As all countries of the world, including the most powerful nation, USA, are tottering on their feet to fight against Covid-19, the scale of suffering that humanity is undergoing is unprecedented in recent history. The last example of such a massive outbreak of the contagious disease was the Spanish flu, a hundred years ago, and hardly any person who was adult at that time is alive to recount that tale of horror. People of today’s world are not used to see the gory visuals that the diabolic Coronavirus is throwing on us relentlessly. The videos of a convoy of army truck carrying coffins in Italy, a patient lying on the floor due to paucity of beds in hospitals in Spain, dead bodies waiting for last rituals on the streets of Ecuador, and migrant labourers of Delhi walking hundreds of kilometers carrying infants on their shoulders to reach their native place, can shake even an imperturbable person making his body catatonic, eyes teary, and blood to boil. It is natural to ask who is responsible for this cataclysmic event.
Going by the originating place of this virus, i.e. Wuhan, and the virus’ surprising spread inside China where it is confined within the province of Hubei insulating Beijing and Shanghai unlike the whole world where it is spreading to all major cities; it is quite logical to raise the finger of suspicion on China. The whole world is suspecting that the Coronavirus was manufactured in a military-controlled lab of Wuhan as a bio-weapon, or that it leaked accidentally from a lab not adhering to the required standards, or, to say least, it entered into humans due to the barbaric practice of the Chinese people of eating semi-cooked wild animals. China owes a clarification to the world as to why it is hiding the real numbers of death and infected persons? Why did the government authorities in Wuhan punish the doctors who were informing about this new virus? Why did it mislead the WHO about the human to human spreading capability and why the WHO did not raise a timely alarm for the rest of the world about the impending danger by declaring it a pandemic so that every nation would have taken timely steps that China took?
It will be grossly imprudent to believe that it is mere coincidence that the Coronavirus spared Beijing and Shanghai but spread in the USA from its east coast to west coast like wildfire. It cannot be ruled out that Coronavirus may be China’s weapon to bring down America that is assertive under Trump like never before. Sacrificing the life of its few thousand citizens to ward off suspicion would have been an easy and sweet deal for China’s oppressive government. But who is going to question the Chinese government? Under the dictatorial communist regime, it is impossible for Chinese citizens to open their mouth even after unbearable suffering faced by them. Given the economical, diplomatic and the military clout of China and its high-handed approach in international affairs, no country can alone dare to demand an explanation.
Russia is maintaining surprising silence; President Trump tried to be courageous by calling Corona a Chinese virus but he was forced to mellow down because of two reasons: (i) Strong reaction by the Chinese government. (ii) First and uncompromisable priority of checking the exponential growth of Corona infections and ramping up health care infrastructure to treat infected patients. India also, even though strongest in its history since independence under PM Modi, cannot demand answers to obvious questions from China because of the same reasons. Most of the nations were already facing a slowdown in 2019, and after the breakout of Coronavirus, their condition is like that of a hypothetical poor and big family whose sole earner is severely injured in an ambush attack, and thus the focus of the family is on providing treatment and arranging the next meal, not on thinking about finding and punishing the attacker.
One year ago, President Trump was threatening China of increasing duties on Chinese items for supporting American companies and to improve the skewed trade balance, but today, while deciding about the lockdown, the USA is standing at a crossroads to choose between the life of its citizens or its economy. Covid-19 has turned the table for China. There is no reason to not believe that China has beaten the USA without waging a direct war. China might have created Corona for the USA, but it would not spare an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by wreaking maximum damage on India due to Corona. As China always prefers to carry out its covert operation in India through the Pakistan-based state and non-state actors, the role of one radical religious organization in spreading Corona uniformly to all Indian states in a coordinated way definitely add substance to the assertion that Corona is a weapon of China against its enemies.
To find how China has grown to this mammoth scale exhibiting extremely belligerent behavior in the international arena of power from an outcast nation in 1949, we have to go to history.
After the communist revolution in 1949 in China, for communism-wary Western countries, China was an outcast. At the UN, it was represented by ROC (Taiwan) Chiang Kai-Shrek regime, not by Mao-led PRC. It was Nehru who advocated the PRC representation at UN whereas the USA was against it. In a letter to chief ministers dated 2nd August, 1955, Nehru revealed: “Informally, suggestions have been made by the United States that China should be taken into the United Nations but not in the Security Council, & that India should take her place in the Security Council.” In the same letter, he explained his stand – “We cannot, of course, accept this as it means falling out with China and it would be very unfair for a great country like China not to be in the Security Council”. He appealed to the leaders of Britain, the US, Burma, and Egypt to support China’s claim on the Security Council membership.
In matters of foreign policy, Nehru’s approach was lackadaisical. His policies were based upon the preaching of moral education textbooks of primary school and there was no element of pragmatic diplomacy, power dynamics among nations, and long-term national interest.
Nehru (in 1946) became the Congress President and consequently the PM of India because of a special favor from Mahatma Gandhi where he overruled legitimate and unanimous choice of 12 Pradesh Congress committees that nominated Sardar Patel. But this undemocratic and graceless selection did not stop him from nursing an ambition to be remembered as a tall world leader and statesman even at the expense of the national interest. Blinded by this ambition and his love for socialism, he tried to appease Mao by offering a seat at the Security Council and relinquishing the Indian claim on that.
China owes a big thanks to Nehru for bringing China into the world’s mainstream and helping it in engaging with nations in a communist-phobic world, which led to its slow and steady growth in economic prowess and power. By resolutely advocating and lobbying for China’s inclusion in the Security Council, Nehru consequently helped in its rise in the world power order and its influence in international matters including affairs related to Pakistan.
Today’s China has grown into a dangerous giant that has a dictatorial communist regime inside, an imposing economic clout outside, a large military force, and the crippling dependency of global supply lines on it. No surprise that it is blatantly aggressive towards and defiant of not only other nations but even international organizations such as the ICJ, Hague. Had Nehru accepted the permanent seat in the UNSC instead of pushing it towards China, had he been out of his stupor of socialism to see the perils of believing the autocratic communist China, China would have not grown to its current formidable size and India would have not suffered humiliation in 1962.
India would have been the axis of power in Asia. History and historians have been generously biased in analyzing the blunders of Nehru’s policy and its consequences. That is because even after his demise, his own party, Congress, with his family members as PM or Super PM, ruled the country for many decades. Since the last 70 long years, India has been bearing the brunt of Nehru’s blunder on the Kashmir issue and his China Policy. Now the whole world and humanity are suffering in an unimaginable manner due to the dreadful deeds of the dragon to whom Nehru gave the teeth.
