India’s approach to its borderlands has historically been marked by a colonial hangover. We treat border zones not as integral parts of the country, but as buffer zones between India and its neighbours. One consequence of this approach was that rather than saturating border regions with economic activity, with the traffic of goods and people, and connecting it with the rest of the country with first-rate infrastructure, India pretty much let these regions remain as frontier outposts.

Almost all our border regions remained remarkably undeveloped and cut-off as a result. Security in these regions was defined in terms of their inaccessibility. Borders were by definition meant to be remote, almost as if we were embarrassed about our own entitlement to these regions. This is in sharp contrast to China, which secured its borders by the opposite approach: blanket border areas with a thicket of economic activity and migration. And what better way to show off one’s sense of entitlement than creating connectivity and infrastructure? This embarrassment about borders had other unintended consequences. I remember a group of Bangladeshi businessmen once saying that they could not respect India because it did not know how to command respect. As an example they asked: why is the Benapol-Petrapol land port on the Indian side so pathetic? It is more in the nature of a forgotten outpost rather than an advertisement for a confident and dynamic power. Rather than the border being an occasion to showcase India’s attractiveness, borderlands were treated more as a source of nervous anxiety. China recognised that sovereignty may be a legal concept, but connectivity is its most potent expression. Moreover for a power that is opening up to the world, borderlands can be vital economic assets if treated as gateways.

It is in this context that the government’s decision to advance the completion dates for thousands of kilometres of roads leading to the borders, especially in the Northeast, acquires significance. This decision is smart three times over: infrastructure development should give the local economies a much needed boost, India’s territorial claims are strengthened, and its preparedness to open up to the world is signalled. But the commitment to infrastructure will have to be accompanied by a radical reorientation to the economies of these regions. These economies will have to be restored to their natural geography — the Northeast will have to be seen to be a gateway to Yunan on the one hand, and Southeast Asia on the other. But whether our security inhibitions will allow this remains to be seen.

If borderlands were a kind of nervous nether land, borders are the Holy Grail around which modern nations territorially define themselves. As old empires dissolved in the middle of the 20th century, and frontiers came to be congealed into borders, the successor nation states came to be locked into conflict. There was no acceptable template for resolving these. In the case of India and China, the old treaties crafted by empires came to be delegitimised as those empires themselves vanished. The other option was to pay due deference to historical evidence and national sentiments. But using this as a template was destined to be nothing but a recipe for going around in circles. Whose historical evidence? Whose national sentiments? Due deference to historical evidence and national sentiments also forms one of the principles India and China have agreed to in sketching out a resolution to their long-standing border conflict. But in a way Tawang is proving to be a reductio ad absurdum of this principle. In the case of Tawang, the Chinese are apparently arguing that this region is integrally part of the meaning of Tibet, having been the birthplace of a Dalai Lama. Apart from the irony of using the lineages of the Dalai Lama as a legitimating argument, the impasse over Tawang points to the limitation of the principle. At one level, on issues like Tibet, India, despite its own national sentiments and historical linkages, has adjusted to the de facto realities of Chinese power. But national sentiments and historical evidence will prevent both India and China from conceding more than they already have. It is something of a curiosity, therefore, why anyone thought that deference to this principle would be propitious ground for settling a border dispute.

Reference to national sentiment is a dead end in any dispute. Settling the dispute with China would require a massive transformation in India’s national sentiment. But oddly enough, while there is at least widespread discussion of Pakistan, there is very little open discussion of the historical baggage we carry with China. For instance, our historical understanding of the 1962 war that casts a long shadow on this relationship, remains frozen in the caricatures the period produced. A settlement with China will require us to overcome our history and exorcise the ghost of 1962. But given the persistent strain of suspicion that China intends to strategically encircle India, changing national sentiment seems a tall order indeed. National sentiment is a dead end in any dispute.

It is in this context that India’s attempts to accelerate the pace of border talks with China seem odd. Our strategy on China seems to contrast with our strategy on Pakistan. In the latter case, we have realised that under current configurations of national sentiment, there is no template that would allow a permanent settlement with Pakistan to take place. Our only hope is to change the question, to concentrate on building linkages through trade, movement of people and building a history of cooperation, and hope that over time the weight of national sentiment on these issues wanes. Making the borders irrelevant is a better strategy than trying to settle the question of borders.

Although the contrast should not be exaggerated, there is a tension in Indian policy. We are hesitant to engage with China fully and openly until the border issue is resolved. In the case of Pakistan we want to say: interlinkages will create a new security paradigm. In the case of China we do not want to push interlinkages till security issues are resolved. In either case it is clear that inherited conceptions of nationalism make a settlement unlikely. But a borderland development policy will be successful only if we can overcome borders, even if we cannot settle them.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi