic of the former would imply little more than a military line, the latter would reconstruct the same as a dynamic gateway. While one would stimulate wariness, the other would help create joint stakes in peace. We need to eschew bipolar models of knowledge construction. As James Boggs (1992, 29) notes, binaries define knowledge essentially as a transaction between two parties: “knowledge producers” such as social scientists and “knowledge users” such as policymakers or decision makers. Such a dyadic framing of knowledge fails to recognize “nonexperts” as important reposito- ries of knowledge, denying them agency as social actors with their own merit. The perception that knowledge and research have to, in the ultimate analysis, be relevant and useful to policymakers as their end user has dictated choices and predetermined terms of inclusion and exclusion. Within these structural parameters of knowledge use, the role of people is thus reduced to being subjects or passive recipients of knowledge flows. The challenge, as Duncan MacRae calls for, would be to effect a shift from “social science oriented bureaucratic management” to one in which the broader democratic community becomes the constituency (MacRae, quoted in Boggs 1992, 55).

C onclusion

The subregional shift is a significant one since the scale of reference moves beyond the hitherto conventional national and regional to the micro- regional level. While regional trading blocs and arrangements have been a common phenomenon, both the bilateral and regional levels have tended to bypass the subregional with its local governance particularities and stake-

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holders. These processes call into question conventional assumptions of a linear progression of regional integration based on the European experience in order to accommodate less formal and more diverse patterns of regional flows and formations. Mainstream IR, in turn, has intellectually isolated and physically divided Asia into problematic categories of South, Central, East, and Southeast Asia, echoing their origins and association with European and American colonial and imperial agendas (Yang 2010). It is not surprising then that the academic debate on India-China tends to polarize over whether the dyad will cooperate or compete (Kurian 2014a). This has clearly been the most overstudied aspect of their relations (Bajpai and Mattoo 2000; Sidhu and Yuan 2003; Frankel and Harding 2004a and b). Not surprisingly, then, borders themselves have been held captive to a set of binaries that have been cast rather simplistically either as barriers or bridges. There is often only a passing ac- quaintance with domestic debates and how preoccupations with stability concerns and legitimacy challenges in the “periphery” play out in the foreign policy behavior of either country. Only accounts that look at the borderlands as an actor and as an alternative site of interactions have broken the monotony of this fixed narrative (T. Sen 2003; Kurian 2005; Vasan 2005; Bhattacharji 2006; Uberoi 2009; Roy 2012). Nascent inquiries also look into the links between federalism and IR, border states, and foreign policy (Sha- lendra Sharma 2009; Jacob 2011; Kurian 2014a). Debating new questions such as these would help redesign area studies to look beyond national and statist frames of reference. These questions offer creative ways of thinking out of the security box so that a different set of issues can be placed on the agenda. These emerging areas of scholarship could also hold out the promise of exciting new conversations with other disciplines such as history, sociology, and anthropology. Many of these biases explain why a critical comparative analysis of subregional interactions is conspicuous by its absence, and why India and China are often studied largely as single cases. But this neglect is increasingly no longer an option given that processes of subregional integration rescale In- dia and China toward constituent units as emerging sites of interactions. A subregional discourse on rethinking territoriality can help to situate India- China’s international relations within a larger historical template of social, economic, and cultural flows that had little, if any, relevance to territory. These flows provide a much-needed caveat to the dangers of totalizing narratives and alert us to be mindful of recognizing the historical agency of actors

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other than the state. Today, economic forces are in fact building on complex histories of transnational social and cultural exchanges that have operated above and below the national level. These cultural, historical, and social processes require a comparative Asian subregional canvas as against a national or statist framing (Kurian 2014a). Recalling these ancient linkages also underlines the reality that the contemporary notion of the borderlands as a landlocked, peripheral region has little or no historical credence. A subregional lexicon would help to in- scribe new meanings into a long-im poverished and threadbare discourse of territoriality. In the process, these new meanings will render the borderlands visible to the mainstream policy and research gaze.

Notes

. 1 Several such growth triangles or quadrangles are already in operation, such as the Singapore-Southern Johore-Batam Island, the Southern China Growth Tri- angle, the Yellow Sea Economic Zone, the BCIM Economic Corridor (Bangla- desh, China, India, Myanmar), BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Multi-Sectoral Initiative for Technical and Economic Cooperation), and the Mekong Ganga Economic Cooperation. 2. Ethnic autonomous areas are categorized to correspond to three broad spatial administrative levels: autonomous regions, autonomous prefectures, and autonomous counties. Autonomous regions are at the provincial level, autonomous prefectures are located between provinces and counties, and autonomous counties at the county level. For details, see H. Zhang (2012). 3. Nowhere is this perhaps more stark than in India’s Northeast, a frontier region that has long international borders with China, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The northeastern region of India has 4,500 kilometers long international borders with only a 22 kilometers link to the Indian mainland. 4. For details, see Premier Zhu Rongji’s “Government Work Report for 2000 to the Third Session of the Ninth National People’s Congress” (China Daily, 6 March 2000). The concern with order and stability is evident in Article 7 of China’s Re- gional Ethnic Autonomy Law, which states that “[i]nstitutions of self government in ethnic autonomous areas shall place the interests of the state as a whole above all else and actively fulfill all tasks assigned by state institutions at higher levels” (National People’s Congress 2001). 5. A Tsinghua University report in 2011 warned that China was caught in a “transition trap” that could seriously undermine its growth trajectory. The report warned that “the problem today is that we’ve become so obsessed with feeling the stones that we don’t even wish to cross the river anymore.” The report ended with a call for reinstituting “equity and justice” as core values; only then can the

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political system offset the growing disaffection and loss of public trust in society. For details, see Bandurski (2012). 6. Stressing the dangers to stability, Hu Angang noted, “The worst case scenario—and what we are trying to avoid—is China fragmenting like Yugosla- via. . . . Already, regional disparity is equal to—or worse than—w hat we saw in Yugoslavia before it split” (Hu, quoted in Malvezin 2000). 7. These differences are coalescing into a sort of intergenerational debate with the first generation supporting continued ethnic differentiation policies and the second generation advocates arguing that ethnic segregation would erode the formation of a shared national consciousness. 8. The opening of India’s and China’s border regions has seen the emergence of new trafficking routes. Opium and heroin moves by road from Myanmar’s poppy fields through Bhamo, Lashio, and Mandalay to Northeast India. For details, see Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy (2013). 9. Myanmar continued to be the second largest opium producer in the world after Afghanistan, with opium cultivation in the region registering a steady growth. For details, see United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2014.” 10. Besides the 510 MW project in Zangmu, three projects include the 640 MW in Dagu, 320 MW in Jiacha, and another in Jiexu on the main course of the river. The Ninth Report of the Inter-Minis terial Expert Group (IMEG) noted that the Jiexu, Jiacha, and Zangmu were within twenty-five kilometers of each other and at a distance of 550 kilometers from the Indian border. 11. The partner institutions include the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources’ Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Bei- jing, China; GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development (GBPIHED), an autonomous Institute of the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India and Ministry of Environment (MoE) / Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation (MoFSC), Kathmandu, Nepal. The area covered includes the southwestern part of Tibet and parts of northern India and northwestern Nepal. Its members include ministries from the respective countries, scientific research institutions, and community-based organizations in the member countries. 12. William Callahan (2004) argues that Greater China is not “normal in IR” since it does not constitute a geopolitical entity but is best understood as a set of “contingent relationships” of highly mobile populations engaged in ties of trade, investment, and tourism.

Chapter 4 Dialogue across Borders

Dam Projects in Yunnan and Sikkim

P ayal Banerjee and Li Bo

This chapter explores what a new lexicon of subregionalism might look like. It entails transgressing borders of all types: geographical, disciplinary, discursive, and epistemic. First, we reach across the India-China border to look at their common borderlands. Second, we do not abide by a typical comparative approach by listing the similarities and differences that distinguish India and China as states, then ask whether or how each may compete or collaborate with the other. Instead, third, in comparing two cases of the same phenomenon—that is, local resource management—we talk to each other as researchers and concerned, transnational subjects of India and China. Together, we understand how a capillaric India-China still circulates within the states of India and China. And in so doing, fourth, we break epistemically from the statist border-centrism of Westphalia World. Our dialogue—or more colloquially, “chat”—exposes the erasures identified in the previous chapters. That is, Westphalia overlooks opportunities for regional integration and development. Another layer to “what’s not there” becomes apparent: transnational action between India-China borderlands. This refocus is especially pressing given the role and influence of global corporate capitalism operating on national and local development in India and China today. We begin with some background. The first part of this chapter documents two “peripheral” borderland areas in India and China undergoing large hydropower development: the Teesta River in Sikkim state of northeast-

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ern India, and the Nu River–U pper Salween in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. Our dialogue completes the rest of this chapter. We conclude with some thoughts on comparative eco-de velopment projects for India- China within India and China.

Dcams a ross the Border

Two dam projects currently dominate Northeast India and Southwest China. These are, respectively, the twenty-six-cascade dams on the Teesta River in Sikkim and the thirteen-cascade dams on the Nu River in Yunnan Province. The two regions share similar natural and social complexities: both are eth- nically diverse, socially peripheral, geographically remote, and economically disadvantaged compared to their respective national centers. At the same time, both regions are resource rich and eager to improve their infrastructure, employment opportunities, and social indicators. International rivers, endowed with a significant heritage of biological and cultural diversity, are at the core of a way of life in both regions. Nonetheless, both local communities across the border remain marginalized. The governments of India and China offer them limited or nominal participation in project planning, feasibility studies, and environmental impact—usually in the early stages. Official clearance (approval) requires such assessment reports. Consequently, grassroots agents experience comparable patterns of exclusion despite the very different political systems that prevail in the two states. For this reason, NGOs play a prominent role at both sites. They have succeeded in slowing down decision-making processes dominated by “official experts and researchers” and in scaling back the number of dams proposed.1 In directing attention to intersecting social, economic, and environmental concerns, activists have pointed out that “experts” planning large dam projects have often excluded or underestimated the environmental and social costs in the locality. For example, large-scale hydropower schemes in India and China, particularly those in the Himalayan region, risk landslides, earthquakes, irregular flow patterns resulting from extensive land use, changes in land cover following dam construction, and climate change. Other unaccounted costs arise, also. Methane emissions from rotting vegeta- tion due to dam-related changes in water flow, for instance, can be higher than those from fossil fuel power plants; fragmented aquatic habitats and

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altered flow regimes threaten biodiversity and inland fisheries—a primary protein source for millions of people dependent on these resources within the watershed. Not surprisingly, NGOs often face powerful resistance from national and local governments. Political elites in India and China proclaim their priorities in the name of development, nation-state building, and national security. Dam building, in particular, echoes rationales commonly heard throughout the globe: (1) rich perennial hydrological potential should be exploited to produce electricity for the region and beyond; (2) dams produce economic benefits for the investing government and private power companies through taxation, the maintenance of stable economic lifelines to other energy-dependent industries, such as mining, and the generation of revenues through power exports to neighboring states/provinces and countries; (3) large infrastructure-building increases employment, thereby outweighing any compensation to displaced local communities; and (4) dam projects improve the state’s capacity to control floods and provide ir- rigation for agriculture, thereby providing security and protection to local livelihoods. Proponents of hydroelectric projects and big dams view them as champions of “development,” labeling their opponents as “antidevelopment” (Rudra 2003). Let us now briefly review each dam project in its own context.

Yunnan: To Dam an Angry River

The Nu River originates in the Qinghai-Tibet high plateau. It descends through southwestern China, primarily Yunnan Province, before entering Myanmar, where it is known as the Thanlwin (in Burmese) or the Salween (in English). The river becomes the border between Myanmar and Thailand for 120 kilometers. It drains a total of 320,000 k2 and eventually flows into the Gulf of Martaban. More than ten million people from at least thirteen ethnic groups depend on the Salween watershed for their livelihoods. The Nujiang, the section of the Salween that flows through China, is found in the Three Parallel Rivers area (the Yangzi/Jinsha, Lancang-Mek ong, and Nu- Salween), a hotspot of biological and cultural diversity recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2003. The region is also home to twenty- two minority nationalities including the Naxi, Lisu, Tibetan, Bai, Yi, Pumi, Nu, and Dulong. The last two are indigenous to this region only. Nujiang River ranks second only to the Jinsha–U pper Yangzi for its hy-

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drological potential. Nujiang Prefecture holds 47 percent of the hydrological resources in the province while administering merely 14,700 km2 (not even 3 percent of Yunnan’s land area). Besides its biodiversity endowment, Nuji- ang Prefecture is well known for its rich mineral deposits and is among the richest in China in terms of per capita resource holding. Yet Nujiang Prefec- ture has long been an inaccessible and economically backward region by national poverty standards or even Yunnan provincial standards. A large part of the administrative budget depends on provincial and national financial support, as it has been a poor and autonomous region for an ethnic group, the Lisu people, who constitute a relatively small and disadvantaged group. Ac- cordingly, Nujiang’s prefectural government feels compelled to develop the rich hydro resources at its disposal. A few Chinese power monopolies have sought to optimize Yunnan’s natural resources with hydroelectric production at the turn of the millennium. A new policy in 2000, the “Open Up the West campaign—Greater Western Development” (xibu da kaifa), further enabled a period of intense transformation in the power industry. Dramatic increases in the demand for energy consumption in the Mekong region, exacerbated by frequent electricity shortages in nearby regions of China, intensified industrialization in the populous eastern areas now turned into workshops for the global market. In 2003, plans for a thirteen-dam cascade on the Nu River suddenly pro- voked public interest. China Huadian,2 one of the country’s most influential power monopolies, received a contract to develop the Nu River. To facilitate the investment, China Huadian established a joint venture with the Yunnan local government to form a subsidiary in November 2004 called the Yunnan Huadian Nujiang Hydropower Development Company. Provincial government documents3 and experts estimated that 50,000 to 70,000 local people would be displaced by the dam project (Y. Zheng 2006). Together with hydropower projects on the other two rivers of the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage site, namely the Jinsha–U pper Yangzi and the Lancang–U pper Me- kong, these proposed dams would gravely jeopardize their heritage status.

NGO Action, State Response, Local Representation

Chinese NGOs played a decisive role in the ensuing debates (Magee 2005; Busgen 2006; McDonald 2007; Feng 2009). In August 2003, when the China State Development and Reform Committee passed a proposal for a thirteen-cascade dam on the Nu River (21MW), with the approval of the

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Yunnan provincial government, Chinese NGOs swung into concerted action. The Beijing-based NGOs Green Earth Volunteers, led by Wang Yongchen, and Friends of Nature organized a roundtable discussion to review the proposed Nu River hydropower project. They raised six points of concern: (1) the Nujiang is an integral part of the World Heritage site; (2) the Nujiang River Valley’s multiple values cannot be reduced to hydropower alone; (3) the river shelters a great number of freshwater fish species endemic to China and Southeast Asia; (4) the Nujiang washes through the faults in the Henduan mountain range, which are active with potential hazards due to soil erosion, landslides, and earthquakes that can shorten the expected economic cycle of a hydropower project; (5) the dam will un- settle people and introduce a great number of migrants to the area; and (6) persistent poverty along the Nujiang is due to multiple factors, and a man- made hydropower project alone will not solve them. More than thirty participants at the meeting echoed such views and the media reported widely on the event. Arguments representing both sides of the debate over the dams cut across many institutions and workshops, media reports, and carried on for months.4 To the surprise of many, Premier Wen Jiabao suspended the project in April 2004, stating that “on matters of great social concerns, there is an understanding and opinion that on environmental protection, greater caution should be practiced and scientific decision-making must be followed.”5 China’s NGOs savored their intervention in the eleventh Five-Year plan. A sense of urgency for river conservation and the water ecosystem intensified given the country’s water crisis at the time. Chinese NGOs also successfully identified issues of lack of transparency and informed content in dam decision making and the resettlement plan for local communities. They drew attention to the lack of focus on factors causing poverty in the dam construction areas. And the NGOs significantly slowed down the pace of the hydro development plan during this five-year period. Many regarded this intervention as the beginning of antidam expression in China. The twelfth Five-Year Energy Plan (2011–15), however, truncated these gains. Contrary to expectations, the government scaled-up dam construction for most of the river projects. Power companies used the burden of climate carbon reduction to their advantage, arguing that climate change victimized communities on both sides of the Himalayas due to extreme weather conditions and hydraulic changes, such as landslides, earthquakes, droughts, and floods. But the power companies themselves also victimized local com-

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munities by marginalizing them at all levels of decision making. The power companies had become, in short, the dominant stakeholders. We find a similar story just across Yunnan’s border.

