Flawed Tibet policy

China obviously has a very clear cut Tibet policy and that is why it has always succeeded in tackling it at various levels. Even today, on the one hand it is engaging Dalai Lama’s representatives in talk and then denigrating him, on the other it is needling India on the border issue and then putting it off by talking about joint leadership. India, however, needs to appreciate that China has greater need of Tibet for without it there is danger of it losing control over number of areas located in the distance. On the other hand India always wavered in its policy and made the wrong choices.

by ABANTI BHATTACHARYA

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.