[The American policy on Tibet was an instrument for creating a larger space in world politics. Its larger concern was to dismantle the expanding feet of communist ideology from China. America realised this could be easily done with the help of India. President Eisenhower wrote, on a couple of occasions, to Prime Minister Nehru, warning the latter of the impending Communist threat to South Asia. The State Department approached India. It argued that the impending Communist takeover of Tibet might offer a base for the extension of Communist penetration and subversive activities into Nepal and Bhutan and eventually India. The common interest of India and America was meeting a common point. Nehru refused to cooperate with the American plan. The US took the support of Nepal and made 19 airdrops of trained Khampas with arms to liberate Tibet. The attempts did not sustain the onslaught of China.]
By
Satish Kumar
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Tibetan spiritual leader
Dalai Lama on the last day of his four-day teaching at the
request of groups from Southeast
Asia, at Tsug la Khang Temple, McLeod Ganj
in Dharamshala, on 7 September
2018. IAN
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US President Donald Trump has signed into law
the controversial “Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act”. China has vehemently
criticised this law. China considers Tibetan issues its internal affair, and
said that any attempt to influence will harm bilateral ties with the US. This
law seeks to promote access to Tibet for US diplomats and other officials,
journalists and other citizens by denying US entry for Chinese officials deemed
responsible for restricting access to Tibet. Chinese foreign ministry
spokesperson Hua Chunying said that the law has sent seriously wrong signals to
Tibetan separatists. The Chinese came out in 2015 with a White Paper called the
“Golden Period” for Tibetans. But the ground reality is much different. Many
journalists and right groups have said that in 2018, the situation for ethnic
Tibetans inside what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region remains extremely
difficult.
The American policy on Tibet was an
instrument for creating a larger space in world politics. Its larger concern
was to dismantle the expanding feet of communist ideology from China. America
realised this could be easily done with the help of India. President Eisenhower
wrote, on a couple of occasions, to Prime Minister Nehru, warning the latter of
the impending Communist threat to South Asia. The State Department approached
India. It argued that the impending Communist takeover of Tibet might offer a
base for the extension of Communist penetration and subversive activities into
Nepal and Bhutan and eventually India. The common interest of India and America
was meeting a common point. Nehru refused to cooperate with the American plan.
The US took the support of Nepal and made 19 airdrops of trained Khampas with
arms to liberate Tibet. The attempts did not sustain the onslaught of China.
China continued its grip on Tibet. It
declared the Dalai Lama as a separatist. It came out with the White Paper in
2015. It maintains: “Tibet has been an integral part of China since ancient
times, and has never been an independent nation.” It pushes China’s claim over
Tibet back to the 7thcentury from the 12th century. Stating that there was a
close connection between the Tibetan people and the Han and other ethnic groups,
it says, “There has never been a break in economic, political and cultural
exchanges between Tibet and the rest of China.” This statement has been
rejected by the exile Tibetan government and the designated Prime Minster of
Tibet at Dharamsala. “Tibet was an independent country, and Tibet is under
occupation today,” says Lobsang Sangay.
On the other hand, China claims that Tibetan
culture and people have been much better off since its occupation rule began in
1959. It claims: “Tibet’s traditional culture is well protected and promoted,
and freedom of religious belief in the region is respected, while its
ecological environment is protected, too.” The White Paper also presents data
to justify its rule over the last 50 years. It claims: “Earlier Tibet did not
have a single school in the modern sense; its illiteracy rate was as high as
95% among the young and middle-aged; there was no modern medical service, and
praying to the Buddha for succour was the main resort for most people if they
fell ill; their average life expectancy was 35.5 year.”
