Arun Shourie’s new book “Self-Deception: India's China
Policies” has come after the recent spate of diplomatic issues
following rising border tensions between India and China. Arun
Shourie uses the narrative of Indian diplomacy from 1950 until the
1962 war, and tries to make a strong, well-researched argument
against India’s accommodating posture towards China.
The book gives references through Pandit Nehru’s letters,
speeches and interviews. He endeavours to reconstructs Indian
attitudes towards China from 1950-1962 and brings to the forefront
three big errors that India made in its dealings with China. Shourie
finds the first big mistake in the leadership’s failure to see
plainly China’s stratagems and ambitions and instead be led by
China’s rhetoric or India’s idealism, whereas he sees the second
blunder in leadership’s tendency to deny or discredit information
that painted a realpolitik view of the Chinese. According to the
book, the third was the leadership’s tendency to downplay events
that did happen, sometimes to the extreme of concealing facts, to try
and project matters as less serious than they seemed.
Shourie draws attention to the mainstay of Chinese strategic
culture. Putting Nehru's self-deception in sight he gives examples of
the Chinese systematic violation of all agreements, whether verbal or
written. The book is an interesting read and closely takes us through
the circumstances which led to the blunders in understanding the
neighbour on time.
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