Sikkim: Hydroelectric Power Projects on the Teesta River

Sikkim, formerly an independent Himalayan kingdom under the Chhogyal lineage, joined the Indian Union in 1975 as a state. Since then, Sikkim has become a prominent tourist destination. Majestic peaks, lakes and water- falls, forests, an excellent climate, trekking and mountaineering opportunities, and the numerous Buddhist monasteries attract tourists from India and abroad. Moreover, due to the present state government’s numerous proenvironment policies, such as the Green Mission, Sikkim has earned the reputa- tion of being a model among states in India for implementing policies that underscore environmental sustainability in areas such as agriculture, tourism, and urban planning. And, in terms of geopolitics, Sikkim holds a significant location in India’s security discourse given its position in India’s Northeast within close proximity to China. Contemporary debates and antidam activism around hydroelectric power (HEP) on the Teesta River in Sikkim reflect a larger discourse on India’s development and energy generation. The government of India has historically viewed hydroelectric projects “as the most economic and preferred source of electricity” (Government of India 2011, 1). Given the acknowledged desirability of hydro electricity, the Indian government identified several “objectives for accelerating the pace of hydro power development” (Government of India 2011, 1). These objectives might be summarized as follows: an ongoing emphasis on hydropower in future plan periods, increasing private investment, and emphasis on building a tripartite partnership between the private sector and the central and state governments. Moreover, one of the specific “Policy Instruments” to expedite the development of In- dia’s hydro potential focuses on the promotion of direct private investments in hydropower projects. India’s Northeast, endowed with an estimated 37 percent of India’s river waters and having been identified with the potential of contributing 41.5 percent of India’s hydropower capacity, is seen as a storehouse for hydroelectric power generation by policymakers and has been labeled India’s “future powerhouse” (Menon et al. 2003; Mahanta 2010). Indeed, the significance of this region’s rich water and forest resources has not escaped the attention of

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international organizations such as the World Bank. One among the continuing series of state commitments for HEPs came in May 2003, when In- dian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee unveiled a new hydropower generation scheme, popularly referred to as the “50,000 MW Hydroelectric Initiative,” by commissioning the preparation of a Preliminary Feasibility Report (PFR) of Hydroelectric Schemes. India’s Central Electricity Authority formulated this scheme with sanction from the Ministry of Power. Seven state-affiliated public-sec tor consultants formulated the PFRs to provide details of the planning, preparation of project and equipment layouts, infrastructure requirements, preliminary environmental and geological studies, cost estimates, and economic evaluation. Completed ahead of schedule in September 2004, the PFRs identified 162 hydroelectric schemes in sixteen states in India with an aggregate installed capacity of 50,560 MW to be exe- cuted during the eleventh and twelfth Plan Periods between 2007 and 2017. According to these PFRs, 10 of the 162 hydropower projects were planned for Sikkim: Dikchu, Rongni Storage, Panan, Lingza, Rukel, Rangyong, Ringpi, Lachen, Teesta-1, and Talem for 1,469 MW of power (Central Electrical Au- thority, Ministry of Power, Government of India 2004). Well before these initiatives, however, Sikkim was home to a dozen of what the government called “Hydel Schemes” from 1966 to 2000 (Central Electrical Authority, Ministry of Power, Government of India 2004). Since the late 1990s, the list of hydel schemes was enhanced further with the establishment of a new “cascade” of HEPs on the course of River Teesta: nearly twenty-nine large hydroelectric power projects along with numerous smaller ones, of which some are complete and generate electricity while others remain in various stages of completion. The contracts for these projects have been awarded to both public-sec tor firms, such as the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, and private companies, such as Teesta Urja Limited.6 The state of Sikkim acts as a joint-v enture partner in these projects. The os- tensible purpose of these dams is to generate electricity, raise revenue, and facilitate development. Teesta Urja’s company website uses the tagline “Power for Peace & Prosperity” following the company title and states:

Water is nature’s most precious gift to mankind. Hydel power is a clean and green power as compared to other conventional power generated using fossil fuel. India—thanks to the mighty Himalayas—is blessed with immense hydel power potential. The development of this vast power potential has been given the top priority by the Govt. of India.7

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Antidam Protests and NGO Activism

Since 2007, local communities have heavily criticized and resisted the state government’s plan to sanction and build twenty-nine large hydroelectric projects in the ecologically and culturally sensitive Teesta River basin. At the forefront of antidam activism is the grassroots organization the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), founded and headed by Dawa Lepcha. The organization’s membership and supporters represent various segments of Sik- kimese society: lawyers, journalists, educators, students, farmers, and Bud- dhist monks. Research with antidam protesters reveal the complex nature of an ongoing contestation involving the state’s people, representing all ethnic groups, activists, and spiritual leaders, against state officials and the hydropower corporations.8 The issues in question include the privatization of and the hydel project developers’ access to land and forests; encroachment into protected areas for ethnic Lepchas; disputes over leases and compensation; damage to venerated peaks, forests, and bodies of water; and extensive ecological, geological, and wildlife damage. An ACT press release from 2009 ar- ticulates the various dimensions of the rationale behind the protests and activism. It warrants quoting at length:

As per current plans the Teesta and its tributaries, will see a maze of large hydel projects. The so called “run-of-the-river” hydroelectric projects being developed involve the construction of large dams which divert the river waters through long tunnels, before the water is dropped back into the river at a downstream location after passing through a powerhouse. These projects are promoted as being “environmentally benign” as they involve smaller sub- mergences and lesser regulation of water as compared to conventional storage dams. This perception conveniently ignores the impact of several features intrinsic to this design. For example, long stretches of the river will be by- passed between the dam and powerhouse, with up to 85–90 per cent of the river flow in the winter diverted through the tunnels. Not only will this destroy riverine ecology, but a cascade of projects will mean that the river is in full flow only in brief stretches between two successive hydel projects. For example, the Teesta V project being “dedicated to the nation” today and being projected as being environmentally benign, involves the bypassing of 23 km of the Teesta river between the dam and powerhouse. The project has involved serious violation of green laws too during the construction phase. In 2007, the Sikkim Chief Secretary admitted to an environmental governance

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crisis in the 510 MW Teesta V project in an affidavit to the Supreme Court- appointed Central Empowered Committee. (ACT press release, “Halt Dams Juggernaut on Teesta,” 4 July 2009)

The adverse consequences of Teesta Phase V, one of the initial segments of the larger Teesta dam project currently in operation, prompted people to take a closer look at the various aspects of these projects from inception to operation. ACT found many instances of environmental and forest clearance violations, granting of project clearances before the publication of assessment reports, disregard for public opinion or rigged public hearings, a host of geological and ecological problems, and a decrease in forest cover, among other socioeconomic issues. The organization’s 2009 press release further stated:

ACT and other sister organizations have been on a Satyagraha since June 20, 2007 to raise concerns about the juggernaut of over two dozen dams planned in the tiny Himalayan state of Sikkim which are becoming a serious threat to the rights of the indigenous communities and the ecological security of the Himalayan state. This Satyagraha completed two years on June 19th this year. (ACT press release, “Halt Dams Juggernaut on Teesta,” 4 July 2009)

With the help of information obtained via ACT’s Right to Information petitions, ACT prepared a list of several lapses and inconsistencies between the HEP project proposals and clearances and the final outcomes during or after project completion. ACT, for example, found that the number of HEP- affected families in Sikkim increased to 928 as construction progressed. This rate is alarming, given that the clearance for projects were obtained on the basis of much lower estimates, which projected that only 72 families would be affected by construction (ACT press release, “Halt Dams Juggernaut on Teesta,” 4 July 2009). ACT also held the state government responsible for ne- glecting specific laws and procedures for land acquisition, such as Amending Act 68 of the Land Acquisition Act 1984; the Land Acquisition (Companies) Rules, 1963; and the Land Acquisition (Companies) Act, 1963. Antidam activists viewed the state as the facilitator allowing private companies with HEP contracts to acquire land with ease. On 10 February 2010, North Sikkim police arrested forty-t hree members of ACT, including its general secretary, Dawa Lepcha. Lepcha, one of the

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most prominent proenvironment activists in Sikkim, reinforced some of the issues raised above during an interview for this research. Since the onset of ACT’s antidam activism, the grassroots group has invoked and practiced satyagraha—the Gandhian approach to nonviolent protests, frequently involving hunger strikes. Lepcha himself undertook and led protracted relay hunger strikes with other activists on numerous occasions, which extended over six hundred days.9 Their protests subsequently focused on specific projects proposed in North Sikkim, particularly in the Dzongu region, the holy land and exclusive reserve of the members of the state’s Lepcha tribe, whose rights in this area are protected by the Special Provisions under Article 371(F) of the Indian Constitution. Addressing his concerns about the dams’ impact on the environment and the sociocultural profile of the community in Dzongu, Lepcha said:

The spurt of large hydel projects in Sikkim is in direct contradiction of the constitutional and legal protection given to Lepcha tribe. The simultaneous construction of so many projects is going to involve an influx of a huge number of outside labor for a long period of time. These demographic changes are going to have a serious socio cultural impact, particularly in North Sikkim. We want the seven proposed projects in Dzongu scrapped and others in Sik- kim reviewed. (Interview with Dawa Lepcha, ACT, 2010)

The development of HEPs continued despite ACT’s protests and petitions collected from a number of supportive organizations nationwide. The Delhi Forum, Kalpavriksh, the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, and others appealed to the prime minister and the president of India to stop the HEPs. Although these petitions did not halt the construction process, they prompted, a month later on 18 July 2007, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee to ask the Sikkim government to respond to the issues raised by the Lepcha community. This court action yielded unsatisfac- tory results: the HEPs were not stopped. Instead, the state government engaged with ACT to persuade the activists to stop their activism and hunger strike, initially through invitations for negotiations, followed by more direct means, such as arrests. The state continued to reiterate the significance of HEPs for the state’s development and India’s power security, and appealed to ACT to withdraw their satyagraha. At least six rounds of talks ensued between the government and ACT, but none led to a conclusive breakthrough.

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After a personal appeal from the chief minister, Dawa Lepcha and Tenzing Lepcha withdrew their indefinite fast on 21 August 2007, which marked the sixty-third day of their hunger strike. In September 2011, Sikkim experienced a massive and destructive earthquake accompanied by numerous aftershocks. It claimed many lives, de- stroyed homes, and tragically killed workers trapped inside collapsing tunnels at HEP construction sites. The question of a link between this landslide and years of blasting, tunneling, and heavy construction on the mountains and riverbanks for the mega-HEP projects could not be ignored. The Con- cerned Lepchas of Sikkim wrote in a press release:

We the concerned Lepchas of Sikkim have been witnessing the entire ongoing natural catastrophe in Sikkim, particularly Dzongu, Chungthang and La- chung area with regret, shock and helplessness. Needless to mention here of our vibrant stand in protesting the Mega-P ower Projects in the region which seismically falls in the most active Zone V. It is put on record here that the CLOS (Concerned Lepchas of Sikkim) along with the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) fought for 915 days calling for the closure of all the mega-power projects from the region before the unyielding and inconsiderate authorities. (Concerned Lepchas of Sikkim press release, 24 September 2011, accessed from ACT website, http://www.actsikkim.com/)

This activism has continued since 2007 through multiple modes of resistance and outreach. These include relay hunger strikes, research and preparation of reports addressing the negative consequences of HEPs, awareness campaigns and tours, speaking engagements, appeals and press releases in the media, publication of campaign statements, and continuous research on HEPs in Sikkim. ACT also maintains an active website and blog online and regularly publishes features, videos, news coverage, and photo essays docu- menting the impact of the HEPs on people’s lives and livelihoods. Networked with Indian and international organizations, such as the International Riv- ers Network, ACT invites such groups to collaborate on research and to campaign for change. In 2012, ACT commemorated the fifth anniversary of the commencement of their hunger strike protest against the HEPs in Dzongu by organizing a symbolic eight-hour sit-in (dharna) with the objective of de- manding geological impact and assessment reports and reiterating their call for scrapping the Panang (280 MW) and Teesta Stage IV (520 MW) projects, which at the time were yet to start. This section would not be complete with-

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out underscoring ACT’s role in sustaining what might be called the spirit of democracy—the centrality of dialogue, research, and awareness, harnessing informed public opinion with the aim to communicate with the state and work toward safeguarding political and socioeconomic rights. Moreover, along with ACT, there are dozens of other activist groups protesting the construction of dams on other rivers across India and simultaneously moving forward with an interlinked movement to challenge land grabs, access to mines and forests, and numerous other modes of privatization of resources that have rendered people displaced and, in most cases, disenfranchised.

Analytical and Practical Crossroads

We seem at a crossroads. Other than recognizing that both India and China share a common problem of local devastation due to national development, as discussed above, how should we proceed? Is it always a case of activists and local communities against government authorities? What’s the role of the media here? And why are there so many similarities in outcome between In- dia and China despite their vastly different political systems? Rather than continue with yet more academic analysis, we propose a dialogue or “chat” between the two authors. This format not only enlivens the discussion for the reader but its dynamic nature also engenders new insights or strategies for the two participants and their respective problem- atiques. Our chat, in short, demonstrates India-China at work. These exchanges were conducted via Skype and e-mail. The first chat occurred in February 2012; the second, ten months later. Additions and multiple revi- sions followed in text. Following, then, is the chat between Li Bo (LB) and Payal Banerjee (PB) on India-China.

A Chat: India-China and the Environment

LI: Given India’s democratic system, why do groups like ACT or any Delhi-based organization seem to have little opportunity to demand proper consultation on project planning and environmental clearance? I presume that dissenters in India, unlike those in China, where the dam business is highly governmental, do not run the risk of being questioned on their loyalty and patriotism. Yet the government’s

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conduct in India on dam construction seems to parallel that in China. BANERJEE: The type of political system matters but not in a linear, pre- dictable way. When national and international elites collude, as in the case of large infrastructural projects involving massive sums of capital, elite claims of “national security,” “economic development,” and “investment returns” tend to override most other considerations, especially if they come from locations marked as peripheral. Indeed, there are frequent public debates, town-hall meetings, and unambig- uous public demands for adequate assessment and neutral research. However, these events or reports can be rigged: inadequate publicity, gatekeeping, preventing some people from speaking out, or ignoring certain voices are common strategies. During instances of severe public protest and criticism, infrastructure projects may be postponed or scrapped, only to reemerge elsewhere, or even at the same river-site. This reminds me of the example you gave from China’s experience. Indian activists also point out that the powerful and politically connected builders and stakeholders call the shots. And, to highlight your point about loyalty and patriotism, indeed, the ACT in Sikkim has been called regressive, unpatriotic, and antidevelopment, which is another code for disloyalty to the nation. LI: I am curious, what do you make of some of the similarities in outcomes or consequences in China and India, so far as activism and protests are concerned? The region between northeastern Indian and southwestern China, roughly two sides of the Himalayas, is home to certain ethnic groups and both areas are somewhat far from the political capital and financial centers. Not only is there an issue of how local voices are represented and heard at the central political arena through formal and informal channels, but there also seems to be a lack of capacity for the centrally located government, or even environmental NGOs, to understand and collaborate with local groups meaningfully. This is particularly true when the concerned people at the marginalized lands are ethnic minorities at the borderlands. In China, these aspects can be used easily as reasons for deploying the urgency of national security and border control. As a result, the in- tention for nuanced social and cultural understanding or profound discussions is discouraged or even prohibited. Meanwhile, the center’s strong determination to exploit rich natural resources in order to

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incorporate the local economy into the larger national economic agenda of a unified national market, and the national or even international economy, leaves little space and opportunity for alternative expressions by and choices for the locals. I believe the similarities between India and China also lie to the extent in which local livelihoods are being sacrificed for the sake of borderland security and sovereignty claims. There is enough evidence to suggest that when local livelihoods on both sides of the border are made difficult and locals have no sense of control over the situation, the borderlands lose their fluidity in terms of the movement of people, goods, cultures, and in its place anger and frustration give life to violence and everyday resistance. I feel anxious and disappointed at a very personal level. As an environmentalist, I’ve gone through mostly losing battles and witnessed many environmental crises of different kinds in the last decade as China’s economic reform steamrolls ahead. But I also know that it is not an option for environmental NGOs in India or China to not take up the fight. Both countries have great population density and fore- see market opportunities with rapid economic growth. Needless to say, environmental NGOs cannot afford to not challenge the adverse consequences, engage with people and politics, and advocate for policy changes. BANERJEE: I’d like your perspective on another question: What might be comparable issues in China in regards to how the state frames what are labeleld as “obstacles” in developing HEPs? From the Indian example, I have noted that in its discussion of the merits of expedit- ing and expanding HEPs, the government has made an effort to identify what it deems to be “obstacles” in the path of hydroelectricity generation. An excerpt from a hydropower policy document, as follows, might give you an idea:

The constraints which have affected hydro development are technical (difficult investigation, inadequacies in tunneling methods), financial (deficiencies in providing long term financing), tariff related issues and managerial weaknesses (poor contract management). The hydro projects are also affected by geological surprises (especially in the Himalayan region where underground tunneling is required), inaccessibility of the area, problems due to

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delay in inland acquisition, and resettlement of project affected families, law & order problem in militant infested areas. (Govern- ment of India, Policy for Hydro Power Development 1998, 2)

Here, I find the framing of “obstacles” to signal the state’s construction of what it sees as hindrances in the way of development. And these hindrances include people, their resistance against marginalization, and relevant socioeconomic crisis! The strategy of naming impediments to development as “geological surprises,” “delay in land acquisition,” “resettlement of project affected families,” and “militant infested areas” reveals an administrative attitude that is overwhelm- ingly techno-bureaucratic. This position distances the state from people’s needs and lived experiences and from the more challenging questions of long-term sustainability of the ecosystem. Is there some form of a parallel in China? LI: It is very interesting, indeed, the use of obstacles framed by Indian policymakers. Although the Chinese system does not use the same words, the obstacles listed as impediments to development refer to the very same issues, whose potential harm or costs are often minimized or underplayed. In other words, similar issues are externalized to the victims or to all taxpayers. The consequence is that the power company takes in more profits by not shouldering any social respon- sibilities. That is exactly how “obstacles” are perceived and addressed, without calling them such. More interestingly, the hydro-com pany’s projects are often marketed as a poverty reduction strategy and an economic stimulus, organized jointly by county and provincial government and power companies. They claim that these projects would light up the inacessible communities that have been held in the dark regarding the information and technology markets. By providing ele- tricity, they get the infrastructure to increase their choices and reduce their workload, previously conducted manually. The government plays a major role in painting and marketing this beautiful picture. When met with resistance, the government uses persuasion or coercion to deflect opposition. This is done in the name of national interest and national growth, which provides the projects with plenty of legitimacy until recently, when independent research and work on resettled population and damage to ecological and cultural heritage became increasingly available. This joint venture between government and the power business is very problematic.

