The fundamentals about Tibet

The status of Tibet is a destabilising factor in Sino-Indian relations. India's official commitment to the sovereignty of China over Tibet has to be made transparent and demonstrable, says SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY. Further extracts from his new book.

IT is essential in India's strategic interest to befriend China, and pay the price for it. That means, according to my understanding of the situation, squarely resolving the contradictions between our legitimate concerns in Tibet with our commitment enshrined in a 1954 treaty to recognise Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. If the latter i.e., our commitment, is made transparent, consistent and demonstrable, the main hurdle in our relations with China will go. Then expressing our concerns to China on Tibet in bilateral meetings would not only not be misunderstood, but China would be obliged to willingly accommodate these concerns as well.

For this to transpire, India must re-orient its policy and the Indian mind purged of the inherited British duplicity on Tibet: which was to keep Tibetan status nebulous in everyone's mind by concocting a feudal concept of "suzerainty". This made Tibet as neither independent nor a part of China, i.e., in a trishanku state. This purging of the imperialist perfidy is the responsibility of the Indian Government. It cannot be done by any other institution in our society...

The crux of my thesis thus is that Sino-Indian relations can never become close, friendly and a warm partnership unless our blind spot on Tibet is removed, and China is reassured. I advocate therefore that we have to digest and internalise the view that the shortest political route to Lhasa is via Beijing, and not across the Himalayas. Dalai Lama, therefore, is welcome to stay in India as a spiritual leader, but not as a head of an "exile" government. If the Dalai Lama advisers get derailed by the conferring of a Nobel Peace Prize or by fawning Hollywood actors, then it is better that the Dalai Lama does his politics stationed in Beverley Hills, California and not from Indian soil. India has no special responsibility to host the Dalai Lama. In the entire 2000 years of Sino-Indian history can the Bureau of the Dalai Lama give a single example when Tibet stood up for India? Lhasa had even laid claims to Tawang when India was weak, and Tibet was temporarily an independent country, e.g., in 1946.

The status of Tibet, and our perception of it, has been one of the destabilising factors in Sino-Indian relations. Publicly, the Indian government regards Tibet as an integral part of China. But in popular parlance, and in many of our actions, we do not behave as if Tibet is a part of China. For example, the Indian government had raised in the 1980s a highly paid special service unit, a 8000-strong commando group of Tibetans, who woke up every morning in the special camps with cries of "Long live Dalai Lama. We shall liberate Tibet". This commando group is still under the active supervision of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Cabinet Secretariat. If we regard Tibet as part of China, then why is there need for maintaining such a special group? Why not instead a regular army unit with contingency plans? The Indian government has never answered this query of mine...

Some Indians are sentimental about the status of Tibet vis-a-vis China. There is the undercurrent of Pan-Hinduism which is responsible for this sentiment. But do such people realise the national security consequence of such a sentiment? If India promotes Tibetan independence, cannot China promote Kashmiri, Assamese, Naga and Punjabi secession? Have not the Tibetan governments from 1890 to 1950 laid claim to Sikkim, Bhutan and the whole of Arunachal? Can India accept these consequential claims of an independent Tibet?

The second question is that if India supports the independence of Tibet, can India sustain it? Today's Tibet province of China is only about half of the ancient Tibet. The other areas have been amalgamated: Amdo in Quinghai Province, and Kham in Szechuan, Yunnan and Gansu. Even today's Tibet, which is more or less the "outer Tibet" of British India's Foreign Secretary McMahon's, is 1.3 million square kilometres in area, one-third the size of India. It has a population of 2 million Tibetans. Can 1.3 million square kilometres of the most hazardous territory be defended by 2 million people without external assistance? And whose external assistance? USA? Russia? Neither! Even at the height of the 1959 Tibetan rebellion, the US State Department spokesman had stated: "The United States never regarded Tibet as an independent state." Now the USA is in a strategic relationship with China. It will never thus support Tibetan independence. And Russia at the height of its anti-China phobia (when Kosygin visited India in 1979), which did not go beyond stating that Tibet was "in the exclusive sphere of India," is today busy negotiating peace with China. Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin travelled to discuss a compact with China.

In other words, it is only India, which is left with the mantle of achieving Tibetan independence and sustaining it! And, why should India take on this responsibility? Once Tibet becomes independent with Indian help, can India prevent the USA or the Russians from establishing a better rapport with Tibetans than India? Was India able to prevent Bangladesh from getting closer to the USA, China and Saudi Arabia even though it was India's army which had liberated Bangladesh, and ironically all these three countries had opposed the emergence of Bangladesh? ...

The question thus remains whether the conditions are ripe for the return of the Dalai Lama. If the Indian government is genuinely committed to its stated policy of regarding Tibet as a part of China, then it should be constantly in search of opportunities whereby the Dalai Lama himself feels that time has come when it is safe to go back to Lhasa.

The continued presence of the Dalai Lama in India serves as a festering reminder that all is not well between India and China. Till the question of the Dalai Lama is satisfactorily resolved, the relations between India and China cannot be properly called normal. And the only satisfactory resolution of the Dalai Lama question is his safe return and survival in Tibet. This is what Beijing Review had said was possible.

The Dalai Lama himself appears in two minds about his return. Sometimes ago, he said in an interview in Far Eastern Economic Review: "During the past 20 years we have stood for independence not because we hated the Chinese or their ideology, but only because of the sufferings of our people. But circumstances change and we cannot hold on to the past." Subsequently, he declared that he would visit Tibet. It, however, seems that some Tibetan refugees in India are averse to the Dalai Lama even paying a visit to Lhasa.

While the veneration of the Dalai Lama inside Tibet even 25 years after his escape to India is astounding, it by no means can be taken for granted. Even among monasteries in Tibet there are pro and anti-Dalai Lama factions. Among the young generation, while they still respect the Dalai Lama, they reject the socio-economic order with existed earlier. The rest of Tibet is in no mood for the kind of revolt which would pave the way for the triumphant return of the Dalai Lama as the temporal head of independent Tibet.

(To be continued)

India's China Perspective, SubramanianSwamy, Konark, Rs. 350.

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