Two unexpected developments in the run up to the Big Goa Summit have made the BRICS gathering an event worth watching.  This has nothing to do with the failure of SAARC to hold its Islamabad summit with Pakistan leadership getting an earful from member nations on its duplicity on the terrorism front.
Washington, which has been bankrolling the GHQ Shura, has been reading the riot act to Pakistan for a while.  The latest ‘stern message’ was delivered on Oct 13 making Pakistan, as Shafqat Ali wrote in the Nation, to fume with impotent rage.
This is understandable though. In a rare appearance before a Washington audience, Peter Lavoy, the White House point person for South Asia, said the Uri attack was “a clear case” of cross-border terrorism. “We condemned this act of terrorism. It was a horrific attack. Every country has a right to self-defence. But in a heavily militarised relationship that has also experienced three wars, there is indeed a need for caution and restraint,” said Peter even as his colleague at the State Department John Kirby was telling  journalists at his press briefing that  Pakistan should “shut down access to areas inside their borders to terrorists”.
The Peter- Kirby- speak has set in a manner of speaking the stage for India taking up with full vigour its anti-terrorism call at the BRICS summit. President Putin has echoed Indian concerns  by asserting that BRICS is “determined “to fight the terrorism menace, and has literally dispelled the sense of gloom created by recent Russia’s military exercises in Pakistan.  That the Indian strategic community has refused to read any wrong signals in the exercises is neither here nor there more so since Russia is known to be keen on gaining expertise from whatever quarter in mountain warfare.
“For our five countries’ leaders this meeting (in Goa) will be a good opportunity to harmonise our positions on key issues on the international agenda. We are determined to cooperate in the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and corruption,” Russian President Putin said in interviews to the media before setting out for Indian west coast town.
Moscow has walked the talk that India is Russia’s especially privileged strategic partner, and that decades of its close relations are here to stay. As many as 18 Russia-India pacts will be signed on the sidelines of the summit when Prime Minister Modi hosts the Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the tourist paradise on India’s Arabian coast.
Unlike Putin who is coming to India with no halts enroute, the Chinese leader is arriving in Goa after a stopover in Cambodia and Bangladesh. In both stopovers, he had announced liberal financial aid for a host of infrastructure projects.
While that is in-line with the new Beijing line of cultivating new friends with some goodies, the news that awaits him in India is unlikely to please him. “Chinese boycott call hitting Diwali sales, say Old Delhi traders,” screamed the front page of a leading Indian English daily notwithstanding a laboured effort by a Chinese research scholar Zhen Bo to show that India boycott hasn’t hurt China goods.
As the Times of India said, “Chinese firms have gained a near-monopoly in India over many Diwali products such as small blinking lights, also called `fairy lights’, decorative items and statues”.   The campaign to boycott Chinese goods is a fallout of Beijing’s support to Pakistan after the Uri attack with social media activists arguing that the boycott would have “a two-fold advantage – that of crippling the Chinese economy and promotion of `swadeshi’ products”.
China has shown no let-up in its unfriendly gestures towards India. The latest is the blocking of a Brahmaputra tributary that originates in Tibet and the Chinese desire to ‘mediate’ between India and Pakistan.
China’s ‘mediation’ offer is an obvious attempt to please its ‘all weather’ friend. But it also looks like an ominous attempt by China to establish its ‘hegemony’—a word Pakistan uses for India—in South Asia. China should know that it has long been India’s stand that it will brook no third party ‘interference’ in its disputes with Pakistan.
It makes no difference whether the Chinese intentions were conveyed by its media or its officials. The Chinese media is state-controlled and is often used to transmit important messages. It is important to note that the Chinese have offered to ‘mediate’ because they say there is ‘imbalance’ of power in South Asia. China cannot correct the ‘imbalance’ by extending blind support to Pakistan’s reliance on terror to back its state policies.
Days earlier, China had gratuitously stated that India’s decision to fence its border with Pakistan was ‘irrational’ and it will affect India-China relations. China has taken a very pro-Pakistan line on the terror attack at a military camp in Uri, accusing India of jumping to point fingers at Pakistan without any investigation or evidence.
This can only be interpreted to mean that China endorses Pakistan’s policy of using its proxies to attack targets in India, both civilian and military. That was clear from the time China started to resist UN action against intentionally proclaimed and Pakistan-based terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar.
If Prime Minister Modi accepts that both Pakistan and China work against the interests of India he has to treat the two in more or less the same manner. Getting ‘tough’ with a country does not mean declaring a war against it or allowing bilateral relations to reach a point of no return.
Relations with Pakistan have moved towards the bottom because it has no interest in pursuing a policy of friendship with India, largely because its military brass would not like that. In China the ruling party (Communist Party) is the single centre of power—civil and military. The Chinese leaders do not speak the language of Pakistan. But the frequency of unfriendly noises and gestures reaching India from Beijing has been increasing disturbingly.
It may not be too far-fetched to imagine that it has something to do with the Chinese fear that worsening India-Pakistan relations will hamper the progress of its grandiose China Pakistan Economic Corridor project in which it is investing $46 billion. China may also be unhappy to see its ‘all weather’ friend in great discomfort because of its near global isolation. The Pakistanis are pleased to hear China endorse their India policy. Together the two countries continue to work in tandem to check in whatever manner they can India’s rise as a global power.
The Modi – Putin one-on-one meetings on the sidelines of BRICS will be an occasion, to clear any mistrust between India and Russia, a steadfast friend from the Soviet era of the 1950s.  As pointed out at the outset, India’s concern is not so much about the maiden joint exercise with a country that has remained implacably hostile towards India but the fact that it was carried out as an ‘anti-terror’ exercise. India has pointed out to Russia the absurdity of it. It is not hidden from anyone that Pakistan uses terror as a matter of its state policy. Its description as a sponsor of terror is disputed by very few.
India’s relations with Russia cannot be compared with its relations with Pakistan or China. Russia would perhaps also like to see India play a role in trying to resolve the current crisis in Syria. But India’s current ‘neutral’ stance on the Syrian strife appears to be alright with Russia.
—-By Malladi Rama Rao