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And in the Chinese context, environmental NGOs can be nega- tively viewed. They are portrayed as a different kind of obstacle to development, or even antihuman and antisociety. China has only had a brief history with NGOs, starting in the mid-1990s, and these have been viewed as the result of foreign influence with questionable purposes. In less hostile terms, green NGOs have been profiled as those that have had individual livelihood security, and thus prioritized the welfare of wildlife over human beings, thus demonstrating no sympathy for local communities. This perception is not uncommon among mainstream techno-bur eacrats. However, one observes a greater degree of hostility against environmental NGOs in arguments that profile these organizations as obstacles to development and blame them for being engineered by sick foreign motives to block China’s economic take-off. I wonder to what extent or, if at all, Indian NGOs experience similar allegations? BANERJEE: Yes, one does encounter the “anti-India foreign influence” rhetoric periodically. If not always in the case of the antidam movement, then certainly this rhetoric appears in other realms of state concern, such as the so-called Maoist movement. The grassroots movements mobilized by organizations such as the ACT against the hydro-pr ojects are frequently labeled as antidevelopment and antinational, standing in the way of India’s progress. I would add, however, that the central government in India is cautious about Sikkim’s proximity to China and as a result decided in 2013 to not involve the World Bank in the region’s power infrastructure development. I wanted to hear your thoughts on another issue, Li Bo. I have noticed during my research that governments or agencies representing the state bring up the question of belonging (who legitimately be- longs to or counts as, say, Lepcha) as a strategy to delegitimize people’s claims for justice. For example, in one of the official assessment reports for HEP clearance, the Lepchas of Sikkim were (inaccurately) represented as migrants from Assam and Myanmar, thereby delegiti- mizing their claims as the inhabitants of Sikkim. The ACT countered this claim by invoking the Supreme Court of India, which had declared the “Lepchas as the original indigenous people of Sikkim” (ACT press release, 19 July 2011). Have you noticed comparable trends or strategies being deployed

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in China from which we can perhaps build a framework to better understand the political strategies used by both states? LI: In China, this differs a great deal. With the migrants—primarily those who moved from rural to urban centers as cheap labor—the question of ethnicity is not mixed with issues of land entitlement. Identification of ethnic groups was largely done at the beginning of the People’s Republic. In China, a close comparative example would be the interpretation of the Law of Regional National Autonomy (Sixth National People’s Congress 1984)10 to determine the best interests of the potentially affected ethnic groups. But it is not easy an easy parallel to draw. There is another issue that I would like to address on the subject of representation. There has always been a critique that local communities in Nujiang watershed have had little representation in the Chi- nese NGOs’ antidam campaign, which is seen as urban-based, nature conservation-or iented, and driven by middle-c lass perspectives. This stands out as the most striking difference between the Chinese Nuji- ang and Indian Teesta campaigns. The latter is peopled by local Sik- kimese living in and around the project areas. The Chinese political system is rather slow still in opening up to create an environment for NGO registration and ability to offer full-fledged services, even though much rhetoric has been given by the central government to encourage society to self-manage and self-help. Grassroots NGOs have always been a strictly regulated group given that their loyalty to national interests and national security has been greatly questioned. The remote and borderland areas of ethnic minorities in western rural China, despite decades-long village-level elections, still seem to reflect Han Chinese dominance;11 consequently, it will remain the most challenging zone for mobilization and expression by community- based NGOs. Therefore, environmental and policy procedural rationales employed by Chinese capital-based NGOs against dams are hardly representative of the local communities, even if some of the local communities’ issues were documented and discussed. My question to you, Payal, is this: Do you agree that local communities in the Himalayan borderlands are doubly pressured by and sacrificed on the issue of climate change? Are you hopeful that Indian NGOs or large organizations in civil society might lead to a more inclusive proccess for the borderland communities?

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Let me explain why I ask this question. As we know, China feels intense pressures to respond to the call of carbon reduction due to global climate change politics, particularly after the Copenhengen conference in 2010. But the government’s strategy has been contested domestically. I expect India will face a similar situation soon. While

both countries, in terms of national per capita share of CO2 emission, are still categorically lower than that of the industrialized nations (In- dia is still much lower), that of the urban centers in both countries are or will quickly catch up following the conventional economic li- bralization policies of the Western countries and financial institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Case in

point is the citywide average of CO2 emissions for Beijing and Shang- hai. These have reached 10.8 and 12.9/tCO2e/capita, while the national average is 3.40/tCO2e/capita (Kossoy and Guigon 2012). In other words, the economic discrepancy and sharing of carbon debts between the rural and urban sectors is increasing. Both countries ad- here to the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibility” in global climate change negotiations, but the game of quick economic catch-up for the urban centers in both countries will likely continue, while hiding behind the skeleton of the rural poor in their respective regions. And this “catch-up” will continue to take advantage of the natural resources in the vast rural areas and have the rural poor shoulder a disproportionate share of the environmental degradation and pollution. As far as hydro-dam development is concerned, river ecosystems and rural livelihoods that depend on the river system will be sacrificed in the name of clean energy and carbon reduction for those in urban centers. BANERJEE: Yes, I agree that the marginalized communities end up ab- sorbing a disproportionate share of the costs of development. Mar- ginalization, of course, represents a complex intersection of various factors such as gender, ethnicity, class, religion. And, in the case of Sikkim, there are considerations that are unique to the socioeconomic and historical contexts of the state. Some might argue that states in India’s Northeast are privileged because of certain protective exceptions (land ownership possible for Sikkim subjects only) or the central government’s financial assistance programs. Yet, if we consider the movement against the dams and concerns raised by the ACT, it is clear that the people in these regions are, as you say, doubly

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pressured: they must make room for the development of mega- projects and confer legitimacy to the state’s Green Mission. LI: Clearly, much remains to be done. This conversation has been most helpful. I must say, working on this book, I have felt a bit lonely and challenged as I am the only nonacademic in this group. And attempting to compare real cases from two countries—especially, India—has not been easy for me. But with your gracious participation, Payal, I feel the task is more possible to do. Through our conversations, I have become convinced that, together, we can gain a great vantage point with real demonstra- tive value. In a word, I am hopeful. BANERJEE: I, too, am hopeful and excited! I look forward to more exchanges and collaborations with you and others working in and outside China on these questions. Indeed, I think that the current India vs. China hyper-tr ope is very limiting: it constricts our consciousness, locks us into an unimaginative sense of self, and blurs the scope for truly listening to each other without the babble of narrow nationalism that is scared and scary, suspicious, and smug. As we realized, it prevents so many from seeing some of the compelling similarities in social outcomes and shared concerns. It is about time that the two ancient neighbors revived former traditions of exchanges while creating new possibilities for dialogue and collaborations in a non-state- centric manner. In a word, I share your hope!

C onclusion

This chapter has exposed a looming crisis in sustainability for the subregion. It compels rethinking in ecological, not just economic, terms. We need to recalibrate “efficiency” toward a more holistic understanding of “benefits” and “gains.” Here, local participation is key. It contributes to a broadening of national decision making, especially in foreign policy, to take into account local as well as national and regional interests. Moreover, we are only beginning to understand the worsening ecological system in China. Resource interventions that do not respect mountain ecologies create and reinforce interlocking webs of environmental and socioeconomic vulnerability. High levels of water stress and growing levels of desertification are early warning

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signs of the rising costs that a fast-track model of growth demands. As much as 98 percent of the 2.64 million square kilometers of desert land, or 27 percent of the total national land area, lies in the western region of China where over 90 percent of the poor in this region live on desert lands. Severe degradation of the natural environment has seen the encroaching footprints of desert registering an annual increase of 3,500 square kilometers in the late 1990s (People’s Daily Online 2005; China Council for International Coopera- tion on Environment and Development 2012). There is now increasing consciousness that, if left unattended, these environmental transgressions hold the potential of boomeranging on the very source of growth itself. It is this realization that is waking up policymakers and energizing measures to repair the ecosystem’s “carrying capacity.” Research remains to be done on monitoring the extent of these changes to the ecosystem in the Tibetan plateau or India’s Northeast. While scientific studies are beginning to establish the extent of damage to biodiversity in the Tibetan region, social impact assessments are largely absent. For instance, scientists, range managers, and development personnel working on the Ti- betan plateau have not factored in the effects of climate change on Tibetan rangelands. They have focussed, instead, on questions such as whether the Tibetans are “rational” land managers. Yet evidence abounds with examples of innovative experiments from various border regions in jointly managing shared resources. Such innovative frameworks are particularly critical for addressing the challenges of a shared neighborhood. Scholarship needs to explore these prospects for a common analytical framework. The two cases on dams from China and India demonstrate the intimate connections between resource management and democratic politics— perhaps best described as people’s interventions—in the region. In both In- dia and China, local communities have suffered when the state decided to undertake large infrastructural projects, like dam building. In the case of Sik- kim in India, NGOs based in local communities have advocated for “nature- friendly” and “holistic” development policies. In China, by contrast, the NGOs based in capital cities have worked closely with political and economic centers, along with the media, to shape public opinion on river projects. These projects’ exploitations and devastations to local resources, environmental and human alike, are well documented. While unilateral, top-down decision making may be expected of a one- party state like China, how do we account for the manner in which local activists, community representatives, and NGOs have found their voices trun-

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cated and lives displaced within comparable patterns of disenfranchisement in India’s parliamentary democracy? What results from this is the “winning” of the nation-state government at the expense of lapses and losses in connecting the landscape with the lifescape. But can this loss really provide security for the nation-state? Instead of being distracted by the different political systems operating in China and India—and reifying binaries between authoritarian China and democratic India—this chapter has asked: Which experiences and outcomes are similar in both countries and what do these shared experiences compel us to reconsider? What is the common problem? And what do common outcomes—the primacy of mainstream development approaches, environmental problems, people’s marginalization, and displacement—indicate about power structures? Lastly, how can we achieve greater transparency and accountability, despite differencens in political systems? Our analysis and subsequent conversation offered a concrete way to proceed. It promises hope for the future, we believe, given our method’s grounding in an ancient, capillaric understanding of India-China.

Notes

. 1 In China, controversies have surrounded the Sanmen Xia Dam on the Yel- low River, the Three-Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, and the Manwan Dam on the Mekong (Jing 1997; Yu 2004). Likewise in India, the Chandil, Icha, and Narmada dams have ignited intense criticism and public protests (International Rivers 2008; Banerjee and Sood 2012). 2. China Huadian was established in 2002, as the state-owned enterprise for production and supply of electricity, heat, and the development of power-related primary energy. 3. Official Memoo. N 94–2008 of Yunnan Resettlement & Development Bu- reau on the Guidelines for the Mid to Downstreams of the Nu River Hydro- development, http://www.3jzx.com/html/155–8/8919.htm, accessed 23 May 2013. 4. A representative and timely book that reflects and speaks for the views of the antidam NGOs, which complies many scholars’ collective work, is Kexue Fazhan Guan Yu Jianghe Kaifa (Scientific river development) edited by Yisheng Zheng (2005). 5. See https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/3031—Wen-again-delays-Nu-River- dam-work/en, accessed 28 January 2015. See also Yardley (2005) and McDonald (2007). 6. See http://www.sikkimpower.org/power/files/Status_20of_20HEPs.pdf and http://www.sikkimpower.org/power/power_developers.aspx for a complete list of

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hydropower developers, along with other details regarding the status of environmental and forest clearances, land acquisition, and the Sikkim government’s equity in the projects. 7. Teesta Urja Limited, http://www.teestaurja.com/index.html; accessed 28 February 2015. 8. Banerjee conducted research on these issues in Sikkim in August 2011 and from August 2012 to the fall 2015. 9. For more details about this antidam activism, see “Teesta’s Tears” (Bunsha 2008). 10. This law was amended in 2001. See http://www.cecc.gov/resources/legal- provisions/regional-ethnic-autonomy-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china- amended, accessed 23 July 2015. 11. There is substantial scholarship on this issue. As the Carter Center’s (2000) research points out, “If one bases the assessment on China’s 5,000 years of history, which lacks a tradition of competitive elections, then China’s new experiment merits a more positive assessment. China’s approach to elections is incremental and experimental, and officials are constantly seeking ways to improve the process. In a decade, the program has made real progress.”

Chapter 5 Border Pathology

Ayurveda and Zhongyi as Therapeutic Strategies

L. H. M. Ling

What if we take capillaric relations to their utmost logical extent, beyond geopolitics and economic development?1 What would we get both theoreti- cally and substantively? This chapter aims to find out. Viewing India-China in capillaric terms means accepting their existence as one body politic. Keep- ing true to the biomedical tradition of this region, my analysis will draw on Indian and Chinese medicine known, respectively, as ayurveda2 and zhongyi.3 I apply their principles and practices to treat the border pathology that has beset India-China since 1962 and continues to do so today. This approach is not as far-fetched as it may seem.4 Ancient medical traditions remain deeply embedded in India and China, including their dias- pora communities throughout the globe. Everyday life still reflects many elements of ayurveda and zhongyi,5 even when Western medicine is readily available and more prestigious (Obeyesekere 1976; Nordstrom 1989). Addi- tionally, many of the norms and methods of ayurveda/zhongyi have entered mainstream society in what IR designates as the “West” (Bardach 2011; Boykoff 2013). Ayurveda and zhongyi thus provide a widely popular and deeply intimate basis for perceiving the world and how we want to live in it.6 Those who struggled for India’s independence knew such wisdom. They often quoted from the Charaka Samhita, ayurveda’s classic text, to cure the nation of British colonialism: “Health is the best cause of virtue, wealth, desire and emancipation, and is the blessedness of life” (Strauss 2002, 247).7 A healthy person, the Charaka Samhita teaches, could inspire even the crops to thrive with “great endowments” (Strauss 2002, 15). Simi-

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larly, zhongyi’s canonical source, Huangdi Neijing Suwen, links good health with good governance: “[I]f the ruler [the heart] is enlightened, his subjects [the rest of the body] are in peace. To nourish one’s life on the basis of this results in longevity.”8 Let me clarify: this chapter does not prescribe ayurveda/zhongyi literally. That is, I do not suggest yoga or acupuncture as a policy instrument for foreign or domestic affairs. Rather, I draw on the philosophy behind yoga and acupuncture to arrive at new ways of thinking about and acting on the border pathology that has so plagued India and China since 1962. With ayurveda/ zhongyi as diagnostic, the “border problem” itself undergoes a radical reas- sessment. No longer simply a result of (intractable) territorial disputes between two self-enclosed, self-interested states, thereby requiring “great power” intervention to manage the system, the “border problem” under ayurveda/zhongyi becomes eminently treatable and transformable locally. At the same time, these ancient medical practices treat the whole system, not just the individual illness. For India-China’s “border problem,” accordingly, ayurveda/zhongyi requires placing the pathology in a larger context: the Westphalian interstate system and its power politics. World politics, in other words, requires as much recovery and rehabilitation as the India-China “border problem.” This chapter begins by introducing the basic principles common to ayurveda and zhongyi. Next, I apply these principles to the India-China border pathology and find it symptomatic of a deeper ailment: Westphalia World. In particular, this section examines triangulation discourse, West- phalia World’s dominant narrative for the India-China “border problem.” I follow with a diagnosis of triangulation discourse and close with some recommendations for therapy. I conclude with the implications of ayurveda and zhongyi for India-China relations, specifically, and international relations/world politics (IR/WP), generally. Let us begin with the basic principles of ayurveda and zhongyi.

