MB Civic

India reveals flawed Tibet policy

By Abanti Bhattacharya
Asia Times Online, Hong Kong
Dec 7, 2007

The recent decision by India’s ruling United
Progressive Alliance government to bar
ministers from attending a felicitation
ceremony for the Dalai Lama is an
indication not only of the blunders
committed by the government in its
foreign policy decision-making, but more
perilously it exposes the flawed nature of
India’s policy towards Tibet.

India has so far failed to understand the
nuances in Chinese diplomatic practice and
negotiating tactics. It has time and again
fallen into the Chinese trap, sacrificing its
national interests in the process.

Clearly, China is tackling its Tibet problem
at two levels. One, it is involving the Dalai
Lama’s representatives in fruitless talks on
the resolution of the Tibetan problem,
while also disparaging him as a “splittist”
who aims to disintegrate China. Two, it is
arm-twisting India on the border dispute
by raising the Tawang district issue and
asking India to remove its army bunkers
from its outposts at Batang La near the
India-Bhutan-China tri-junction, while at
the same time mesmerizing the Indian
leadership with rhetoric on India-China
joint leadership in bringing about an Asian
renaissance.

China’s Tibet policy forms the linchpin of its
nationalist project. Its sovereignty over
Tibet has significant ramifications not only
for its national integrity but also for
stability in its other minority areas,
particularly Xinjiang. If Tibet falls from
China’s grip, Xinjiang would follow suit. The
bottom line of China’s Tibet policy thus has
been the maintenance of its sovereignty
over Tibet through military and economic
means, whereby the region is fully
integrated with the mainland and Tibetans
are reduced to a minority in their own
province.

More importantly, China’s Tibet policy has
significant external security ramifications
owing to the entanglement of the Tibet
issue in the Sino-Indian border dispute.
India inherited the British policy of
sustaining Tibet as a buffer zone and
Tibet’s de facto independent status under
Chinese suzerainty suited its national
security interests.

In the post-1949 period, when the People’s
Republic of China came into being, India
urged China to let Tibet be an autonomous region, as this would be in line with its
historical status, its religious, cultural and
political identity, and minimize China’s
military presence in the region.

However, the entry of 20,000 PLA (People’s
Liberation Army) troops in 1950-51 into
Tibet ended its independent status. The
Chinese occupation of Tibet brought to the
fore the issue of India-China border.
During his visit to China in 1954, Jawaharlal
Nehru raised the issue of inaccurate
border alignment in some Chinese maps to
which Chinese premier Zhou Enlai replied
that those maps were reproductions of the
old Kuomintang maps and that the Chinese
government had had no time to revise
them.

Ironically, these two developments formed
the undercurrent of the Hindi-Chini Bhai
Bhai era (India and China are brothers)
when India signed the agreement with
China on trade and intercourse between
India and Tibet on April 29, 1954. Under the
agreement, India gave up all extra –
territorial rights and privileges that it had
inherited from the British Indian
government and recognized Tibet as part
of China.

The first official Chinese statement on the
Sino-Indian border dispute came on
January 23, 1959, in response to Nehru’s
letter of December 14, 1958, in which he
had drawn Chinese attention to the
incorrect Sino-Indian border alignment
shown in Chinese maps. Zhou Enlai wrote
saying that the Sino-Indian border was
never delimited and that China had never
recognized the McMahon Line.

It may be recalled that the British had
delineated the McMahon line as the
boundary between India and Tibet
following a tripartite agreement among
the British India, Tibet and China in 1914
but the treaty was not ratified by China.
After the India-China 1962 war China went
on to claim about 90,000 square kilometers
of Indian territory in the eastern sector
and 38,000 square kilometers in the Aksai
Chin area. China’s Tibet policy thus had
brought to the fore a serious border
dispute between India and China, and it
has remained intractable till date.

Indeed, China’s claim over Tawang
(Arunachal Pradesh) on the basis of old
Tibetan religious and monastic links is a
reminder of the fact that the Tibetan issue
is far from over. In fact, the 11th round of
the meeting between the special
representatives of the two countries in
September 2007 ended on an inconclusive
note partly because of the Tawang issue.

