Sunanda K. Datta Ray
The Free Press Journal
April 27, 2013
India can improve on its leverage in the current dialogue with China, without stooping to the provocative banality of what is called ‘playing the Tibet card’
PV Narasimha Rao was outraged by my suggestion that we were not doing enough for Tibet. “What do you mean?” he snapped. “No other country would have given the Dalai Lama and nearly 100,000 Tibetans asylum!” He went on to describe what I already knew – that the Western powers affect sympathy for Tibet only when it suits them to rile the Chinese.
Some would call that unethical compared to the selfless hospitality in which Narasimha Rao took just pride. Others might laud it as mature realpolitik. India now has an opportunity of blending both approaches to compensate for past vacillation and further the national interest. The confrontation in the Daulat Beg Oldi sector of Ladakh and the expected visits — China’s premier, Li Keqiang, to New Delhi and Salman Khurshid to Beijing — provide an appropriate setting for vigorous new diplomacy to enhance defence, without disrupting the continuing series of border flag meetings. Far from being the embarrassment it has been all these years, Tibet might then be regarded as an asset.
There is no point in crying over the spilt milk of 1954. Although Tibet was invited as a separate country to the 1947 Asian Relations Conference and sent a four-man delegation, Jawaharlal Nehru was not impressed by what the representatives had to say. He greatly admired Mao Zedong and the new China. And so far as constitutional legality went, he chose in this instance to believe what the British said was their principled foreign policy, instead of observing how in practice, they manoeuvred their position from event to event to extract the maximum advantage.
The Dalai Lama’s very reasonable utterances seldom go beyond the options for China and Tibet; he is careful not to suggest any course of action for India. But one of his senior officials made some interesting points at a conference, titled ‘Tibet’s Relation with the Himalayas,’ that the Foundation for Non-Violent Alternatives recently hosted in Gangtok, in collaboration with Sikkim University’s Department of International Relations/Politics.
Thubten Samphel is director of the Tibet Policy Institute in Dharamsala. He has visited Tibet as part of a fact-finding mission from the Central Tibetan Administration. The FNVA, which provided him with a platform, calls itself “an institute for developing peace studies.” It is dedicated “to promoting a better understanding of regional dynamics … with emphasis on the rising power of India and China” and to promoting a “dialogue between the peoples of India, Tibet and China.” Thubten directly addressed that mandate, indicating how India could improve on its leverage in the current dialogue with China, without stooping to the provocative banality of what is called “playing the Tibet card.”
With three separate United Nations resolutions in 1959, 1961 and 1965, Tibet, he maintains, is an international issue, despite Chinese protests to the contrary. Perhaps India can cite these resolutions to urge Beijing to resume the negotiations with the Dalai Lama that were suspended in January 2010. If the pontiff is unacceptable as a “splittist”, the talks can be with the Dharamsala administration, though Thubten didn’t say so. Instead, he cited the attendance of more than a thousand mainland Chinese at the Dalai Lama’s teachings at Bodh Gaya to claim that public opinion in China is changing, even if authority remains rigid.
He might have mentioned the many other mainland Chinese who revere and visit the young Karmapa Lama, head of Buddhism’s Karma Kagyu sect and representative of the world’s oldest unbroken line of succession through reincarnation. They accounted for some of the perfectly normal cash donations that caused such a hullaballoo not long ago. Thubten’s second point follows from this religious link. “Buddhism is India’s greatest soft power and (India) should not allow others to hijack this for their political objectives.” Theiji Sampho, who led the Tibetan delegation in 1947, made the same point, calling India “the motherland of Buddhism.” So, ironically, did the Chinese diplomat I asked why Beijing wanted Arunachal Pradesh. “It’s very important to us,” he exclaimed, astonished that I should even ask. “The sixth Dalai Lama was born there!” Presumably, Thubten wasn’t only indulging in wishful thinking in asserting that conversations with the Chinese about Buddhism and about Tibet’s “middle way approach” guarantee that Beijing’s future attitude will be more positive if the Chinese public is allowed “a say in shaping policy.”
His three other suggestions seem equally constructive. India should persist with its efforts to reopen the Lhasa consulate. Beijing cannot logically object, since China’s provinces enjoy some foreign policy powers. India must of course convince the Chinese that far from encouraging “splittist” activities, the consulate will care for pilgrims in both directions (Mount Kailash as well as Sarnath, Nalanda, Rajgir, Bodh Gaya and other sacred Buddhist sites) and help to expand trade, tourism and cultural ties between India and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Since Tibet’s waterways provide food and irrigation for about 47 per cent of humanity, India and Bangladesh should set up a Brahmaputra river commission with the “sole aim” of ensuring that the Yarlung Tsangpo does not deplete the flow downstream. Finally, he wants far more in-depth research on Tibet, not only by the exiled community, but also under Indian government auspices, so that there are “multiple sources of information, knowledge and perspectives on China’s activities and intentions on the Tibetan plateau.” The aim would be to ensure that development activities on the roof of the world are not detrimental to neighbouring countries.
Thubten received strong support from another Tibetan, Tenzin Norbu, who heads the CTA’s environment and development desk. His long and learned paper invoked scientific data to argue that the survival of 1.2 billion people depends on the water resources of the Tibetan plateau and demand “long-term planning for the time when the current enhanced flows due to glacier melt will greatly diminish, once the un-recharged glaciers are exhausted.” In other words, as the common stand India and China have taken at many international forums on global warming and climate change confirms, it’s in the interest of the two countries also to cooperate on husbanding Tibet’s water resources.
None of these recommendations are definitive. But a new regime has taken over in Beijing. The Chinese are engaged in territorial disputes with Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam. They know that while India can’t match their country in economic strength or the ability to project power, it could be a formidable adversary in the company of Japan, the United States of America and the Association of South-east Asian Nations. Moreover, China’s development needs the raw materials that make for a $23-billion deficit in a $66-billion trade that is expected to go up to $100 billion. Taking everything into account, a bold stand by India might persuade the Chinese there is more to bilateral diplomacy than infructuous talks on the border and potentially dangerous friction in desolate regions.