Basic Principles

As Sujatha Reddy notes, ayurveda and zhongyi share a mirrored history.9 Two mythical, mystical personas—K apila10 and Laozi11 — are credited with founding the philosophies of Samkhya and Daoism that, respectively, underpin ayurveda and zhongyi. Kapila’s Samkhyapravachana Sutra and Laozi’s Daode-

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jing provide the onto-cosmologies that account for the master works in In- dian and Chinese medicine, respectively: the Charaka Samhita (hereafter “Charaka,” circa third to second century BCE)12 and the Huangdi neijing suwen (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic Basic Questions, hereafter “Suwen,” circa first to third century AD). 13 Brahma (god of Creation) and the Dao (the Way) ground ayurveda and zhongyi, respectively. Each tradition posits the Void as the beginning of all beginnings. From the Void comes the dialectical interplay between the masculine (purusha, yang) and the feminine (prakrti, yin). These produce change and form in the world—dynamicall y, constantly, and dialectically—t hereby accounting for its myriad manifestations (wanwu). Both ayurveda and zhongyi value the “five elements” (pancamahabhutas, wuxing) that turn the wheel of life.14 The ayurvedic terms vata, pitta, and kapha have their counterparts in Chinese medicine; similarly, zhongyi encourages yoga, a good diet, and the importance of knowledge and enlightenment as a regimen for good health. Each medical tradition also traces life to an essential vitality, energy, or force: prana or jiva in ayurveda; qi in zhongyi. Illness (including unhappiness) ensues when an imbalance disrupts or blocks this life force. Healing comes when the jiva/prana/qi is stimulated and released so it can resume flowing.15 A person must resonate harmoniously, inside and out, to achieve and maintain lasting health and happiness. Identifying the key sites and vessels to release the life force thus becomes key. Treatment starts with a patient’s particularities. The Suwen makes this point explicitly: the healer must heal with mindfulness; no general approach can apply even though general principles may be at work. The sage healer Qi Bo urges:

Close the door and shut the windows, Tie yourself to the patient, Repeatedly inquire about [his/her] feelings, Adapt [your treatment] to his/her sentiments. (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 230–31)

The Daoist image of yin and yang conveys this philosophy most succinctly (see figure 1). It shows an inverted S-curve outlining two spheres— one white, one black—joined together to form a whole circle with a dot of coimplication in each: that is, a black dot in the white sphere and a white dot in the black. Two polar opposites—yin and yang—ma y contradict each other

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(black vs. white) but, equally significant, they also complement each other (black-within-white, white-within-black). These pockets of coimplication produce unique continuities in tandem with a universal process of change. Synthesis in Samkhya/Daoism thus proliferates in terms of continuity and change, sameness and difference, particular and universal.16 As the Suwen notes, life reflects a complementarity of opposites:

Heaven is yang; the earth is yin. The sun is yang; the moon is yin. (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 165)

Fig. 1. Yin-Yang diagram

Note, for example, ayurveda’s seven “energy vortices” known as chakras. These integrate a person’s particular disposition with a universal process of enhancing health through enlightenment. The chakras register from the base of the spine to the crown of the head; each relates a part of the body to a specific color, symbol, element, sense, and purpose (Rama 1988, 162–73). The fourth or heart chakra acts as the linchpin: it connects the bottom three chakras, mostly concerned with one’s physical well-being (safety, sexuality, nourishment), with the top three chakras, which center on spiritual realization (creativity, intuition, cosmic consciousness). Of course, a lower chakra (e.g., need for nourishment) could contradict a higher one (e.g., achieving cosmic consciousness), leading to imbalance and therefore illness. Ayurvedic treatment, then, focuses on how to align all the chakras. Good health requires balancing the spiritual with the physical, so the whole body or system could operate naturally and organically. Zhongyi bears similar principles. Qi Bo advises the Yellow Emperor:

If one gets a hold of the spirit, The [patient] will prosper

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If the spirit is lost, [the patient] perishes. (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 231)

Buddhism flowered from its common stem in Samkhya and Daoism. Histori- cally, Buddhist monasteries served as clinics of treatment and cure in both India and China. A Chinese monk, Hiseh, performed cataract surgery in the eighth century, a skill he learned from a “foreigner from a western country identified as Tianchu, i.e., India” (Reddy 2002, 316–17). A patient paid tribute in a poem, dedicated to the “Brahmin-Priest Physician Who Bestows Eyes”:

I wept all day, my journey came to an end, With both my eyes dark henceforth I was an old man in the middle of my life I gazed at vermilion, gradually it turned jade-g reen I was afraid of the sun, no longer could I evidence the wind This master knew the art to comb it out entirely How did he lift the covering? (quoted in Reddy 2002, 316–17)

Of course, ayurveda and zhongyi also differ significantly. These differences could be subtle and stark at the same time. For instance, in zhongyi, acupres- sure points (xue), when stimulated, can activate meridians (mai) to the body’s major organs. Whereas, in ayurveda, vessels (siras) and channels (sro- tas) lead to vital points (marmas) deeply embedded in the body’s tissues, in- dicating its most vulnerable spots: “Injury to these points kills the body or ends in permanent deformity” (Van Loon 2003, 325). Yet the Susruta Samhita also identifies 700 siras for puncturing as a cure named Siraveda, much like acupuncture (Van Loon 2003, 327). Clearly, there is more to ayurveda and zhongyi than can be summarized here. What binds the two traditions—and what most concerns us here—are their common diagnostics and therapies. These converge into roughly four integrated methods:

1. Balance. Ayurveda and zhongyi both seek systemic balance to achieve good health. Each conceives this balance in terms of a Samkhya/Daoist dialectical interaction between seeming opposites (e.g., hot and cold). Should one fall into excess (e.g., fever) or deficiency (e.g., chills), poor

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health ensues. Treatment aims to balance one opposite with the other by drawing on the coimplications within (e.g., coolness- within-heat, heat-within-coolness). The Charaka explicitly theorizes about the importance of this third, in-between condition. In every being, it teaches, three types of “humor” (doshas) prevail: sattva (“peaceful, clear, balanced, steady”), rajas (“momentum, desire, action”), and tamas (“inertia, dullness, sleep, darkness”) (Van Loon 2003, 38). Health presides when sattva balances, not eliminates, rajas and tamas. Elimination is neither possible nor desirable for that would place sattva in excess. In this way, ayurveda and zhongyi each ensures that balance would resume steadily, naturally, and self- generatively.

2. Flows. From blood to good spirits, multiple flows must accord with the rhythms and cycles of Nature/God/Heaven.17 The Suwen cites the ex- emplar of water. Called the Perfect Potency, water contains within it the dialectics of yin (e.g., gentleness, absorption, containability) and yang (e.g., hardness, destruction, spillage). Key is to keep water flowing evenly despite its volatility. A person’s health requires a similarly open and dynamically circulating system—and it extends beyond the merely physical. A balanced flow, the Charaka teaches, requires an “undisturbed, empty mind”; treatment must draw on a combination of “speech, mind, and body” (Van Loon 2003, 38, 16). Time also matters. Both the Charaka and the Suwen lament that people are no longer what they used to be. These texts imply we must learn from the past to benefit the present so we may ensure a healthy future. “In early times,” the Charaka notes, “no undesirable consequence arose except from unrighteousness”; accordingly, the people were endowed with “prowess like the sons of gods” (Van Loon 2003, 165). Similarly, the Yellow Emperor asks Qi Bo:

“I have heard that the people of high antiquity, in [the sequence of] spring and autumn, all exceeded one hundred years. But in their movements and activities there was no weakening. As for the people of today,

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After one half of a hundred years, the movements and activities of all of them Weaken. Is this because the times are different? Or is it because the people have lost this [ability]?” (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 30)

The Heavenly Teacher answers in part:

“The qi follows [its appropriate course] and therefrom results compliance: everything follows one’s wishes; in every respect one achieves what one longs for. Hence, They [the people] considered their food delicious, They accepted their clothes, and They enjoyed the common.18 Those of higher and those of lower status did not long for each other.19 The people, therefore, were called natural.” (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 35)

3. Resonance. Good health needs resonance from inside and out. An individual body must accord with its larger physical, aesthetic, and spiritual environment. The “beneficial life,” the Charaka exhorts, includes being “free from carelessness,” “keeping the company of the elderly persons,” and “engaged in various types of gifts” (Van Loon 2003, 16). Illness results, for example, from “perverted, negative, and excessive use of time, intelligence, and sense objects” (Van Loon 2003, 16). Disturbance to this natural, reciprocal ecology, according to the Su- wen, could cause irreparable harm:

If one follows yin and yang, then life results; If one opposes them, then death results. If one follows them, then order results; If one opposes them, then disorder results. (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 56)

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4. Interbeing. Ayurveda and zhongyi both urge ever-higher realms of knowledge and enlightenment to attain and keep good health. This pursuit, moreover, calls for an enjoinment with Others rather than a Self-obsessed, individualistic regimen. Thich Nhat Hanh’s (1998) term “interbeing” (tiep hien) captures both concept and process succinctly.20 It updates the Buddhist tenet of codependent arising (pratītyasamutpāda) whereby a transsubjective fusion harmonizes “ourselves and nature . . . our own joy and the joy of others.”21 Buddhists describe this state of higher realization as “you are in me and I in you” (ni zhong you wo, wo zhong you ni). Table 2 summarizes these principles of and prescriptions from ayurveda and zhongyi.

Table 2. Principles and Prescriptions of Ayurveda and Zhongyi Principle Prescription

Site Balance Balance the masculine (purusha, yang) with the feminine (prakrti, yin), the hot with the cold, the hard with the soft, and so on Method Flows Unblock life’s essential vitality, energy, or force: jiva/ prana or qi Context Resonance The individual body must relate to its larger environment physically, aesthetically, and spiritually (e.g., chakras) Goal Interbeing Act on the mantra: “you are in me and I in you”

Diagnosis: What’s the Problem?

Seen through an ayurvedic/zhongyi lens, India-China’s border pathology resembles a personality disorder. The patient swings from one extreme, like the brutishness of border incursions, to its opposite, like the anxiety of a “trust deficit,” that further motivates expressions of (potential) brutishness through modernized militaries. These swings sometimes overlap, leading to stunted growth due to an inability to cooperate; moral alienation from a constant need to police borders; and sustained neurosis given declarations of friendship despite obvious mutual antagonisms. An ayurvedic/zhongyi course of treatment would seem relatively straight- forward: seek balance, release flows, identify resonances, and strive for inter-

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being. But is this enough? Ayurveda and zhongyi aim to rehabilitate the whole patient, not just its surface symptoms. After all, what is producing these symptoms? To answer, ayurveda/zhongyi must consider the patient’s larger context. For India-China, this means Westphalia World and its triangulation discourse of U.S.-India-China relations.22

Westphalia World and Triangulation Discourse

From an ayurvedic/zhongyi perspective, Westphalia World undermines India- China. Instead of relational balance, Westphalia emphasizes “great powers.” Why would “lesser” actors matter in a hierarchy of power? Rather than focusing on the particular characteristics of each patient and how these relate to universal principles, Westphalia World treats every “unit” (state) as identical, ranging from interests to desires to logics. All states seek power, Westpha- lia World believes, and in the same ways regardless of time, space, or culture. Politics in Westphalia World qualifies as a Great Game whereby elite men decide who is King and who is pawn. Resonance has no worth, not to mention an agenda for action. And Westphalia World cannot conceive of any alternatives to itself—especially one that involves systemic transformation like a civilizational version of interbeing. Triangulation discourse exemplifies Westphalia World for India and China. To date, the most comprehensive version comes from John Garver (2001, 2002). He follows Westphalia’s logic precisely:

1. Only “Great Powers” Matter. To Garver, India and China cannot have a relationship without the United States, the world’s remaining superpower. Nonetheless, he grants that each state jealously guards its self-enclosed, self-interested sense of sovereignty. These states, in fact, approximate autonomous individuals. For this reason, Garver often anthropomorphizes the state: for example, Washington or New Delhi or Beijing “thinks” or “believes” or “wants,” and so on. He also pays attention only to officials and their circles since they represent the state. Nothing else matters.23

2. All States Seek Power. Only military or economic capabilities, or both, count. These help to enhance the Self in defense against all Others. In triangulation, a bal-

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ance of power calculus renders each state anxious to prevent the other two parties from ganging up against it. But in the case of U.S.- India-China triangulation, Garver asserts, India and China worry about collusion more than the United States because they are the “weaker states” (Garver 2001, 6). The United States, in contrast, en- joys the privilege of pivoting the triangle due to its superpower status. For China, “[c]ooperation with the United States in the South Asian region would be a very big step toward the Chinese goal of being accepted as the peer of the United States as a global power” (Garver 2001, 50).

3. World Politics Is a Great Game. World politics constitutes a geopolitical “game” whose ultimate re- ward is national power/glory. The “rules” of the game are clear-cut and mutually understood. India and China play it “consciously and enthusiastically” (Garver 2001, 5). China may have a “historical des- tiny” to discover but to truly ascend to global hegemonic status, China needs to model itself after Europe and, in particular, that Teu- tonic mastermind of nation-building, “Iron Fist” Bismarck:

Unless China can produce a statesman closer to the caliber of Otto von Bismarck, the sine qua non of whose diplomacy was to keep Rus- sia, France, and Britain from uniting against Germany, the future may be gloomy, or to return to the narrower theme of this essay, align- ments within the new post-Cold War triangle may become rigid (Garver 2001, 56).

4. No Alternatives Are Possible. Occasional compromises can ameliorate immediate crises but these operate within a context of constant conflict and competition. All great powers, as John Mearsheimer has declared, “searc[h] for opportunities to gain power over their rivals, with hegemony as their final goal” (Mearsheimer 2001, 29). For this reason, the United States has nothing to worry about. As the world’s sole superpower, the United States remains majestically and singularly above petty power manipu- lations by Others. Preserving the status quo, then, offers the best option for all. Other Westphalians agree. They reinforce Garver’s triangulation

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scenario by dismissing any inherent integrity or substance to India- China relations and centering the decisive role and impact of the United States. Susan Shirk, for example, characterizes China as “smug” in its relations with India: “China does not consider India one of the important states in the world; India is simply not on Chi- na’s ‘radar screen’” (Shirk 2004, 75). The United States need not worry, Sumit Ganguly adds, Sino-Indian relations will remain “competitive”; they may “find occasions for cooperation [but] they will nevertheless be at odds on a number of issues” (Ganguly 2004, 124). Ganguly attributes their “deep-seated” discord to the 1962 border war, its “searing” memory on India’s side, and an insufficient stock of common interests to “bandwagon against the United States,” primarily due to “Chinese and Indian aspirations for leadership in Asia” (Ganguly 2004, 103). Richard Fontaine and Daniel Kliman add that India (along with Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey) serves “quintessentially” as a “global swing state” (Fontaine and Kliman 2013). Drawing on a concept from U.S. presidential politics, they define the “global swing state” as one that could tilt the scene toward or away from an incumbent but is committed to the system overall.24 Put differently, Fontaine and Kli- man see India as the perfect junior partner to U.S. hegemony; they propose a program of mutual national interest to uphold and service the “global order”: for example, managing developments in South- east Asia (especially Myanmar), joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean, and trade and investment agreements that comply with international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. In particular, Fontaine and Kliman caution against India “swing- ing” inward: “[It] would be inimical not only to the United States but to all countries that benefit from today’s international order.” Evidence of this potential inward shift, they claim, comes from a 2012 policy paper written by a group of leading Indian intellectuals and opinion leaders titled “NonAlignment 2.0” (Khilnani et al. 2012). What the United States needs to do, Fontaine and Kliman urge, is to continue “broadening [India’s] international hori- zons. . . . Over the long term, this investment promises to deliver a high geopolitical return.” Indeed, to Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu and Jing-dong Yuan, it was the West that brought India and China together in the first place:

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For two neighboring civilizations as old as China and India, there is remarkably little historical evidence of political interaction between them. . . . Ironically, it was the colonial experience and the exploitation of the sea routes by European powers that provided China and India with a common political history for the first time. (Sidhu and Yuan 2003, 9–10)

The two states on their own have nothing to offer each other. They remain “imprisoned by history” and “locked in an (in)security complex“ due to contending, geographically defined spheres of influence:

For New Delhi, its region of strategic concern (traditionally, South Asia, or southern Asia) “extends from the Persian Gulf in the west to across the Straits of Malacca in the east, and from the Central Asian Republics in the north to the equator in the South. . . . In contrast, Beijing has traditionally excluded itself from India’s strategic space and has narrowly confined South Asia to include only the SAARC countries. (Sidhu and Yuan 2003, 45)

Systemic Instability and Illness

To ayurveda and zhongyi, triangulation discourse induces instability and, therefore, illness. These stem from the following:

1. Imbalances. In prioritizing states—and the “great powers” among them— triangulation discourse disregards all nonstate, non-Westphalian relations that could have a mitigating or stabilizing effect. Any history, culture, economy, or other tie not identifiable within the Westpha- lian framework becomes marginalized, dismissed, or simply erased; it counts only as museumized history, lucrative ethno-tourism, or an idiosyncrasy (“local color”) from a bygone era. A particular kind of “postcolonial anxiety” (Krishna 2008) infects the postcolonial state, accordingly, when faced with this kind of structural stratification and competitiveness. The postcolonial state can never—and was never meant to—“catch-up” with the West, now led by the United States.25 A neurosis arises: Westphalians from outside the West continue to perpetuate its myths even at their own expense. The Sidhu-Yuan

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claim, for example, that the West brought India-China together simply defies history. Not only does this claim distort India-China’s rich mutual history, but it also contradicts the record of Westphalian interventions in the region. The West has consistently sought to subju- gate and divide these two ancient civilizations, culminating with the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century. As Rajiv Malhotra notes, when the Other allows the Western Self to mold it into what is “acceptable or familiar . . . colonization and cultural conquest” return anew (Malhotra 2011, 220).

