'India paying the price of failed neighbours'

New Delhi: In a sharp criticism of India’s neighbouring countries, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said India is paying the price of being surrounded by failed states.

In what threatens to send the Gujral Doctrine — considered to have made a substantial change in the India’s bilateral ties with its neighbours — flying out of the window, Chidambaram said Islamabad has taken its "hostility" towards India beyond Kashmir.

"Pakistan is implacably opposed to India. While Kashmir appears to be the central issue of contention, Pakistan has taken its hostility beyond Kashmir and supports terrorist activities and communal conflagrations in other parts of India," he said delivering K M Cariappa Meomorial Lecture.

The Finance Minister said while there are challenges from across the border, there is also a challenge of "alienation" of the Muslim community and more recently of the Christian community.

"The divide between the Muslims and Hindus is taking new and dangerous forms," the Finance Minister said.

Chidambaram referred to the "ghettoisation, social boycott, discrimination in employment and blurring of lines between the state and religion as witnessed in Gujarat" and said "out of the hopelessness and despair of the Muslim community—and if not addressed firmly—the Christian tribal communities too will rise new waves of terror," he said.

"There is no other explanation for the pheonmenon of graduates, engineers and doctors born, educated and living in India taking to the path of violence", he said.

The bluntness was not just for the traditional bugbears on India's Western flanks.

Referring to India's "troubled neighbourhood", he pointed out how Myanmar gave shelter to insurgent groups and Nepal remained an "enigma" under the new government led by Maoists.

“Nepal remains an enigma. At this stage, it is difficult to predict the future of Indo-Nepal relations under a Maoist-led coalition government in Nepal,” he said.

In what reflected intense foreboding, Chidambaram, who is a member of the Cabinet Committee on Security, also took on China.

Describing China as a "rival" and "unpredictable" neighbour, the Finance Minister said Beijing had adopted a "negative stance" at the recent Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting and wondered whether it will accept India as an equal.

"From time to time, China takes unpredictable positions that raise a number of questions about its attitude towards the rise of India. The most recent example is the negative stance adopted by China in the meeting of NSG," he said.

Chidambaram rattled statistic after statistic to make the point that China is far ahead of India in the development race, but it is the frenetic pace of China's military modernization about which he expressed particular concern.

“China will spend $ 50 billion more than India on defence every year. This is a huge sum of money, which can buy about 1,700 F-16s each year,” he said.

Watching Chidambaram spitting fire, free of the pressures of diplomatic office, was External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

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