One fails to understand why China is opposing the Dalai Lama’s visit to the monastic town of Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. There was once a time when this part of Arunachal Pradesh had close ties with Tibet, then a strange monastic-political entity headed by the Dalai Lama. This relationship ended with the departure of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959. The Dalai Lama was rightly given shelter in India with his followers because of the deep respect and reverence he enjoys in India.
China’s claims — on India’s border areas like Ladakh, Aksai Chin or in Arunachal Pradesh — are entirely based on the strength of the fact that the Dalai Lama had some kind of tenuous hold, more spiritual than political, over the people living there.
We need not, at this stage, go into the question of how right India’s policy was in permitting China’s military occupation of Tibet between 1950 and 1959. Before the Dalai Lama fled from Tibet, India had an excellent relationship with the Tibetan government, so much so that Indian pilgrims did not require a passport or a visa to visit Kailash Mansarovar and other pilgrimage centres located in Tibet. The border was not demarcated and there was no question of any dispute or clash between Tibetan and Indian officials. The Indian Army was stationed at Lhasa and Gyantse.
In 1950, when China sent its Army to take possession of Tibet, India went out of its way to accept China’s dubious claim over Tibet and, in a rare gesture, withdrew the Indian Army garrisons from both Lhasa and Gyantse.
It also allowed the Chinese Army to walk free over the Tibetan plateau. Thereby, compromising her own security as subsequent events were to make very clear. China’s border guards at the Indo-Tibetan border started questioning Indian pilgrims on their way to Kailash Mansarovar. They held all pilgrims without passports and visas and started harassing them.
The Indian government, instead of protesting vocally, submitted to their brandishments. We need not go into the question whether it was right on the part of the Indian government to acquiesce in China’s military takeover of the Tibetan plateau or whether India could have in any way prevented it. But the point I would like to emphasise is that China’s claim to Aksai Chin or Barahoti or Arunachal Pradesh are essentially on the basis of the arrangements that the Dalai Lama’s government maintained in relation to the Indo-Tibetan border. We cannot, therefore, rule out the great position that the Dalai Lama has in all these regions and the spiritual hold he has over the people living there.
There is nothing wrong in the Dalai Lama expressing his wish to visit Tawang and to preach among the local people there, as he has been doing elsewhere. There is every thing wrong in Beijing’s reacting to this pathologically.
Whether this is a stray event or part of a deep-seated China’s strategy to weaken India, is an open question. Some time ago when a blog from China suggested that China should try to disintegrate India by appealing to the country’s various secessionist groups, it could be dismissed as one mad man’s ranting and not necessarily China’s strategic thinking. But it was the failure of the authorities in Beijing to disown and regret this blog which is a matter of much surprise. The fact is that to this day there has been no official denial from China. Are we to assume then that that it was, perhaps, Beijing’s cleverly thought out strategy to weaken India?
This was followed by several reports of border incursions by China in Ladakh, the middle sector and Arunachal Pradesh. Beijing has contradicted these reports and joined its views with those who are describing Sino-India border as peaceful.
However, no clarification on the part of China regarding the controversial blog does not mean that India should retaliate by encouraging secessionism in China, say, among the Muslims in Xinjiang or in supporting the Dalai Lama’ request to China for restoring Tibet’s autonomy. That will be realpolitik in the extreme. Surely secessionism is much more of a problem for China than for India. But Indian authorities should take note of secessionism in India seriously and prevent all possible developments where China might fish in.
There can be no doubt that the so-called Maoist insurgency in the Northeast is being aided and abetted by elements in China. Our government should try to collect evidence, confront China and prevent any possibility of Maoist upsurge, as they say, from “Pashupati in Nepal to Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh”, through the states of West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
Where are the Maoists getting money, arms and explosives from? Our civil and military intelligence should pull up their socks. Could one draw any connection between the burgeoning insurgency in Northeast and China’s interest in the oceanic flanks of the India peninsula? For example, along with China’s onshore and offshore strategic assets in Burma, the deepwater port at Gwadar, Pakistan, represents China’s first strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea.
These are natural concerns of our nation without indulging in realpolitik or Machiavellianism. Also, the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force must take all possible steps to neutralise the advantages of China’s well-entrenched presence in the Tibetan plateau.
We should learn a lesson from tiny Vietnam which gave the Chinese Army a fitting military reply a few years ago. There is little room for being conciliatory at the expense of important strategic concerns. China’s so-called claims on some Indo-Tibetan border areas became invalid the moment it repudiated the Dalai Lama and his rule over Tibet. It is time we boldly assert that.
Nitish Sengupta, an academic and an author, is a former Member of Parliament and a former secretary to the Government of India