2. Blockages. Five types of blockage ensue: (a) geographical, (b) historical, (c) cognitive, (d) intellectual, and (e) temporal. The first two reinforce each other, just as the third and fourth blockages mirror each other. All stunt growth. A geographical blockage comes from triangulation’s exclusive focus on military/economic capabilities. It obstructs the prana/jiva/qi of ancient India-China where long-standing flows of knowledge, arts, goods, and peoples have circulated across the Himalayas for over two millennia.26 A second, historical blockage links to the first: nonrecog- nition of similar flows between India-China and the U.S.-West (Frank 1998; Hobson 2004). The claim that the United States “pivots” India and China, because the latter need the former more than the other way around, denies this past history as well as the continued flow of contemporary trans-P acific relations (Prasad 2010; Kurtz-Phelan 2013). A cognitive blockage emerges: an inability by Westphalians, whether inside the West or outside it, to see the Other on its own terms. As noted by Kurian in chapter 3, many analysts in India and China suffer from such cognitive myopia. A related, normative blockage results: epistemic violence on subalterns by subalterns. For example, Fontaine and Kliman characterize India’s “NonAlignment 2.0” as a “report . . . that argue[s] for an inward turn” (National Bureau of Asian Research [NBR] for the Senate India Caucus July 2013). Yet nowhere in the document does such an argument appear. In fact, “Non- Alignment 2.0” echoes all those elements that could be found in a standard U.S. national security document: that is, commitment to the international order as defined by democracy, capitalism, and hu-

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man rights, representation by organizations like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, and supported by the sovereign state’s right to alternate “hard” power with “soft.” Where lies the “autonomy” in action or thought as suggested by the report’s title? In- deed, “NonAlignment 2.0” shows no indication of such given its en- trenchment in Westphalian norms, principles, institutions, and practices.27 These previous blockages reinforce a fifth, temporal one. It mani- fests both explicitly and implicitly. Explicitly, Westphalians truncate history to the present only or remember it selectively, as Garver and others have shown. Implicitly, Westphalians impute a temporal bias: all action must register an immediate impact; otherwise, it qualifies as ineffective or useless. Their notion of world politics as a “great game” serves as a prime example. Like chess, the “great game” demands immediate moves to counter those made by an opponent. An inability to do so indicates a lack of nerve, smarts, or ability, thereby ceding one’s advantage. Westphalians cannot allow policies to unfold incre- mentally and nondramatically so a more sustainable foundation for change can take place. But, as ayurveda/zhongyi instructs, neither good health nor good governance can proceed in haste.

3. Alienation. As triangulation discourse consistently fails to achieve its highest purpose—protection of the nation—while hiding this failure behind a cavalier gaming façade, alienation sets in. A well-known “insecurity dilemma” arises: attempts to ensure national security rationalize increases in defense spending that further aggravate national insecurity.28 The postcolonial state takes on an added layer of colonial race and gender with the insecurity dilemma. Internalized mimicries of Westphalian hypermasculine militarism rationalize the state’s resort to missiles and bombs, the secret service and domestic police.29 The postcolonial state ends up disaffecting its own people, particularly when they dissent and in border areas. These spaces doubly threaten the Westphalian state given their potential for domestic and transborder unrest.30 Top-down, centrally administered measures of discipline and control invariably result, intensifying systemic blockage and alienation.

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4. Systemic Neurosis. Because Westphalian IR tolerates no consideration of alternatives to its norms, policies, or institutions despite their obvious failures, the state withdraws into a narrow vision for its identity, people, and future. For India-China, we forget the critical role of learning and enlightenment in pre-Westphalian relations (T. Sen 2003, 2006a and b). Well documented in the Buddhist world, for example, are the accom- plishments of Xuanzang, a monk from seventh-century Tang China. He violated the emperor’s injunction against travel to the “West” (In- dia) to gather the Buddhist sutras. He explained why in a letter to a Himalayan king en route to India:

[W]henever I held a book to study it I was perplexed and felt at a loss to understand the meanings of the scripture I was holding in hand. . . . Although I knew that one could not examine the sky through a small tube, or measure the sea with a calabash shell, I still could not abandon my humble idea. Thus I made preparations and started on my journey. (Xuanzang, quoted in Śramaṇa Huili and Shi 1995, 34)

The monk’s dedication so impressed another king that he declared: “Since you [Xuanzang] have consented to be my brother, whatever we have in the country is our common property. There is no cause for you to thank me.” When Xuanzang insisted on continuing with his journey, the king and his court escorted the monk “for several tens of li” while “cry[ing] piteously” (Śramaṇa Huili and Shi Yan- cong 1995, 36). Sixteen years later, the monk sought to reenter China. He sent a letter to the Tang emperor begging for forgiveness. Xuanzang acknowledged his earlier transgression but justified it in terms of learning from the sutras. The emperor responded: “We are extremely happy to hear that the teacher is coming back after seeking the Way in foreign lands. He may come speedily to see us” (Śramaṇa Huili and Shi Yancong 1995, 169). In contrast, Westphalia World emphasizes greater Self- accumulations to guard against and compete with Others. Capital and goods, along with bombs and rockets, become the new markers of national success regardless of the nation’s, and the world’s, well-

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being. The environment may suffer, perhaps irreversibly, affecting all regardless of national borders, social class, or any other human construct. Yet state elites continue to maintain the same norms, policies, and institutions. Pathology takes over. In brief, triangulation discourse has not worked. It has not reduced tensions in the region nor does it have the capacity to transform the situation in any way. Instead, triangulation discourse reproduces the “problem” domestically and internationally, structurally and norma- tively. State elites, however, persist in triangulation discourse and its Westphalian presumptions: the state is the only actor in world politics, borders are fixed, history is singular, and all states play a “great game” of power politics. We need to cure ourselves of this self- fulfilling pathology. What would ayurveda/zhongyi recommend?

Recommendations for Therapy

Ayurvedic/zhongyi therapy for India-China would recommend simultaneous, coimplicated healing. In Daoist-zhongyi terms, this means addressing the yin-within-yang (India-China within Westphalia World) as much as the yang- within-yin (Westphalia World within India-China), in order to keep up with the dynamics of change between two, supposedly opposite, polar conditions: yin (India-China) and yang (Westphalia World). In Samkhya-ayur vedic terms, coimplicated healing requires keeping the three types of “humor” (doshas) in balance: peaceful, balanced sattva (historical, cultural India- China); active, dynamic rajas (competitive contemporary India and China), and dull, inert tamas (status quo narratives of “truth deficit” and “triangulation”). For both ayurveda and zhongyi, healing begins when the vital energy force—jiva/prana/qi—is stimulated and released so Life can resume flowing. Reconceptualizing borders-as-capillaries will help to do so:

1. Seek Balance. India and China must ground themselves internally to balance West- phalia’s hegemony externally. This means (re)valorizing pre- Westphalian philosophies like Samkhya/Daoism to (re)discover the complementarities that bind the two ancient civilizations despite the contemporary conflicts that push them apart. One source of comple-

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mentarity comes from India-China’s pre-Westphalian legacies.31 What Garver and other Westphalians refer to as the “deep-seated” hostility between India and China dates from 1962 only. It qualifies as a mere blink when compared to the two thousand years of interaction that have passed between Indians and Chinese as peoples, empires, and civilizations.32 As Paula Banerjee notes, the very same geography that Westphalians claim to divide India and China unites them through shared histories, cultures, and communities. “In fact, many of these tribes feel they have more in common with each other than with the nation-state of which they form a distant appendage” (Ba- nerjee 2010, 55–56).

2. Release Flows. India-China’s common borders and borderlands function like ayurvedic/zhongyi meridians: they activate, maintain, and regulate the various types of social intercourse that make a body politic (see chapters 1 and 2 in this volume). With borders and borderlands as “capillaries,” the governments of India and China could unleash the essential life force of contemporary globalized times: trade and commerce, tourism and investment, jobs and development. Such circulations include crossing metaphorical borders and borderlands through collective storytelling about selves and others.33 Borders and borderlands do not just carry the hard, “masculinized” currency of goods, capital, and labor; they also convey the soft, “feminized” collections of memory, identity, and social relations. Only by combining the two can an organic whole develop. Toward this end, analysts in India and China need to reappreciate the local and regional contexts of their respective states. Southeast Asia, in particular, debunks the myth of fixed borders separating one people from another; it bears long-standing histories of local mixing with both Indians and Chinese (chapter 5). Put differently, regional and subregional relations in Asia warrant as much attention as that given to extraregional powers like the United States or the European Union. Regional trans-subj ectivity or civilizational interbeing enables stakeholders to (re)center their interests on local communities rather than, as now, on ruling elites pursuing gains primarily to benefit the capital city (chapter 3). Additionally, an ayurvedic/zhongyi regimen would urge respect for the

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flow of time. That is, treatment necessarily involves patience. Solu- tions specific to the ailment require learning from trial and error. In this way, the path to recovery would not shock or harm the patient while, at the same time, establishing a lasting effect. Recent talks between India and China, for example, labeled the Working Mecha- nism for Consultation and Coordination (Sanjeev Sharma 2013), could serve as one venue for such low-key but highly productive collaboration for the long run.

3. Identify Resonance. As zhongyi tells us, the heart “rules” the body, just as in ayurveda, the heart chakra connects the lower concerns of safety, sexuality, and nourishment with the higher ones of creativity, intuition, and cosmic consciousness. Under triangulation discourse, the leaders of India and China can focus only on the lower three chakras: national security (safety), hypermasculine-militaristic posturing (sexuality), and economic development (nourishment). Neglected are the upper three chakras: possibilities for nonstate, noncorporate alternatives (creativity), transsubjective learning (intuition), and civilizational interbeing (cosmic consciousness). To connect the lower three chakras with their upper counterparts, India China can turn to a third source of complementarity: the Himalayas. This transborder region not only contains the “border problem” writ large (including Tibet and Kashmir) but it also bears other common, core concerns).34 Noted environmentalist Kawaljit Bawa and his cohorts contend: “[L]oss of biodiversity, increased pollution, and climate change [in the Himalayas] may have negative social and economic consequences and, even worse, escalate conflicts within and between [India and China]” (Bawa et al. 2010, 1457). But herein lies the purusha/yang-opportunity within the prakrti/yin-conflict. Compared to more complex political-military matters like the Line of Actual Control between India and China, Ti- betan independence, or Kashmiri demarcation, the environment offers a relatively open vista for collaborative problem-solving (Ling 2014a). More than simply an agenda item, the environment itself could present a new “standard of civilization” for IR/WP, previously re- served for the West/Westphalia only. Ayurveda/zhongyi as an approach to IR/WP may, in fact, resonate with the times. Alternative theory-building in the field is coming of

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age. No longer caught in Cold War bipolarity, theorizing in IR/WP has become more reflective, self-critical, and hybrid by loosening the shackles of a singular definition of “science” or “politics” or even “universalism” (Mupiddi 2004; Dallmayr and Manoochehri 2007; Tickner and Waever 2009; Forum, International Political Sociology 2009; Shogimen and Nederman 2009; Special Issue, Millennium 2011; Tickner and Blaney 2012; Ling, Messari, and Tickner, forthcoming). We may be entering what Patrick Thaddeus Jackson calls a “post-foundational IR” whereby the discipline can “abandon the fu- tile quest to articulate a single basis on which to produce knowledge” (Jackson 2011, 189). Politics across the globe affirms the need for these theoretical innovations. The vox populi emerging from Tahrir Square in Egypt to Gezi Park in Turkey to the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil represent only the latest demands for change from below and the margins. The status quo is no longer so status (Gill 2012). No less significant is the emergence of third-world capitalism through the rise of states like Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) along with indigenous movements in Venezu- ela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and other communities in Latin America that demand an alternative meaning to the state and its purpose (Ling 2014a). Nonetheless, ayurveda/zhongyi would caution against disregarding the tamas narratives of “trust deficit” and “triangulation.” Though a source of “inertia, dullness, sleep, [and] darkness,” these tamas narratives still require attention. As a new body politic is emerging between India and China so, too, its doshas are changing. As the peaceful, stable sattva of historical, cultural India-China interacts more with the active, dynamic rajas of competitive contemporary India and China, the old tamas narratives of “trust deficit” and “triangulation” will be operating in a new context—especially given the rise of a new consumerist middle class no longer beholden to the West either intellectually, economically, or technologically. A “trust deficit” may remain but who or what will be its target? Similarly, who or what will be “triangulated”?

Strive for Civilizational Interbeing. Here, ayurveda/zhongyi provides an unexpected insight when civilizational interbeing fails. Shortly after their respective states gained in-

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dependence from foreign powers, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Premier Zhou Enlai sought to withstand the Cold War with a unified India and China up until the eve of the 1962 border war. No need for Bismarckian genius, these postcolonial leaders understood all too well Westphalia’s power politics. Nehru held on to his vision of “Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai” (“India and China as brothers”) until the first shot was fired. Zhou Enlai worried about just such a schism between India and China three years before. “Unfortunately,” Zhou wrote to Nehru on 17 December 1959,

there are still not a few influential groups in the world who . . . are trying to poison the international atmosphere, continuing the cold war and creating tension to place barriers in the way of East- West talks; they are slandering the peace policy of the socialist countries and inciting discord between the Asian-African countries and socialist countries, so that they may profit thereby (Gov- ernment of India, quoted in Payal Banerjee 2007, 437–563).

As postcolonial states, India-China suffered from a fundamental misalignment between the international and the domestic. Postinde- pendence, nationalist leaders of former colonies proudly saw the postcolonial state as an undeniable repudiation of and protection from future foreign encroachments. In 1955, they proclaimed a third world, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Bandung, Indonesia. Their purpose: to resist Western imperialism’s second coming through the Cold War (Cho 2007; Tan and Acharya 2008). But the viability of the postcolonial state depended on Westphalian-reified borders and the inviolability of sovereignty. Any incursion would amount to a return to the postcolonial state’s previous condition of being labeled “sick,” “effeminate,” or, even more damningly, as Hegel put it, “outside of History.” Westphalia’s structural logic, in other words, prohibited then— and still does now—solidarity of any kind between states.35 Only tem- porary coalitions for power balancing could take place. The system’s grounding in Hobbesian competition and national self-int erest amid a supposed global anarchy militates against lasting commitments. For this reason, NAM deteriorated and India-China descended into war. As ayurveda/zhongyi has shown, India-China’s “border problem”

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symptomizes a deeper ailment, Westphalia World. This observation is not new. Others have made it before, particularly in light of the Cold War (Bhattacharjea 2002). What this chapter suggests as a remedy, however, differs epistemologically, not just substantively, from these previous analyses. That is, India and China alone cannot resolve the “problem.” To transform the current stalemate between them, analysts for India and China must look beyond Westphalian boundaries, both national and intellectual, practical and epistemological. This search entails finding the embedded complementarities within India and China despite the seeming conflicts and contradictions that keep them apart. Specifically, Indian and Chinese analysts must find the subjectivities that bind inside (“you are in me and I in you”) to reframe the larger context outside. The two domains must align for local changes to take root. Otherwise, India-China will continue to experience the failure of Bandung. Table 3 summarizes ayurveda/zhongyi’s diagnosis of triangulation discourse for India-China and their therapies for recovery.

