India v/s China

The thing that got my goat more than the joint US-China statement saying China had a big role to play in South Asia, a region that India sees as its area of influence, was our response to the statement. Our government was literally foaming at the mouth, our media was in paroxysms about our “loss of prestige”, the journalists were apoplectic. Everywhere you heard the refrain about how India would not brook any interference in her affairs and so on. Within a few days, the US came out with a statement averring that their ties with China “were not at the cost of their ties with India” and we all patted ourselves on the back for a serious challenge averted and honour saved. Then last night China came out with a statement that they did not intend to intervene between India and Pakistan (which is what we thought the joint statement was a veiled reference to) and they preferred that we solve the problem bilaterally. What a nice gesture!
But what irritated me in the whole affair was that our knee-jerk reaction to that statement made us sound almost childish. And moreover, it gave China a tacit right to meddle in South Asia. Notice that they say that they would not prefer to interfere in the Indo-Pak affairs. They might, but they won’t. Let’s see if the two kids can solve this quarrel between themselves, they see to say. Have we looked more stupid in recent times? I don’t think there was any need to go public with our “righteous indignance” here. Ignoring the statement would have given it the amount of importance it deserved. No one has the right to interference in our affairs is an understood fact. By responding to the statement like we did, we brought that fact into question. By refusing to even acknowledge it we would have given the impression that we really didn’t care what China or the US said about this stuff, as long as they didn’t try to actually act on their stupid ideas. If ever China offered to mediate we could counter that offer by offering to mediate between China and the Dalai Lama. By ignoring the statement we would have said to the world, “We don’t recognize anyone’s right to meddle in our affairs”, by responding to it as we have, we say “We know China has the right to interfere but we won’t allow it to.” Which sounds better?