By Ravi Velloor, South Asia Bureau Chief
EVER since the phrase was coined in the 19th century, strategic thinkers have tended to link The Great Game with Anglo-Russian rivalry, with Afghanistan as the staging point.
The game may just have shifted a column east on the map.
Indian and Western analysts now say it is not Russia but China that is the new player to watch, and Kashmir the theatre.
China's moves on both sides of divided Kashmir manifest a new assertiveness towards the sub-continent at a time when Pakistan is at its weakest in decades and India's part of Kashmir is riven with the strongest separatist uprising in 20 years.
India has long protested against China's move to issue stapled, not stamped, visas to people from Jammu and Kashmir state. But last month, China seemed to raise the pitch somewhat when news broke that Beijing had denied a regular visa to the three-star general commanding Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir.
Lieutenant-General B.S. Jaswal had been scheduled to visit China as part of regular confidence-building measures.
India promptly cancelled the visits of two Chinese military officers in retaliation, surprising those who had become used to a softer approach from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government.
Beijing's justification for its refusal to give Lt-Gen Jaswal a proper visa was that Kashmir is 'disputed territory'. But Indian analysts were quick to note that Army Chief V.K. Singh, during his stint as a three-star general heading the Eastern Army, was issued a regular visa when he visited China last year. The Eastern Command's operational area includes Arunachal Pradesh, a state claimed in its entirety by China.
New Delhi was initially inclined to believe that the Chinese move was more of a gesture by an increasingly assertive People's Liberation Army (PLA). The Chinese government itself, went the thinking, doesn't back the hard line.
Now they are not so sure.
New Delhi's thinking appears to be changing at a time when influential Western analysts underscore Kashmir's growing significance in the regional power play.
'A quiet geopolitical crisis is unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control over the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the north-west corner of disputed Kashmir to China,' noted American scholar Selig S. Harrison wrote in the New York Times recently.
Mr Harrison, who is director of the Asia Programme at the Centre for International Policy in Washington, DC, said China sought a grip on the region because it wanted unfettered rail and road access to the Gulf through Pakistan, to shorten the time it takes Chinese goods to reach the Gulf from 16 days to just two.
To this end, he wrote, citing a variety of Pakistani and intelligence sources, as many as 11,000 PLA soldiers are working on dams, housing complexes and expressways in the Gilgit-Baltistan region. They are also said to be building about 20 secret tunnels where even Pakistanis are not allowed entry.
The Chinese moves come at a time when both sides of divided Kashmir are seething against entrenched administrations.
Mr Harrison wrote that if reporters could get into the part of Kashmir held by Pakistan or ceded to China, they would find 'widespread, brutally suppressed local movements for democratic rights and regional autonomy'.
On the other side of Kashmir, rocks have been raining on Indian security forces for three months now and more than 60 people have died.
A recent visit to the Kashmir Valley also revealed a new trend in thinking.
Kashmiri mobs at one time used to shout pro-Pakistani slogans. But across the Valley, there is now pervasive disillusionment with Pakistan along with fears that it is falling apart and that its sectarian strife will spill over into Kashmir.
'We don't want Kashmir to be Talebanised,' said Mr Miraj Wani, a 20-year-old engineering student interviewed by The Straits Times in Sopore, the heart of the militancy.
Mr Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar, the religious head of Kashmiri Muslims, confirmed this was the general thinking. 'No one in the Valley looks to Islamabad any more,' he said. 'We realise we are on our own and have to fight our own battles.'
Amid these changing dynamics, China's strategy is 'to convert Kashmir into an India-Pak-China issue, making China a stakeholder', said analyst Bhaskar Roy, a former Indian intelligence official.
For the past five years, as relations improved and trade and economic ties blossomed, Indian officials sought to play down their rivalry with China.
National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon once dismissed the 'string of pearls' containment theory that China was seeking to throttle India by building a string of naval bases stretching from Gwadar in Pakistan to Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Sittwe in Myanmar. A pearl necklace, he scoffed, is a 'pretty ineffective murder weapon'.
But now the language from New Delhi has altered.
Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna told the Indian Parliament on Tuesday that India was closely monitoring Chinese intentions as it had come to realise 'that China has been showing more than the normal interest in Indian Ocean affairs'.
For all these reasons, the November visit of United States President Barack Obama is being watched closely for signs that a new US-India concord on China may be taking shape, one that might even welcome a more lasting American presence in the region.
Mr Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mr Richard Holbrooke, hinted as much in a recent interview when he indicated that even if US troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the US would still have a sizeable force in the South Asian region for a while. The influential Mr Harrison too has been pushing for greater, not less, US engagement in the region.
One indication of counter-pressure on Beijing would be if New Delhi invites the Dalai Lama to any official reception it may host for the US President.
Were that to happen, the New Great Game may get fully under way.
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