Even if the above data are true, there are
many aspects which are equally true. The Tibetan community has been butchered
and subjugated to reduce them to slavery. Their twin identities of faith and
pastoral lives were forcefully destroyed by the communist regime. Tibet was
been strategically cut into two parts. One part of it, the Tibet Autonomous
Regions, has been converted into a nuclear dustbin, spreading deadly diseases
such as cancer. Thousands of Tibetans are behind the bar. Their economic status
is very low. The policy of transferring Han Chinese into the TAR is making the
Tibetans a minority community in their own region. There was further
disappointment for Tibetans and supporters across the world at the beginning of
2015 when China announced plans to increase the Han-Chinese population of Tibet
by 30% by 2020—a total of approximately 280,000 new arrivals.
Chinese Takeover of Tibet and Its
Implications for India
The Chinese takeover of Tibet was a strategic
move rather than for historical or ideological reasons, says Prof Dawa T.
Norbu. China has always been apprehensive of the influence of external powers
in the territory of Tibet. That is why it purportedly shifted the area of
buffer zone from Tibet to the tiny Himalayan states like Nepal and Bhutan.
China’s Tibet policy impacts on Indian security interests in two ways. One, it
exposes the border problem between India and China which led to the 1962
Sino-India war. The Chinese invasion of Tibet ended the buffer zone between the
two countries. It also increased China’s reach into South Asia.
In the Northwest region, it has occupied
43,180 sq km of the strategic and mineral rich Aksai Chin, besides 5,180 sq km
of Kashmir, ceded by the Pakistan government in its 1963 boundary agreement
with China. Aksai Chin is an ancient trade route and the Chinese need it for
forming a link between Tibet and Sinkiang (Eastern Turkistan) that was also
similarly annexed by them in 1949, advocated T. Jacob, a Sinologist. Other serious
consequences of Chinese developmental strategy in Tibet could be in terms of
environmental hazards. India’s major rivers originate from the trans-Himalayan
region. China’s western development programme is causing major deforestation
and ecological imbalance. Tibet is endowed with the greatest river systems in
the world. Its rivers supply fresh water to 85% of Asia’s population.
China’s policies towards India have been
characterised as a judicious combination of deep strategy and surface
diplomacy. The deep strategy consists of striving to gain a strategic edge over
India in Inner Asia by courting India’s acceptance of the occupation of Tibet.
At the same time China seeks strategic alliance with Pakistan to deny India
regional supremacy in South Asia. The surface diplomacy aspect is characterised
by frequent visits of all kinds to New Delhi since 1994. China plans to build a
540-kilometre strategic high-speed rail link between Tibet and Nepal, which
could pass through a tunnel under Mt Everest. Such a move could raise alarm in
India about the Communist giant’s growing influence in its neighbourhood.
“A proposed extension of the Qinghai-Tibet
Railway to the China-Nepal border through Tibet would boost bilateral trade and
tourism, as there is currently no rail line linking the two countries,” China’s
state-run China Daily has reported. The rail line is expected to be completed
by 2020. However, there was no word on the cost of the project. The 1,956-km
long Qinghai-Tibet railway already links the rest of China with the Tibetan
capital Lhasa and beyond. Two factors make Tibet important for India. First is
the religious and cultural factor; Tibet has an important place in Indian
imagination. The Kailash Mansarovar is in Tibet. It has religious connectivity
with Tibet. The second factor is ecological. If the Tibetan community refuses
to accept the roadmap drawn up by the Communist Chinese regime during the
period of the 14th Dalai Lama, it would be much more difficult after he is no
more.
Tibet has unfortunately been part of the
larger set up of world politics for American interests. But the Indian case is
completely different. It bore the direct consequences. Had Nehru accepted the
American design in 1950s when China was much weaker, Tibet would have been an
independent country, but an ideological prejudice of Nehru did not allow it to
happen. The US was prepared to provide nuclear arsenals to India. An
independent Tibet would have created altogether much different India. The major
threats which India is facing from North and Northwest would not have been
challenging for Indian security. The China-Pakistan nexus was possible to the
extent of a threat. The Indian first neighbourhood policy would have been
smoother and better integrated.
