When Deve Gowda set aside protocol to receive Jiang Zemin at airport

It was November 28, 1996, when former prime minister H D Deve Gowda set aside protocol and went to the airport to receive president Jiang Zemin, who was China’s first head of state to visit India after the communist party came to power in the East Asian nation in 1949.

Gowda and Jiang raised the hope in New Delhi and Beijing of a new relationship between India and China, leaving behind the bitterness of the 1962 war. But the hope was belied as Jiang passed away at the age of 96 on Wednesday. The agreement the two nations inked after his meeting with Gowda in New Delhi is one of two that both sides are blaming each other for violating.

Jiang’s visit to New Delhi came eight years after Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had made his ice-breaking visit to Beijing, met China’s ‘Paramount Leader’ Deng Xiaoping and brought about a thaw in the relations between the two neighbouring nations with a historic three-minute-handshake.

Chinese Premier Li Peng visited India in 1991. President R Venkataramana visited China in 1992, followed by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in 1993 when the two sides had inked the agreement on 'Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India-China Border Areas'.

So, when Jiang and Gowda met in New Delhi in November 1996, they built on the new momentum and witnessed the signing of the new agreement for “Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas”. The two leaders reaffirmed that neither side should use force against the other by any means or seek unilateral military support.

The joint statement issued after the Jiang-Gowda meeting called for “a long-term good-neighbourly relationship” between India and China in accordance with the “five principles of mutual respect for sov0ereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence”.

Jiang was accorded a warm welcome by Gowda and President Shankar Dayal Sharma in the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, with a 21-gun salute.

Sharma hosted a banquet in honour of the Chinese President, who also visited the Taj Mahal in Agra later.

Jiang’s visit saw India and China sign agreements in New Delhi to fight crime and drug trafficking, and improve communications across the border.

But as the 5th President of China breathed his last on Wednesday, the promise he and the 11th Prime Minister of India made remains unfulfilled, with the soldiers of the two nations engaged in a stand-off along the LAC.