China rejects visit by Kashmir general

Simmering tensions between China and India flared on Friday after Beijing rejected an official visit by the army general responsible for overseeing India’s troubled Muslim-majority province of Jammu and Kashmir.

The spat centres on Beijing’s refusal of a visa for General B.S. Jaswal, chief of the Indian army’s northern command including the restive Kashmir region, which is being rocked by angry anti-India protests .

Gen Jaswal’s trip to China was part of a routine exchange of high-level army officers intended to build confidence and maintain communication lines between the giant neighbours. The two countries went to war in 1962 and still have uneasy relations.

Incensed by Beijing’s rejection, New Delhi summoned the Chinese ambassador on Friday for an explanation. “While we value our exchanges with China, there must be sensitivity to others’ concerns,” the Indian foreign ministry said. “Our dialogue with China on these issues is ongoing.”

However, A.K. Antony, the defence minister, ruled out cutting defence ties, saying that, “occasionally there are some problems, but that will not affect our broader approach”.

The flare-up came just a day after Kashmiri politician Farooq Abdullah – a cabinet minister in Delhi and father of Kashmir’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah – warned of Beijing’s designs on Kashmir, where 64 civilians have been killed by security forces since mid-June.

“China is waiting to gobble it up,” Mr Abdullah told parliament on Thursday in an impassioned plea for Indian elites to take steps to win “the hearts and minds of Kashmiris” and grant the state political autonomy.

Beijing is unhappy with New Delhi giving refuge to the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, and has been needling India over Kashmir for more than a year, by refusing to give Indian passport holders from the region the same stamped visas it gives other Indian citizens.

Instead, China’s embassies in India give Kashmiris stapled paper visas, which New Delhi interprets as a challenge to its sovereignty. Kashmiri students, researchers and business people have been caught in the middle, as New Delhi has refused to allow them to travel to China.

“Whether it’s Tibet or Kashmir, you can see the deep anxiety of the post-colonial state and the way in which it interprets any contestation of its sovereignty,” said C. Uday Bhaskar, former director of New Delhi’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

India also deeply resents China’s support for its neighbour Pakistan, with which it has has fought three wars over Kashmir. The region is now divided between the two neighbours and claimed by both. Last year, New Delhi demanded that Beijing stop supporting projects in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, such as Islamabad’s planned 969MW Neelam-Jhelum hydropower project, which is being built with Chinese help.

Verbal sniping between India and China had been easing after last year’s frenzied levels. But Mr Bhaskar said China might have been emboldened by its new status as the world’s second largest economy, reflected in its recent assertiveness over the South China Sea. “They feel they can exert their muscles,” he said.