The Big Story: Friends or enemies?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Kazakhstan where on Friday, India and Pakistan will be inducted as full members into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a multilateral grouping led by China that began as a forum to improve the security situation in Central Asia. Much of the focus, at least for the media, will be over the question of whether Modi will have any substantial discussions with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The two met briefly on Thursday as leaders were arriving in Astana – the first meeting between the two in 17 months – but reports suggest that they only made small talk.

This India-Pakistan sideshow to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is indicative of just how unusual it is for New Delhi to become a part of this grouping right now. India took observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2005 and applied for full membership in 2014, with the backing of both Russia and China, who offered membership to Pakistan as well. Yet it still seems somewhat incongruous for India to be sitting at the same table as Pakistan in a multilateral forum that is focused on fighting terror in Central Asia, and Afghanistan in particular, partly because New Delh holds Islamabad responsible for much of the violence.

Unlike the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation, the other multilateral forum that India and Pakistan are both a part of, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is not a geographical grouping. The Shanghai charter specifically spells out a commitment to confidence-building in military fields, and statements from the group have mentioned a combined effort to ensure regional peace, including through joint exercises among member states. By joining, India is effecetively becoming a partner with Pakistan in an effort to fight terror and bring peace to the region, something that is hard to do while the countries are still firing shells at each other.

But the oddity, and the opportunity, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation does not end there. Just a few weeks ago, India pointedly refused to send a delegation to China’s massive Belt and Road Forum, with almost every other major country in attendance. India said it was concerned about sovereignty and all but suggested that the initiative was disguised colonialism. Yet here is New Delhi, joining another China-led grouping which was very clearly designed to act as an Eastern alternative to NATO and the Western order.

That’s not all. China has suggested in the past that this forum might be responsible for helping reduce tensions between India and Pakistan, a benign approach, but one that nevertheless comes in the way of New Delhi’s stated position that all issues between the two countries are bilateral. “We hope India and Pakistan will strictly follow the charter of the SCO, and the idea of good neighbours, uphold the Shanghai spirit, improve their relations and inject new impetus to the development of the SCO,” said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson earlier this month.

For all New Delhi’s muscular posturing of late, attempting to be harsher on Pakistan and taking a tough line against Beijing on the Belt and Road Forum, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation induction is a sign that India is willing to take a different approach. There is no guarantee that being in the grouping will lead to anything concrete for India, even on the Central Asian front, yet having a seat at the table presents tremendous opportunities for New Delhi. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation membership acknowledges the growing, unavoidable influence of China in Asia and forces India to think of Pakistan as a partner against terror, and vice versa. Even if that does not bear fruit in the short term, over time it might prove to be tremendously useful.

The Big Scroll

  • Linking southern Asia by rail is a better alternative to China’s fanciful One Belt, One Road project, writes Mohan Guruswamy.
  • Another East India Company: Fears in Pakistan that One Belt, One Road will make it a Chinese colony, finds Shoaib Daniyal.
  • India’s boycott of One Belt, One Road summit in China was self-defeating, writes Girish Shahane.
  • Is India trying to convince the world China’s One Belt One Road plan is secretly colonial?

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Punditry

  1. “Doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results, is not very smart,” writes retired chief of naval staff Arun Prakash in the Indian Express, who calls for a thorough rethinking of India’s approach to security concerns.
  2. One of Vinayak Savarkar’s major issues with cow worship, “apart from its deadening of the mind as he saw it, was that it had “ensured” many a Hindu defeat in the past”, writes Vaibhav Purandare in the Times of India.
  3. Rajdeep Sardesai argues, in the Hindustan Times, that this is the right time to play cricket with Pakistan because of the huge gap between the “highly-skilled and fit Indian team and a mediocre Pakistan side”.
  4. Saharanpur’s Bhim Army may be new, but it actually comes from a long line of organisations for the self-defence and cultural assertion of the Dalit community, writes Raja Shekhar Vundru in the Indian Express.
  5. “The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution of India seem to represent the best and worst aspects of India’s tendency to compromise,” writes Sidin Vadukut in Mint.

Giggle

Don’t miss

Arup K Chatterjee explains how the curry came to London, and tells us why it may never taste the same after the United Kingdom’s election.

“Victorian London was a cesspool of Oriental exhibits, from porcelain hookahs, Turkish kaleens, hunted tigers and tiger skins to cashmere shawls and many counterfeit arteifacts from the British Empire. Around the time of the Great Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, London was not just stocking the works of industries from around the globe, it was also consuming culinary aspects of the world – with the curry as the uncrowned monarch among these.

In the grandson Thackeray’s satirical book from 1848, Vanity Fair, one of the major characters Jos Sedley is an imitation of the grandfather – in whose time the curry-mania appears to have struck roots. Sedley, a civil servant who returns from Uttar Pradesh, is pursued romantically by Becky Sharp. To seduce him, she pretends to be fascinated by all things Indian, and tries to consume a hot curry cooked by Sedley’s mother.”