C onclusion

In this chapter, I have applied the four therapeutic strategies identified with ayurveda/zhongyi: balance, flows, resonance, and interbeing. Altogether, they suggest the possibility of systemic transformation, not simply overthrow or replacement. Neither ayurveda nor zhongyi would sanction a whole- sale repudiation of Westphalia World.36 It is already deeply embedded within our political selves, both individually and collectively. Overthrow or replacement would cause another imbalance. Instead, ayurveda and zhongyi would advocate greater engagement with Westphalia World and its foremost representative narratives, the “trust deficit” between India and China and “triangulation” discourse for U.S.-India-China relations. But engagement must stem from balance and parity, not superiority or subordination. Indians and Chinese themselves must reconsider and value their own terms derived from their contexts, rather than constantly seeking to “catch-up” with the West/ Westphalia. Let us delay no longer. As the Suwen notes, treatment after the fact would be pointless:

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Table 3. India-China Border Pathology: Ayurvedic/Zhongyi Diagnosis and Therapy Symptoms Diagnosis Therapy

Dangerous mood Systemic Imbalances: Restore Balance: swings (1) Ex cessive attention to (1) balance the yang of Westphalia Westphalian norms, with the yin of India-China policies, institutions (2) Value local trans-subj ectivities, (2) Deficient attention to pre- activities, narratives, and Westphalian histories, cultures, philosophies economies, ties (3) Situate India-China within (3) Ex tracted from own context, Asian context as basis for new placed in artificial “triangle” definition of relations with the with the United States United States Stunted growth Blocked Flows: Treat Borders/Borderlands as (1) neglec t of historical flows “Capillaries”: of knowledge, goods, and (1) renew old flows peoples across the (2) include common stories/ Himalayas storytelling (2) denial of how India-China (3) enhance common stakeholding contributed to the West (4) remind Westphalians of the West’s own past relations with India-China Alienation Lack of Resonance: Find Complementarities: (1) “insecur ity dilemma” (1) focus on the “heart” of India (2) h ypocrisy: failure to achieve and China: Himalayas purpose (i.e., national (2) focus on concrete problem- protection) yet keep “gaming” solving: e.g., environmental attitude challenges (3) t hreatens domestic dissent, (3) release flows in borders and especially in borderlands borderlands Systemic neurosis Lack of Civilizational Inter-being: Reframe IR/WP: (1) insist on status quoeven when (1) learn from past mistakes conditions worsen (2) recognize “you are in me and I (2) narrow vision of Self and in you” and engage the West/ Others Westphalia on India-China ’s own terms and context (3) theorize IR/WP anew

Now, When drugs are employed for therapy only after a disease has become fully developed, When [attempts at] restoring order are initiated only after disorder has fully developed, This is as if a well were dug when one is thirsty,

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And as if weapons were cast when the fight is on. Would this not be too late, too? (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 57)

We ignore such wisdom at our peril.

Notes

. 1 I thank Boyu Chen, Christine Chin, Ching-Chane (Ginger) Hwang, Bridget Martin, Binoda K. Mishra, Peter Oviatt, and Patricia J. Robertson for their close readings of and helpful comments on this text. I bear full responsibility, however, for any errors within. 2. The Charaka Samhita defines ayurveda as “that which deals with good, bad, happy, and unhappy life, its promoters and non-promoters, measurement and nature” (Van Loon 2003). 3. Two characters comprise the term for traditional Chinese medicine. Many take “zhong” to refer to the tradition’s land of origin, zhongguo, translated as the Middle Kingdom or “China” in the West. But this term actually refers to the concept of the middle way, derived from Daoism and canonized in one of the Confu- cian classics, Zhongyong (The Doctrine of the Mean). “Yi” means to treat or cure. Hence, zhongyi literally conveys the notion of “curing through the middle way.” 4. Given the hegemony of Westphalian international relations/world politics, this application would shock national security elites in India and China as much as those in the West. At the same time, the principles of ayurveda and zhongyi would appeal as much to alternative thinkers in the West as to those in India and China. 5. The streets of Southeast and East Asia, for example, routinely sell herbal drinks to purge the body of accumulated heat, especially during the hot, humid summer months. Similarly, mothers in South Asia give neem juice to their chil- dren to prevent infections and other common childhood diseases. 6. At the same time, neither zhongyi nor ayurveda has remained immune from Western technology or biomedicine. Zhongyi is now often computerized and contemporary ayurveda constitutes a “hybrid” medical practice in many ways (Warrier 2011). I thank Peter Oviatt for this reference. 7. I thank Peter Oviatt for this reference. 8. In zhongyi, the heart “rules” the person like a benevolent king, assisted by the other major organs as its “twelve officials.” Other bodily sites function, for example, as “palaces” (fu) and “depots” (zang) to “levy/collect” (mu) or “transport/move” (shu) precious energy (qi); good health sometimes requires “guarding qi” (wei qi) with military-s tyle “camps” (ying/rong) (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 155). 9. Some scholars trace Indian and Chinese cultural relations to the twelfth century BCE based on common astronomical findings (Reddy 2002).

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10. Kapila is thought to have lived around sixth century BCE (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2014). 11. Laozi is variously identified as someone who lived in the sixth century BCE or serves as a composite of historical figures from the fifth to fourth centuries BCE. 12. The other classical text for ayurveda is the Susruta Samhita (circa third century AD). But since it focuses primarily on surgery, it is less useful for this chapter. 13. These dates indicate the earliest recorded references to these books. The knowledge contained within must have existed earlier. 14. Wuxing designates certain conditions and directions of change: wood (ger- minating), fire (growth), earth (nourishment), metal (ripening), and water (de- cay) (Unschuld and Tessenow 2011, 321). The mahabhutas indicate bodily functions: earth (smell), water (taste), fire (sight), air (touch), and space (sound) (Van Loon 2003, 21). 15. Warrier (2011, 82) cites Zimmerman in noting that “[a]yurvedic texts relied upon images derived from the plant kingdom, with networks of veins on a leaf, the rising of the sap, and milky exudations from resinous plants, providing models for the body.” 16. Daoist/Samkhya/Buddhist dialectics differs significantly from the Hege- lian/Marxian branch that emphasizes synthesis through overthrow or subsump- tion of one polarity by the other. Cheng (1977, 25–5 9) has a comparison of these dialectical traditions. 17. These circulations reflect all the dialectical interplays that make the world: for example, between the general (e.g., Nature) and the particular (e.g., person), the mundane (e.g., herbs) and the aesthetic (e.g., music), the sacred (e.g., rituals) and the secular (e.g., charity), the masculine (i.e., yang, purusha) and the feminine (i.e., yin, prakrti). 18. In other words, people did not seek sophisticated things as a way of life (author’s interpretation). 19. People did not envy one another’s station in society (author’s interpretation). 20. He uses two Chinese characters (xiang ji) to convey “interbeing.” In Viet- namese, these characters are read as tiep hien. Tiep means “being in touch with” or “continuing” and hien, “realizing” or “making it here and now.” 21. Thich Nhat Hanh describes interbeing in three main steps: (1) “get[ting] out of our shell” to be in touch with an all-encom passing reality that includes the “animal, vegetable, mineral realms” so that (2) we may continue the enlightenment “started by the Buddhas and bodhisattvas who preceded us” in order to (3) attain a transformative realization toward harmony “between ourselves and nature, between our own joy and the joy of others” (Nhat Hanh 1998, 3–5). 22. Particularities may vary but U.S. foreign policy regarding India and China all plays variously along one common theme: how to counter one Asian giant, China, with another, India. See, for example, Bader (2014). 23. Garver records state visits by high-le vel leaders among the three states like

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Nehru, Deng Xiaoping, Bill Clinton, Indira Gandhi, and Jiang Zemin, focusing on state issues like “the India-China border dispute, establishing nuclear deter- rents, the war on terrorism, relations with Pakistan, and political and economic influence in the South Asia-Indian Ocean region” (Garver 2001, 5). 24. “Global swing states are nations that possess large and growing economies, occupy central positions in a region or stand at the hinge of multiple regions, and embrace democratic government at home. Increasingly active at the regional and global level, they desire changes to the existing international order but do not seek to scrap the interlocking web of global institutions, rules, and relationships that has fostered peace, prosperity, and freedom for the past six decades” (Fon- taine and Kliman 2013). 25. More half a century after decolonization, the U.S.-West still appoints itself “tutor” to the rest of the world. See, for example, Ikenberry and Slaughter (2006). 26. For a brief sample, see Roy (2013), Tan and Geng (2005), and T. Sen (2003). 27. A similar critique applies to the so-called Chinese School of IR. See Ling (2016). 28. Labeled the “insecurity dilemma,” this vicious cycle has been well studied. See, for example, Herz (1950) and Job (1992). 29. For an analysis of the race and gender implications of triangulation discourse, see Ling, Hwang, and Chen (2010). 30. In the United States, for example, border states like Arizona, Texas, and California are far more vocal and active in their conservatism about immigration from Mexico than more centrally located states like Ohio, Louisiana, or Missis- sippi. 31. This is beginning to happen in China in social theory. See, for example, Y. Zhang (2010). The Subaltern Studies Group started this process for South Asia in the 1980s, primarily regarding history. 32. For a succinct summary of this relationship, see Deepak (2012). 33. For an example, see chapter 8 of Ling (2014a). 34. See, for example, Chellaney (2011). 35. Waltz (1979) referred to this logic as structural ordering without an orderer. 36. Note, for example, acupuncture’s protocol for treating addiction. Acupunc- turists target those organs and subjective factors that contribute to the addiction—for example, the mind and the spirit (heart), sympathy (nervous system), depression and anxiety (lungs), and rage/anger (liver)—rather than behav- ioral dysfunctions such as cravings, impairments, recklessness, and so on. For more, see the website for the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association. See also Jordan and Tu (2008). I thank Melanie Katin for these references.

Conclusion

What’s Ahead: India-China in the World

Borderlands Study Group

This volume began with the mainstream’s question for India and China: “Who will win?” By now, it should be apparent that this question—and the political, economic, and epistemic infrastructure behind it—enables only national and corporate elites to win. The chapters have demonstrated that mainstream IR, rooted as it is in Westphalia World, cannot acknowledge the main arguments in this book:

1. India China are civilizational twins with common historical, cultural, religious, and political legacies despite a daunting physical geography between them (chapter 1); 2. The 1962 border war has not succeeded in eradicating the deep cross- border relations that prevail in the India-China borderlands, making regional integration a logical, not just a political or economic, neces- sity (chapter 2); 3. Along with concrete policy actions, we need to foster a subregional discourse with its own lexicon for dialogue, and doing so requires break- ing away from Westphalia World’s epistemic constraints (chapter 3); 4. One way to begin is by engaging in a cross-border, cross-national chat: it addresses how borderland communities, along with regional NGOs, can contest collusion between national-cor porate interests in exploit- ing local resources, as demonstrated by large-scale hydro-po wer projects in both India and China (chapter 4); and,

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5. We can draw on India-China’s ancient archives of knowledge— ayurveda and zhongyi are just two examples—to heal the scars of 1962 (“trust deficit”).

Given the above, we pose a different question: “How can India-China contribute to a better world?” The question requires us to rethink borders and security in theory and practice. We propose the following conceptual and prescriptive innovations:

1. Borders-as-Capillaries. Of critical significance is our concept of borders-as-capillaries. That is, we conceptualize borders as fluid, mobile conveyors of life. Physical arteries pass along peoples, goods, technology, and capital. But life requires nonmaterial assets as well: for example, memories, identities, beliefs, and social relations in general. Our concept of borders-as- capillaries recognizes both as integral to—indeed, defining of—the body politic.

2. Generative Security. Borders-as-capillaries disentangles security from a preoccupation with the national/international to engagements with the local/regional. Elites in the capital can no longer claim exclusive rights to defining security or what it claims to protect. National goals and aspirations must also come from local communities, especially those most affected in the borderlands. Formal differences in national institutions, such as India’s democracy and China’s single-party rule, matter little when faced with global-cor porate capitalist interests. With borders-as-capillaries, local communities are empowered to claim their centrality in national strategies, thereby generating security from inside and below.

3. Interconnected, Dynamic Borderlands. Cross-border connections and dynamics endure, especially if they have transpired over millennia. Indeed, no borderland could sustain itself totally on its own—or desire to—given its location. Our perspective applies to “borders” and “borderlands” of all types: for example, between ideas and institutions, state and society, elites and masses,

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today and yesterday. Each domain in-between is rife with possibilities for creativity and transformation, prompting a “new border imaginary” of both substance and episteme.

4. Grassroots Democratization and Institutionalization. A newfound sense of agency arises. And with it comes an organic process of democratization stemming from the grass roots. In shifting analytical and prescriptive attention from fixed borders to fluid borderlands, borders-as-capillaries compel national and corporate elites to share, not just impose, plans for local development. Drawing on zhongyi and ayurveda, for example, we can reimagine development as releasing all that borderlands have to offer. Indeed, the sheer mean- ingfulness of borderland flows may repair the border pathology that has plagued India and China from 1962 to the present.

Epistemic insights account for these innovations:

1. Ancient ↔ Contemporary. Only by linking the ancient with the contemporary could we see borders in action as capillaries. Otherwise, we remain hostage to West- phalia World’s presentism: it eternalizes a convenient moment in Western history (e.g., colonialism) or philosophy (e.g., Immanuel Kant’s treatment of the Other) as a universal standard for all, distort- ing in the process an accurate understanding of the West itself, not to mention what it labels the Other. Puncturing this myth frees every party involved to identify itself anew and in relation to others. One of the benefits of history—especiall y millennial history—is that it shows how one society invariably adapts to and learns from another, not just to survive, but also to thrive.

2. Norms ↔ Policy. Likewise, explicating the norms behind policy exposes what really takes place for whom and why. It unravels Westphalia’s ruse of policy making as an “objective,” “rational” process undertaken for the “public good.” Accordingly, subalterns can participate along with elites in deciding stakes and benefits. Politics thus proceeds more transpar- ently, giving members a more sustainable sense of security. Internally

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grounded and self-generated, it lasts longer than security that is imposed from the top (e.g., elite rule) or imported from outside (e.g., liberal democracy).

3. Culture ↔ State. Recognizing how culture and the state construct each other returns IR to what Paul Feyerabend (1999) called a “richness of being.” It does so in two senses: (1) we retrieve the state from mainstream IR’s deadening characterization of it as a “unit” in an interstate system differentiated only in terms of military or economic capability, and (2) we retrieve social science from a similar deadening parsimony whereby “objective” reality can be explored with the presumption that “thoughts, perceptions, memories” are “given” rather than “idiosyn- cratic and deceptive” (Feyerabend 1999, 15–16). In recalling “richness” to social science, we can conceive of both India-China and theory-building as dynamically interconnected borderlands—and all the “richness of being” this would bring in turn.

4. Development ↔ Power. Lastly, realizing the relationship between economic development and institutions of power makes both possible. That is, we do not feel fooled by the liberal promise that development enhances local empowerment when elites clearly appropriate the major share of benefits. Nor are we blinded by the Marxist charge that only elites benefit since development does have ripple effects, as demonstrated most recently by a middle class in India and China where none had existed before (albeit with rising income inequality). Instead, positing an in- timacy between development and power gives us a means of negotiating between them. Aided by a corresponding awareness of the relationship between norms and policy, mentioned above, stakeholders can juxtapose plans for development with institutions of power so each must respond to the other. In this way, we may design accountability into the process rather than use it as a hammer to pound integrity into place after the fact.

Each of the above wedges open political and epistemic space in Westpha- lia World. A profound change in global norms emerges as a consequence.

