New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2015. vi, 343 pp. (Illustrations.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-300-19567-5.
In early June of 2015, Indian special forces carried out an attack across the Indo-Burmese border against an insurgent group that had previously attacked an Indian Army unit in the border state of Manipur. India’s willingness to use force beyond its borders in the northeast marked a new assertiveness on the part of the Narendra Modi regime. It also highlighted the fact that despite years of attempts to both repress and conciliate a host of insurgent movements in the region, the country was far from out of the woods.
The obvious strategic significance of this region to New Delhi cannot be overstated. It abuts India’s principal antagonist, the People Republic of China (PRC), Bangladesh, a country with which India has had a complex and occasionally troubled relationship, and Burma (Myanmar), a state where India is now involved in a competition for influence with the PRC. Yet substantial scholarship or even informed commentary on India’s northeastern states and their ties, both formal and informal, with China, Bangladesh, and Burma, is scanty. Quite apart from the geopolitical importance of this region, this lacuna is perplexing at various other levels. The region has long been politically volatile, laden with a host of movements ranging from autonomy to secession. It is the site of much regional migration across porous borders, with all its concomitant tensions, and it shares borders with the PRC, which has substantial territorial claims in the area. To complicate matters further, it is also a part of the world with substantial biodiversity. The fragile ecosystems that permeate it are now under threat owing to extensive dam building projects both in the PRC and in India.
Given the paucity of reliable and insightful work on the contemporary politics of the region, Bertil Lintner’s Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier is a most welcome contribution. Lintner, a journalist of considerable repute, writes with authority, clarity, and verve about the tangled skein of ethnic tensions, state responses, and political chicanery that have long characterized this region.
The central argument of the book is that there is a long-term competition between the PRC and India in India’s northeast and its adjoining regions. Lintner argues that this contestation has intensified in recent years. Both states have expended considerable resources to garner influence, with varying results. The PRC, Lintner demonstrates, had long sought to exploit existing grievances in India’s northeast. To that end it had supported a range of ethnic secessionist movements, supplying them with weaponry, training, and organization, and even sanctuaries.
He also shows that Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate (ISI-D) has been active in Bangladesh in efforts to undermine India’s influence in the country. Specifically, like the PRC, it has sought to establish links with Indian secessionist organizations and has attempted to boost their activities. Furthermore, it has fostered anti-Indian sentiment in Bangladesh and provided assistance to radical Islamist organizations in the country.
Of course, it is hardly surprising that India’s two principal adversaries, Pakistan and the PRC, would seek to sow discord and exploit existing grievances in a volatile region. It is to Lintner’s credit, however, that he is entirely unsparing in his description and analysis of the shortcomings of India’s policies that contributed to the emergence of various movements for autonomy and secession in the region. In his examination of the political movements in the northeast, he demonstrates a fine-grained knowledge of both their historical backgrounds as well as contemporary realities. His understanding of the role of key individuals, critical turning points, and flawed policy choices, all of which converged to create a combustible mix, is indeed exemplary.
Lintner’s discussion is not confined to the seven states in India’s northeast and Bangladesh but also extends to Burma. Once again, he brings to bear a keen understanding of recent Burmese history, its fraught domestic politics and its deeply blemished policies toward its ethnic minorities. He also shows that the PRC, in its attempts to penetrate the country, may have now overplayed its hand. As a consequence, a backlash of sorts, especially within the Burmese military, is now emerging against its overbearing presence. To that end, Burma’s rulers have sought to court the United States to balance the PRC. Yet he contends that the PRC will not easily cede ground given its own strategic concerns in the region. The physical proximity that the PRC enjoys, its early involvement in the country and its determination to try and limit Indian influence will all conspire to render American efforts to establish a more robust presence within Burma difficult.
The considerable historical background, the careful description of contemporary developments, and the deft analysis of both the roles of domestic and external players in the region makes this book a most useful contribution to a very small body of existing work. Scholars, diplomats, and students interested in the complex politics of the region will all stand to benefit from Lintner’s discussion.
Sumit Ganguly
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
pp. 618-619