China, Focus on Unrest at Home - Leave India Alone
Washington, D.C. (August 19, 2009) - The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) took strong exception to a recently published article suggesting the Balkanization of India by the China International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential think tank that advises Beijing on strategic global issues. The author, strategist Zhan Lue, argued that splintering India into multiple independent states would fuel social and economic progress in South Asia. The article was republished on several other Chinese web sites and gained attention in international media outlets as well.
“With the peripheries of the Chinese state fraying as evidenced by growing unrest in Tibet and the Uighur province, and a Chinese state-managed economy beginning to unravel in the midst of the global economic downturn and structural weaknesses of a totalitarian state, it would seem that China would already have its hands full," said Ishani Chowdhury, HAF's Director of Public Policy. "The fact that China's client state Pakistan and the Taliban are involved in getting Muslims in Urumqi and East Turkestan restive should be another concern to China, rather than having public media involved in distracting its people with delusions of India's alleged vulnerabilities."
Given the totalitarian nature of the PRC and its control of the media, Indian policy analysts largely felt that the article would not have been published without official sanction from Beijing. The author argued that India was solely held together by the Hindu religion and that therefore, India was a “Hindu religious state.” He further alleged that historically Hinduism was not what held the people and region of India together and that enabling India’s states to break away from the Indian Union would energize the region and allow Indians to escape the "shackles of Hinduism."
In light of the intentionally provocative article in official media, HAF leaders hoped that Communist and left-wing political parties in India with strong sympathies with China, would respond appropriately with condemnations to the article. The Foundation also regretted the fraying of Buddhist philosophy in China that could be a source of affinity among the people of the two nations.
"It is unfortunate that the great Han majority, which had embraced Buddhism, and found India the fount of philosophy and spirituality, is now led by a totalitarian leadership willing to do anything, including demonizing Hinduism and threatening the sovereignty of the only democracy in the region, to take focus away from its very real economic, political and humanitarian problems at hand," added Chowdhury.