Conclusion 131

Change in Global Norms

Westphalia World’s white hypermasculinity as the standard for all begins to disintegrate. Borders-as- capillaries democratizes IR by crossing and blurring Westphalia’s exclusivist colonial binaries. To begin with, borders-as- capillaries addresses “postcolonial insecurities” (Krishna 1999). No longer subject to the demands of “securing borders” as a sign of manly nationalism, the postcolonial state now has the epistemic space to define itself and on its own terms. Especially important is an inquiry into how borders and borderlands were handled before Westphalia. In ancient Siam, for instance, borders indicated a zone of negotiation rather than a fixed line; overlapping sovereignties ensured local communities of multiple sources of protection from nearby kings rather than, as the British later sought to correct, a maddening condition of native ambiguity (Winichakul 1994). Similarly, Ling (2003) reminds us that borders signified something quite different elsewhere in other times. When Meiji Japan opted to Western- ize in the nineteenth century, for example, Qing China regarded the act as a “betrayal” between two “brush-talking” (bitan) cousins, even though no changes in physical boundaries had taken place. Such an internal inquiry applies externally as well. With greater onto- logical parity between the “West” and the “Rest,” old binaries could turn into new sites of engagement. Notions of a white, manly West that is needed to lead, if not supervise, an infantile or feminized Rest fail to persuade. IR concepts, specifically, and the production of knowledge, generally, will have to consider how the “West” and the “Rest” construct each other—and have done so for a long time. Reappreciating India-China as ancient archives of knowledge offers one step in the right direction. This does not mean a simplistic return to or dupli- cation of the past. Certainly, the past carries enough mistakes and destruc- tions of its own to caution against repetition. Rather, what we propose is to learn creatively from the past so we can better prepare for the future. How do we start?

Decolonizing IR

To work, our approach depends on a simultaneous double move. That is: (1) we must “de-colonize” (qu zhiming), “de-im perialize” (qu diguo), and “de-

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Cold War” (qu lengzhan) our thinking about IR and world politics (Chen 2007), and (2) we must offer concrete, feasible alternatives to Westphalian power politics, not just a set of fine critiques. But herein lies the rub: (2) largely depends on (1). That is, an alternative world politics can only come from an alternative episteme. IR needs to catch up intellectually with what is already happening on the ground, as exemplified by the “rise” of India- China in the first place and the enduring legacy of India-China. Put differently, we need to decolonize from Westphalia World. The first step requires recognizing and dismantling its in-built binaries.

Westphalia’s Binaries

Westphalia World is not just a self-generating system or structure (Waltz 1979; Hardt and Negri 2000). Nor is it simply a global consensus formed by rational, enlightened members of the “international community” (Keohane [1984] 2005; Ikenberry 2011). Rather, Westphalia World enacts a normative order that entails three interrelated binaries: (1) hypermasculine center vs. feminized, infantilized periphery, (2) pristine whiteness vs. degenerate hybridity, and (3) outside, Eurocentric expertise vs. local, traditional knowledge. These binaries operate, moreover, in a hierarchy. The first term always supersedes the second in desirability, effect, and even morality. Governance in the Westphalian state serves as a prime example. It ra- diates outwardly from a national center to the “water’s edge” or some other bordered periphery. Considered an efficient form of state management, Westphalian governance effectively strips borderland communities of their histories, functions, and identities. Consequently, these turn into the spatial equivalent of the hysterical female: they are “slippery spaces” that are “unstable, ephemeral,” “remote,” “elsewhere,” “uncom- fortable,” and “dangerous” (Hayter, Barnes, and Bradshaw 2003, 17). Logic demands manly control, if not supervision, through territorial patrols, enforcement, and enclosures. After all, only “large metropolitan areas” qualify as sites “where creativity thrives” (Hall and Donald 2009, 2). Any kind of problem-solving requires outside “experts,” equipped with a manly toolkit borrowed from the West and parachuted in, equally in manly style, from the national center or another capital. Local knowledge, typically conveyed through stereotypical images of women gather- ing herbs, does not and cannot qualify as expertise; it is too “unreliable” (Shiva 1993). With such dismissal, Westphalian governance infantilizes

Conclusion 133

borderlands. They can no longer claim a status of their own—or the agency that comes with it. Furthermore, Westphalian governance casts borderlands as inherently inward, stagnant, and closed. If any “mixing” occurs, then it must be degenerate or salacious in nature. Hybridity has taken on a sinister connotation in borderlands since colonial conquest, the Westphalian state’s first “international” mission, imposed civilizational whiteness on the rest of the world (Memmi [1957] 1991; Fanon 1967). Representing all that is pure and pristine, modern and civilized, whiteness exiled anything smacking of cross- fertilization as tainted and backward, if not mysterious, and possibly evil. Popular culture has enshrined this image for the “border town.” Iconic is Orson Welles’s 1958 film, Touch of Evil. In the famous, uninterrupted, three- minute-long shot of the opening scene, the viewer travels visually from the “organized,” “safe” U.S. side to the “sleazy,” “crime-infested” Mexican border town with Welles himself playing a Mexican cop who is physically and mor- ally disgusting. Most depictions of borderlands, in fact, evoke fear and loath- ing precisely due to its “disturbing” liminality. Roman Polanski’s 1974 film, Chinatown, extends this image to ethnic enclaves or internal border towns. The film has nothing to do with Chinatown itself but uses its associated sense of opaque unease represented by “China” and “Chinese immigrants” to signify corruption, murder, and incest among ruling whites in Los Angeles. “Forget it, Jake,” the movie’s final line concludes. “It’s Chinatown.” Cosmopolitan elites from outside the West also resort to these images to depict interior spaces or minority populations, or both. Ma Jingle’s 2009 film,Mulan , retells the story of the famous woman general, Hua Mulan (circa 6 AD), who battled “barbarians” on the frontier of the Han empire. The film depicts the Other in almost exactly the same terms as those of Western colonizers for the nonwhite “savage”: that is, they are backward, cruel, coarse, and unredeemable. Similarly, Deepa Mehta’s 1996 film, Fire, may have revo- lutionized Indian film by focusing on a lesbian love affair between two lonely sisters-in-law. But the film perpetuates racial and sexual stereotypes for a Chinese female character: she has so beguiled one of the wayward husbands that his neglected wife turns to lesbianism for consolation (Payal Banerjee 2007). Yet borderlands have always reached outward, rendering them a sophisticated mix of peoples, languages, and beliefs. Note the border regions abut- ting China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India’s Northeast. The ethnic makeup of its peoples reflects centuries-old processes of commingling

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and cross-migrations. History tugs powerfully here, blurring geography with languages and religions. The Hmong-Khmer and Tibeto-Burman family of languages is spoken across Southeast Asia, southern China, and Northeast India. Various religions have metamorphosed, also, as traders and pilgrims alike crossed borders and then returned, enriched with local flavors. In fact, whenever the state closes its borders, other, more informal channels of exchange open up. Borders daily bear witness to a multiplicity of crossings that, though “unofficial” or “illegal,” are very much real in every sense to the people who live and work there. The border is far from the hypermasculine line of control that the center or capital constructs it to be. Indeed, for the locals, living on the borderlands gives lie to the Westphalian myth of borders as fixed and containable. Borders are, instead, highly mobile and liminal. The border is invisible to many locals, for instance, because their transactions often escape state control; yet, at the same time, the border is integral to their lives due precisely to such activities. As van Schendel (2005, 202) notes, border regions resonate with stories of how unsuccessful states are in “enclosing people bent on crossing.” Westphalia’s episteme prohibits us from recognizing this kind of substantive difference on its own terms. “Monopolies of knowledge” (Innis 1950) take root whereby certain kinds of knowledge are privileged while others are sidelined. These constitute “epistemological silos” with their own disciplinary baggage of cognitive frames, research questions, and different bench- marks of what they seek to include and exclude by way of methodological assumptions. These individual epistemologies are not unlike disciplinary turf battles that result in reifying and defending knowledge production. Lack of a common language prevails and becomes the norm. What passes in the name of interdisciplinary research is often a “stapling together” of individual research outputs. This “territorial trap” (Agnew 1994) in thinking and doing prohibits new ways of being and relating. In short, we are ready for a non-Eurocentric, post-Westphalian IR.

Non-Eurocentric, Post-Westphalian IR

That today the Himalayan region encompasses two major states—India and China—is a rather recent and externally imposed development. So, too, is the fact that these two polities have come to vary widely in systems of political representation, mechanisms for voicing public opinion, and laws and

Conclusion 135

regulations dealing with civil dissent. Westphalians usually cite these features as evidence of an inherent incompatibility between India and China. We do not deny these differences. What this volume highlights, instead, is that a capillaric India-China still lives within India and China, even under conditions of nationalistic competition for corporate globalization. We highlight India-China not to indulge in romantic nostalgia. Rather, this notion helps us realize a significant means to contemporary economic and political development. Indeed, rumors abound of a new Great Game between India and China (Laruelle et al. 2010; Myint-U 2011; North 2011; Dalrymple 2014). As of this writing, the New York Times trumpets a headline on its front page: “China’s Global Ambitions, Cash and Strings Attached” (Krauss and Bradsher 2015). But upon closer review, we find cooperation between India and China alongside the usual competition for land, labor, and resources. These include collaborations on regional trade and commerce (Panda 2014); climate change, especially regarding the circumpolar Arctic (Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India 2009; S. Chaturvedi 2013, 2014); global governance (Narlikar 2013; Kahler 2013); and developments at third-par ty sites like Silicon Valley and Dubai (Byrne 2011). A BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Development Bank offers further opportunities for collaboration (Abdenur 2014). The China Institute of International Studies, a think tank for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, calls for “new thinking” to “balance” Sino-Indian relations with an emphasis on “pragmatic” and “rational” interests (Lan 2013). Equally significant, an inside-out intellectual movement is emerging. Historian Wang Hui, for example, questions some of the basic assumptions and categories that Western knowledge, especially social science, has perpe- trated on other societies and cultures. Even the category of Asia, he notes, requires reimagining. To capture “the idea [of Asia],” Wang suggests, we need to see it not only as a piece of geography with a specific culture and history but also as a constant dynamic of creation produced by seemingly opposite forces. That is, Asia “is at once colonialist and anticolonialist, conservative and revolutionary, nationalist and internationalist, originating in Europe and, alternatively, shaping Europe’s image of itself” (Hui 2011, 59). Given this context, he asks:

In an era in which the nation-state has become the dominant political structure, will the traditional Asian experiences of various types of communica-

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tion, coexistence, and institutions provide possibilities with which to overcome the internal and external dilemmas brought about by the nation-s tate system? (Hui 2011, 59)

In India, the Subaltern Studies Group has long pioneered an interrogation and reframing of knowledge production. Since the 1980s, the group has produced, in particular, a postcolonial understanding of politics and history that reveals the colonial conditions that persist despite the formal ending of the colonial state, accounting for, among other things, different types of nationalism in former colonies (Chatterjee 1993; Bhabha 1994; Chakrabarty 2007). Entering IR in the early part of the twenty-first century, postcolonial studies now reconstitutes the field along similar lines. IR can no longer erase colonialism and imperialism—or, for that matter, issues of race and gender— from world politics (Ling 2002; Chowdhry and Nair 2002; Seth 2013; Vitalis 2015). Nor is the field content with mere critique and deconstruction. Post- colonial scholars now seek to rearticulate and reconstruct IR by acknowledging contributions from the previously silenced, marginalized, and exiled. For instance, L. H. M. Ling (2014) draws on Daoist dialectics to reenvision IR as a dynamic between the yang-“West” and the yin-“Rest” as a means of turning world politics away from hegemony and violence and toward balance and engagement. To “unlearn” colonial/imperial power relations, Pinar Bil- gin and L. H. M. Ling broaden the definition of “Asia” to include its Mediter- ranean and Arab/Islamic components (Bilgin and Ling 2014). Not only does such work query, “What is Asia?” It also asks: What is “the West”? (Special Issue, Millennium 2011; Shilliam 2011; Buzan and Acharya 2010; Schouen- berg, forthcoming). “The time of sahibs and munshees is over!” Amitav Acharya declared as incoming president of the International Studies Association in March 2014. The first nonwhite male president in ISA’s fifty-fiv e-year history, Acharya analogized the world’s largest organization for the study of world politics to a British college established in nineteenth-centur y Calcutta. The college referred to the British professors as sahib, given their status as lordly purveyors of knowledge. The Indian instructors, in contrast, were called munshee, to designate their status as native language teachers or secretaries to Europeans. IR will no longer mirror this kind of colonial knowledge production, Acha- rya underscored. IR will globalize. “It’s no longer your mentor’s ISA,” someone remarked in the audience after Acharya’s speech. We add: it’s no longer your mentor’s India and China, either.

Conclusion 137

India-China and the World

Security eludes Westphalia World precisely due to borders. It uses borders to control security but ends up, more frequently than not, with uncontrollable insecurity. Because Westphalia World robs borders of any flexibility in meaning, security turns into something absolute, exclusionary, and inflamma- tory. The state invariably militarizes, calling for “sacrifices” (usually borne by the masses) to satisfy “priorities” (usually to the benefit of elites). These ex- penditures can only spiral higher over time as neighboring states regard such border enforcement, no matter how “defensive” in nature, with suspicions that escalate easily into hostility and then into their own militarization. Af- ter all, “national security” trumps all. Westphalia World thus condemns us to a self-fulfilling prophecy of living and dying by power politics only. Such is the “tragedy” of Westphalia (Mearsheimer 2001). With borders-as-capillaries, we can reset this scenario. It helps us consider borders and security as policy and episteme. Different cases may push us to act differently but we cannot cease reproducing the same old problems until we think differently. Using substance to engage episteme helps to interrogate and problematize both. Research can now place hitherto missing issues like borderlands onto the agenda so that local communities—like the rest of us—can, once again, imagine their/our own futures. It is in this dual sense of being that India-China links to the world: what exists “out there” in terms of what we experience relates to and reflects what’s “in here” in terms of how we think. To transition from Westphalia’s “tragedy,” then, we need to embrace borders-as-capillaries. India-China, in short, is not just for India and China—it is also for the world.

Maps

Ling, L.H.M. India China: Rethinking Borders and Security. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.6577564. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Ling, L.H.M. India China: Rethinking Borders and Security. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.6577564. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages

Map 1. Tea Horse Road

Map 2. Stilwell Road Ling, L.H.M. India China: Rethinking Borders and Security. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2016, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.6577564. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Revised Pages

Map 3. BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar)

Map 4. New Silk Road

Map 5. Pilgrimage Road to Kailash

Map 6. Nu River, Yunnan Province

Map 7. Teesta River, Sikkim

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Author Biographies

Adriana Erthal Abdenur is a Fellow, Instituto Igarapé, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Dr. Abdenur’s research and teaching focus on the politics of the Global South, especially the role of South-Sout h cooperation in development and security. Recent publications include articles in Global Governance, Third World Quarterly, Global Society, IDS Bulletin, Africa Review, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and the Journal of Asian Studies. Dr. Abdenur is a former Fulbright Research Grant recipient, and she is coeditor, with Tom Weiss, of Emerging Powers at the UN (Routledge, 2015).

Payal Banerjee is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Smith College, Massachusetts. Her current research includes three projects: Indian immigrant IT workers in the United States; Chinese minorities’ citizenship and belonging in India’s post Sino-Indian War (1962) era; and the convergence of green growth and hydroelectric power projects in the northeastern Himalayas in India. Collectively, this work focuses on the many expressions of North-South relations, the transnational political economy of migration, immigrant experiences, and the centrality of state policies in sculpting the structures of exclusions and displacement. Banerjee’s work on globalization, labor, and Indian immigrant IT workers in the United States has appeared in other edited volumes and in Critical Sociology, Race, Gender, and Class, Inter- national Feminist Journal of Politics, Irish Journal of Anthropology, Women’s Stud- ies Quarterly, Social & Public Policy Review, and Man in India. Her research on Chinese minorities in India and India-China relations has been published in Huaqiao Huaren Lishi Yanjiu (Overseas Chinese History Studies), Security and Peace, and China Report. Her recent articles on the political economy of sustainable development and hydropower projects in India appeared in Percep- tions and as a UNRISD Occasional Paper. Banerjee has been a research fellow

171

172 author biographies

at the BRICS Policy Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has taught at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School in New York City, and in India at Sikkim University in Gangtok and at FLAME in Pune, as visiting faculty.

Nimmi Kurian is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi, India, and India Representative, India China Institute, The New School, New York. She is part of the Asian Borderlands Research Initiative, a network of scholars interested in the reconfiguration of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of borderlands. She has also been part of the BCIM Forum since 1999, an international Track-II initiative to promote subregional cooperation among India’s Northeast, Chi- na’s Southwest region, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Her research interests include border studies, India-China borderlands, approaches to regionalism, and transborder resource governance, particularly water. Her recent work includes subregional debates on sustainable development; prospects for institution building on transboundary waters; and accountability debates in India and China. Professor Kurian is the author of The India China Border- lands: Conversations beyond the Centre (Sage, 2014).