The former Chinese ambassador to New
Delhi, Zhou Gang, said that as the Chinese
people would never accept the “McMahon
line”, India would have to make substantial
adjustments in the Eastern sector by giving
Tawang to China.

India’s policy towards Tibet has suffered
because of its many dilemmas. In the 1950s,
though India opposed China’s invasion of
Tibet, it refused to sponsor a Tibetan
appeal to the United Nations, turned down
US proposals for cooperation in support of
the Tibetan resistance and persuaded the
young Dalai Lama not to flee abroad but to
reach an agreement with the Chinese
government.

All this forced the Dalai Lama to sign a 17-point agreement with Beijing in May 1951.
This Indian policy stemmed from the need
to preserve Tibet as an autonomous region
within China, while simultaneously
advancing ties with Beijing. Consequently,
India signed the 1954 agreement with
China on Tibet, in which it virtually
surrendered its Tibetan card. The 1956
uprising in Tibet exposed the insincerity of
the Chinese towards granting autonomy to
Tibet and in an effort to retrieve the lost
ground India granted asylum to the Dalai
Lama in 1959.

But Beijing saw the granting of asylum to
Dalai Lama and enabling him to mobilize
international support as an anti-China
policy. Consequently, in all subsequent
India-China joint statements, it ensured the
insertion of a clause on India’s acceptance
of Tibet as a part of China.

By repeatedly reiterating over the years
that Tibet is a part of China, India diluted
its leverage not only in shoring up the
Tibetan cause but also in its border negotiations with China. At the same time,
China continues to fear that India might
use the Tibetan card at some point in the
future. Despite these Chinese fears, India
has steadfastly avoided using the Tibetan
card as a bargaining strategy.

Given its tradition of pursuing an
independent foreign policy, it is
incomprehensible why India is buckling
down under Chinese pressure on Tibet. It is
well known that given the present
dynamics of India-China relations with
greater synergy as the goal, New Delhi is
not likely to take up the Tibetan cause
actively. But at the same time, it is well
within the parameters of Indian foreign
policy to regard the Dalai Lama as Tibet’s
spiritual leader. When China hosted the
World Buddhist Forum, no eyebrows were
raised though the event had significant
political import. India, being the land of
Buddha, should take the initiative to
felicitate the Dalai Lama. After all, the
Dalai Lama is not demanding
independence but is only legitimately
demanding the preservation of Tibetan
identity, religion and culture within
Chinese frontiers.

India lacks the political will to creatively
use the Tibetan card and is losing an
important leverage in its negotiations with
China. India has the Tibet card if it chooses
to use. The very presence of the Dalai Lama
in India along with 120,000 Tibetan
refugees spread across 35 settlements is
leverage for India.

Further, the Dalai Lama recognizes the
1914 Simla agreement, in which case the
Chinese claims on Tawang on the basis of
history do not hold ground. In any case,
historically, the Tawang tract did not
belong to China. The Chinese side in their
dialog with the Tibetan Task Force have
tried to persuade the Tibetans to accept
Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory, to
which the Tibetans have firmly refused.

Interestingly, while the Chinese are trying
to solve the border dispute with India
through special representatives group meetings, they are also simultaneously
holding talks with the Tibetans on the
Tibet issue.

This indicates entanglement of the Tibetan
issue with the India-China border dispute.
Therefore, the problem of Tibet including
the fate of Tibetan refugees in India and
the border dispute cannot be solved
effectively without a tripartite participation
of India, China and Tibet.

India should explore ways to involve the
Tibetans in the border resolution. In fact,
an effective solution to the India-China
border dispute would depend on involving
the Tibetans as representatives in the
ongoing border negotiations. It may be
similar to the Sino-Japanese history issue
where a joint committee has been set up to
resolve the history question. India-China-Tibet need a joint historical research to
resolve the “leftover” of history.

Dr Abanti Bhattacharya, associate fellow,
Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses
(IDSA), Delhi.