Li Bo is a part-time consultant for environmental grant-making in China and chief editor of the Green Cover Book: Annual Review of China’s Environ- ment, a Chinese publication. At the same time, he runs a small organic farm by Lake Huron in Canada. He is the former Director of Friends of Nature, the oldest environmental nongovernmental organization in China. In addition, he has served as a consultant with the Stockholm Environmental Institute– Asia in Bangkok, Conservation International, and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund; a research associate at the Center for Human and Eco- nomics Development Studies at Peking University; and an adjunct researcher of environmental justice at the Institute of Environmental Laws at Zhong- nan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, central China. As a fellow at the India China Institute, Li explored the possibilities of democratic decision making at the grassroots level toward strong local stewardship of natural resource management and sustainable livelihood.

Mahendra P. Lama is a Professor in the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, India. He has been Chair- person, Centre for South, Central, Southeast Asia and South West Pacific

author biographies 173

Studies at the School of International Studies at JNU, a Ford Foundation Fel- low at Notre Dame University, and a Visiting Professor at Hitotsubashi Uni- versity in Japan. Professor Lama was also the Founding Vice Chancellor of the newly established Central University of Sikkim and became the youngest head of a National University in India. He is presently India’s representative in the Eminent Persons Group set up by the two prime ministers of India and Nepal in 2016. He also served as the chief economic advisor in the Govern- ment of Sikkim with a cabinet minister rank from 2000 to 2007 and as a member of the prestigious National Security Advisory Board of the Govern- ment of India. Till very recently he was the Pro Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, which is the world’s largest educational institution in the arena of open and distance learning. He was nominated by the government of India as a member of the Steering Committee of the coveted South Asian Forum set up by the Heads of the States and Governments in the 16th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit in Thimphu in 2010. He has been nominated by the President of India to the highest executive boards of various leading institutions of India including IGNOU, North East Hill University, National Council of Educational Research and Training, and Hyderabad University. Central to his intellectual pursuits is the development, cooperation, and integration in South and Southeast Asia and the Northeast region and hills and mountain areas of India. Besides authoring and editing twenty-tw o books, he has extensively worked on issues of energy, trade, investment and energy cooperation, sustainable development, migration, refugees and human security in South Asia. He is widely considered the architect of reopening trade in 2006 between Sikkim in India and the Tibet Autonomous Region in China along the traditional Nathu la route after forty-f our years of a closed border.

L. H. M. Ling is a Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City. She is the author of four books: Postcolonial International Rela- tions: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West (2002), Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Worlds (coauthored with A. M. Agath- angelou, 2009); The Dao of World Politics: Towards a Post-Westphalian, World- ist International Relations (2014); and Imagining World Politics: Sihar & Shenya, a Fable for Our Times (2014). Professor Ling is also editor or coeditor of the following anthologies: Theorizing International Politics from the Global South: Worlds of Difference (coedited with Nizar Messari and Arlene B. Tickner, Rout-

174 author biographies

ledge, forthcoming), Asia in International Relations: Unlearning Imperial Power (coedited with Pinar Bilgin, Routledge, forthcoming), Four Seas to One Fam- ily: Overseas Chinese and the Chinese Dream (coedited with Tan Chung, Beijing Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2015). Professor Ling’s articles have appeared in various journals and anthologies. Since 2014, Professor Ling has served as coeditor with John M. Hobson (University of Sheffield) for a new book series, “Global Dialogues: Developing Non-Eur ocentric Interna- tional Relations and International Political Economy,” at Rowman & Little- field International.

Index

1962 border war, 40, 112, 121, 127 Cherrapunji, 40 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, 40, 43 China-India trade, 32 China-Pakistan, 39, 43, 149 Abraham bin Yiju, 8 China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, 39, 43, ancient Silk Road, 20 149 Asian Development Bank, 10, 97 China threat, 34 Autonomous Region, 20, 31,32, 41, China’s Western Development Strategy, 51,83,163, 170 62 Ayurveda, 3, 6, 102,103, 104, 105, 106, 107, Chinese and Indian isolationism, 22 109, 110, 113, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, Chinese Communist Party, 44, 45 124, 125, 128, 129, 160, 165, 166 civilizational twins, 6, 127 Climate change, 19, 69, 70, 73, 79, 81,84, Bay of Bengal, 31, 39, 78 96, 97, 99, 119, 135, 158 BCIM, 3, 39, 43, 47, 57, 78, 139, 155, 165, 169 Cold War, 44, 111, 120, 122, 132, 142, 150, BIMSTEC. See Multi- Sectoral Techno- 167 Economic Cooperation, bin Laden, 14 colonial binaries, 134 biocultural landscape, 73 commissioner Lin Zexu, 9 biodiversity, 40, 53, 67, 70, 71, 73, 82, 83, 99, Confederation of Indian Industry, 34 158 conservation, 68, 70, 71, 73, 79, 84, 96, 169 Bolor, 24 cosmopolitan hubs, 23 border as a securitized space, 62 counterintuitive strategy, 3 borderlands, 4, 5, 11, 14, 17, 21, 25, 26, 29, cross-border exchange, 20, 40 30, 31,32, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 48, 50, 53, cross-disciplinary, 67, 73, 74 55, 56, 60, 62, 65, 67, 69, 72, 75, 78, 80, 92, 93, 96, 123, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, Dalai Lama, 11, 29, 30, 63 134, 137, 155, 169 Dali, 26, 38, 53 border problem, 10, 11, 103, 119, 121 Dam building, 81, 82, 84, 92, 99, 153, borders-as- capillar ies, 2, 15, 16, 17, 39, 55, dam construction. See Dam building 56, 117, 128, 129, 131, 137, Daoism, 6, 103, 105, 106, 117, 124, breakneck transformation, 38 Daoist dialectics, 19, 136 BRICS, 4, 19, 120, 135, 142, 168, 169 Decentering governance, 72 Buddhism, 6, 22, 106, 160, 162 Decentralized policy making, 45 Burma Road, 27, 28, 34 decolonizing IR, 131 Delhi Forum, 89 capillaric approach, 3 Deng Xiaoping, 9, 44, 126 carbon reduction, 84, 97 Dharamsala, 11, 30

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dialogue, 3, 5, 10, 34, 57, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83, Gobi Desert, 6 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 98, 101, 127, 148, grassroots level, 71, 169 149, 165 Great Game, 2, 19, 110, 111, 115, 117, 135, difference without alienation, 6 148, 156, 159, 160 Dynamic Borderlands 17, 128 Gyantse, 26, 30

ecological and cultural heritage, 94 happiness, prosperity, and stability, 12 Economic Corridor, 39, 43, 57, 78, 149 hegemonic discourse, 5 economic exchanges, 10, 57 historic trans-Himala yan exchanges, 62 economic integration, 39, 55, 74 historical negation, 41 ecosystem, 38, 67, 68, 69, 84, 99, 169 HIV-AIDS, 66 ecotourism, 53 human trafficking, 66, 67 empowerment, 72, 131 Hump, 28, 29, 165 energy consumption, 83 Hwawei, 38 energy resources, 11 hydroelectric, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 145, 168 English school, 18 hydro electricity. See hydroelectric enslavement, 8 hyperfemininity, 5, 15 entrepôt, 42 hypermasculinity, 5, 13, 15, 131 entrepreneurs, 54, 74 environment, 1, 54, 68, 79, 89, 91, 96, 99, identities, 14, 45, 130, 132 109, 117, 119, 135, 144, 145, 147, 156, 158 imperialism, 13, 121, 136, 143 environmentally benign, 87 imperial Japan, 8, 13 epistemic commitment, 6 import, 32, 33, 50, 51, 153 epistemic conquest, 13 independence, 30, 48, 102, 119 epistemic self-violence, 15 India-China, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9,10, 11,12, epistemic world, 2 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, ethnic minorities, 62, 92, 96 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 43, 48, Eurocentric IR, 19 49, 52, 57, 60, 61, 62, 64, 69, 73, 74, 75, 77, European and American colonial and im- 80, 82, 91, 93, 102, 103, 106, 110, 111, 112, perial agendas, 77 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, Evidence-based policy learning, 67, 73 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, Exchange networks, 34 136, 137, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, experts, 34, 47, 81, 83, 132 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169 export, 32, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55,155 Indian Ocean, 1, 6, 8, 11, 112, 126, 154 Indian state of Sikkim, 20 Feyerabend, Paul,15, 130,149 infrastructure gap, 66 Flying Tigers, 28, 29 insurgencies, 29, 144 Foreign mud, 9 interaction zone, 63 foreign policy, 40, 42, 44, 67, 77, 98, 125, Interbeing, 109, 110, 118, 120, 122, 125, 147, 155, 156, 159 160 interconnected borderlands, 17, 27, 130 gender, 5, 12, 13, 15, 19, 97, 115, 126, 136, interdependence, 62 143, 147, 158, 168 intergovernmental, 67 Generative Security, 16, 128 internal security, 14 Ghrirakuta Mountain, 7 international community, 1, 132 global climate change politics, 97 International Monetary Fund, 112 global corporate capitalism, 128 international norms and conventions, 18 global hegemon, 2 interstate competition, 2 global swing state, 112, 149 interstate relations, 6 globalism, 60, 64 ISIS. See the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria globalization, 135, 143, 149, 159, 163, 168 isolation assumption, 22

index 177

Kashgar, 24, 63 national self-interest, 16, 121 Kashmir, 10, 11, 24, 42, 63 national territory, 36 knowledge producers, 76 national unity, 46, 62 Kunming, 27, 28, 29, 43, 47, 48, 51, 57, 66, 155 nation-building, 9, 111 Kunming Initiative, 43, 47 natural resource management, 70 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 4, 9, 11, 29, 121, 126, 169 Ladakh, 10, 58, 63, 142, 145, 160, 161 new Asianism, 44 Lhasa and Urumqi, 62 new regionalism, 39 Lijiang, 26, 38 NGOs, 4, 81, 82, 83, 84, 92, 93, 95, 96, 99, Listening Ears, 37 100, 127 local engagements, 42 no man’s lands, 31 local stakeholders, 56 non-Eurocentric, 134, 171 localization of foreign policy, 67 nonracialized, nongenderized goals, 16 non-state-centric, 64, 98 mainstream IR, 11, 77, 127, 130 Northeast region of India and Southwest mainstream policy, 3, 60, 67, 78 China, 39 Manasovar Lake, 33 northern India, 24, 27, 28, 79 Mangalore, 8 Nujiang River, 82, 84 Mao Zedong, 9 Nu River, 3, 81, 82, 83, 84, 100, 140, 158 maritime dialogue, 10, 149 maritime trade, 23, 26, 32 one child policy, 62 migrants, 84, 95, 96 one-size-fits-all policy, 70 militarization, 137 open-sea piracy, 10 military, 1, 2, 8, 10, 13, 17, 18, 21, 28, 29, 30, opium, 8, 9, 12,18, 19, 25, 79, 114, 160 31, 36, 40, 44, 49, 55, 56, 58, 63, 65, 67, Other, Color, Rest, 12 76, 110, 112, 114, 119, 124, 130, 143, 148, Othering, 8 149, 164, 165, 166 Ming Dynasty, 22, 23, Patliputra, 23, 24 minority, 4, 16, 61, 82, 133, 167 pilgrims, 7, 23, 33, 52, 134, 162 modern Indian and Chinese nation-s tates, policymakers, 21, 46, 76, 85, 94, 99 30 postcolonial, 4, 5, 6, 8, 13, 14, 19, 113, 115, modernity, 3, 143, 150, 163, 164 121, 131, 136, 146, 155, 156, 163, 170 modern nation-states, 36 postcolonial state. See postcolonial Modi, Narendra, 9, 35, 52, 55, 56 post-Westphalian IR, 13, 14, 19, 131 monolithic entity, 23 power politics, 2, 104, 119, 122, 113, 115, Mount Kailash, 33, 53 121, 131 multidirectional, 14 Precolonial, 6, 15 Multi- Sectoral Techno-Economic Cooper- presence in the Indian Ocean, 1 ation, 39 President Xi. See Xi, Jinping myopia, 5, 114 privatization, 87, 91 problem-solving, 14, 15, 16, 119, 123, 132 Nathu-la, 3, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 26, 27, 28, 29, prospect of a Pacific century, 44 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 32, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41, protectorate, 29, 40 42, 43, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 59, 156, 159, 170 Qing, 26, 131 national elites, 16 Qinghai plateau, 25 national grievances, 11 Queen Victoria’s government, 9, 156 national (in)security, 11 nationalism, 4, 131, 145 race, 1, 5, 8, 12, 13, 15, 115, 126, 136, 147, national security, 13, 14, 17, 29, 30, 44, 82, 158, 164, 168 92, 96, 114, 115, 124, 127, 137, 152, 153, 170 race and religion, 8

178 index

radial governance, 37 spices, 51, 63 regional economy, 63 spiritual prodigies, 7 regional interdependencies, 16 statist border-centrism, 80 regional power without a regional policy, Stillwell Road, 28, 29, 34, 48 44 subaltern, 12, 126, 136, 155 Regional trans-subjectivity, 118 subregional cooperation, 64, 169 representation, 72, 83, 96, 115, 134 subregional discourse, 3, 60, 75, 77 restrictions on tradable items, 51 subregionalism, 60, 75, 80 rethink borders, 5, 17, 74, 128 subregional shift, 73, 76 rethinking territoriality, 75, 77 Subregionalizing IR, 3, 60, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79 SAARC. See South Asian Association of Re- sustainability, 68, 85, 94, 98 gional Cooperation sustainable development, 38, 73, 169, Said, Edward, 13 170 securitized spaces, 64 systemic transformation, 110, 122 security. See National security Self, White, West, 12 Tan, Chung, 21 Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 9 Tea Horse Road, 6, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 35, shift from “borders” to “borderlands,” 39, 38 74 technological change, 33 Shipki-la, Lipulekh, 3, 39, 46, 48, 49, 58, technology transfer, 57 157 Teesta River, 3, 80, 81, 85, 87, 141 shock-absorptive institutions, 57 territorial containers, 14 Sichuan, 25, 26, 41, 57, 63, 153, 164 territorial demarcations, 36 Sikkim, 3, 4, 18, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, territorially marked states, 2 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, 48, therapeutic strategies, 102, 122 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 88, three waves of interconnectivity, 21 89, 90, 92, 95, 97, 101, 141, 144, 146, 148, Tibetan Autonomous Region, 20, 163 153, 156, 159, 163, 169, 170 Tibetan community, 11 Silk Road, 2, 6, 20, 21, 22, 24, 23 26, 37, 40, Tibetan refugees, 30, 55 43, 57, 64, 139, 144, 151, 157, 166 tobacco, 29, 51, 63 Silk Road Economic Belt, 40, 43, 57 tourism, 30, 33, 34, 38, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, simultaneous flow of power and resources 79, 113, 118, 156 from inside out, 2 tragedy, 2, 137, 158 Sino-Indian. See Sino-Indian relations, trans-Asian highway, 34 Sino-Indian relations, 17, 20, 24, 32, 35, 40, transborder dimension, 40 53, 112, 135, 143, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, transcontinental network of cities, 23 162, 163, 167, 168 trans-Himala yan trade, 22 skirmish, 1 Triangulation discourse, 103, 110, 113, 115, small-arms proliferation, 66 117, 119, 122 smart borders, 55 trust deficit, 11, 109, 120, 122, 128, 154 social interactions, 54, 57 Tunis, 7, 8 social relations, 2, 16, 118, 128 socioeconomic, 2, 88, 91, 94, 98 United Nations Office on Drugs and soft power, 18, 115, 118 Crime, 66, 79 South Asian Association of Regional Coop- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, eration, 43, 52, 55, 57, 113, 170 18 sovereignty, 9, 93, 110, 121, 143, 157, 158, urban nodes, 26, 29, 36 163 U.S. Army, 29 Soviet Union’s disintegration, 62 spice trade, 8 Vietnam, 7, 48, 58, 145

index 179

West Bengal, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 41, 42, 47, Xi, Jinping, 9, 11, 17, 23, 24, 43, 52 52, 63 Western colonialism and imperialism, 8 Yadong city, 26, 30, 32, 33 Western imperialism’s second coming, 121 Yatung, 26, 46, 52 Westphalia, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, yin and yang, 104, 108 80, 103, 110, 116, 117, 119, 121, 122, 123, Yunnan, 3, 4, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32, 38, 46, 127, 129, 131, 132, 134, 137 47, 57, 58, 63, 66, 71, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, Westphalia’s Great Game, 2 100 140, 152, 155, 158, 167 Westphalian norms, 115, 123 Westphalian state, 6, 14, 115, 132, 133 zhongyi, 3, 6, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, what’s not there, 1, 5, 11, 80 109, 110, 113, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, World Bank, 34, 86, 95, 97, 154, 166 122, 123, 124, 128, 129 World Heritage site, 82, 83, 84 Zhou, Enlai, 9, 66, 121, 166 World Trade Organization, 112, 115 World War II, 2, 20, 27, 29, 30, 48