The Tibet Factor

Tibet continues to be a thorn on the side of an improving India-China relationship, shows a new book

The Tibetan Saga for National Liberation by Pranjali Bandhu, Odyssey, Rs. 350

TG JACOB


The Qinghai-Tibet railway line in Qinghai Province, western China
In the current scenario of the increasing thaw and growing economic relations between India and China, the Tibet factor in this relationship needs re-examination in clear perspective. The existence of a Tibetan government-in-exile in India, the continuing stream of a refugee population, active ‘Free Tibet’ campaigning—all these represent thorns between the two governments. The Tibet issue is closely linked to the border issue, which despite several sessions of talks in the last quarter of a century has remained intractable. The nature of India-China trade relations is also not entirely satisfactory from India’s point of view. Last but not the least is India’s dependency on the US, which has only deepened with time.

In fact, India’s granting of asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 was done with the concurrence and support of the US government. Nevertheless, the Indian government has from the time of Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet accepted Chinese suzerainty and sovereignty over Tibet. It has endorsed the ‘one China’ principle and has never publicly upheld Tibetan independence after its occupation by the Chinese. It is, however, pertinent to keep in mind that the border issue—delineating and demarcating the border between India and China—actually involves Tibet on the Chinese side. This is a fact that is being completely overlooked and sidelined at present, both at the political level and by the mainstream media because Tibet is held to be an inalienable part of China.

Can the right of Tibetans to determine their border with India be proclaimed without India simultaneously conceding the same rights to the nationalities inhabiting the Indian side of the border, namely, the Kashmiris, the Ladakhis, the Sikkimese, the Arunachalis (including many tribal groups), the Nepalis, the Lepchas and so on? This would involve acknowledging the right to self-determination up to the right to secession of the various peoples, which neither the Indian nor the Chinese government is prepared to do. It would mean that the Indian government would have to openly acknowledge its annexation of Sikkim; it would have to own up that a wide swathe of territory from Ladakh to Myanmar including Tawang was actually politically and culturally Tibetan or stood under Tibetan influence, and it was first the British and then Nehru, who followed a forward policy in this region.

The Tawang tract and other bordering areas that had been ceded by the Tibetan government in 1914 to the British (forming part of the so-called McMahon Line) were occupied by the Indian government in 1951 and incorporated into the Indian administration.
This was done despite the fact that in 1947 the Tibetan government had formally asked India to return these border territories and had even included Sikkim and Darjeeling district in their claim (Darjeeling had been annexed from Sikkim, a dependency of Tibet, by the British).

Now that Tibet is forcibly incorporated as a province [albeit part of it as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)] into China, the central Chinese government is laying claim to such ‘Tibetan’ territories. In fact, it has already built townships in Arunachal Pradesh and does not officially recognize it as a part of India. In the Northwest region, it has occupied 43,180 sq km of the strategic and mineral rich Aksai Chin, besides 5180 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 Turkestan) that was also similarly annexed in 1949.

The above facts are known and documented though little highlighted. A recent publication which using available documentation and research throws much light on the Tibetan issue is The Tibetan Saga for National Liberation by Pranjali Bandhu. It provides an excellent documentary background to deciphering the Tibet issue and the persisting demand for independence inside and outside Tibet.

Starting with history, it clearly establishes—false historiographical Chinese claims notwithstanding—the existence of Tibet as a state independent of mainland China for a couple of thousand years. It delineates in detail the historical evolution of the Tibetan nation and its relationship to the interventionist and dominating Chinese nation up to the eve of its outright annexation in 1949/1950 by a Chinese government under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party’s approach to the national/ethnic question in China in general and to Tibet in particular from the time of its growing ascendancy in China is taken up for analysis and so also the events leading up to the famed 1959 uprising in Lhasa and the subsequent fleeing of the 14th Dalai Lama.

The Chinese establishment of control over the territories of not only Tibet, but also of Sinkiang (East Turkestan) and Inner Mongolia clearly had, in addition to strategic considerations an economic rationale of exploiting their vast mineral resources for industrialisation in mainland China, particularly in its eastern and southern coastal regions, in a typically colonial fashion. But the rapacious destruction of a self-reliant nomadic pastoral economy through imposed democratic reforms is camouflaged under a ‘developmental’ jargon. The Chinese having taken upon themselves the Han man’s burden of a transformation of Tibet claim that under their rule unprecedented high growth rates and material prosperity have come.

The book traces the ‘development’ trajectory of Tibet under Han Chinese aegis and concludes that the kind of ‘growth’ that has taken place has fuelled marginalisation and class polarisation within the TAR. It has benefited largely a migrant Chinese population, the Tibetan elite and middle class, while rural areas, populated largely by Tibetans, suffer from inadequate incomes, lack infrastructure, basic amenities and education and health provisions. The highly controversial Lhasa-Golmud railway has contributed to the inflow of migrants and tourists and of the outflow of wealth due to resource extraction apart from its dubious environmental impact. The degradation of Tibet, its people and environment, is multifarious. The aspects of religious, cultural and linguistic oppression, the ‘bastardisation’ of a people, the environmental devastation are recorded as being the results of a market-driven Chinese economy that no longer has any relationship to the ideas and ideals of communism.

In its final chapter the book also takes a look at the Tibetan struggle for independence. By all internationally accepted criteria, the Tibetans constitute a nation. The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and the Tibetan regions of Kham and Amdo incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Gansu, Sichuan, Yunan and Qinghai, are occupied territory. Resistance to Chinese colonisation has been met with armed suppression. It is estimated that at least one million Tibetans have died as a result of the occupation, imprisonment, torture and starvation. In the prisons there is an attempt to remould the outlook of those who believe in Tibetan freedom. Basic civil, religious and democratic rights are denied.

The media, including the arts and literature, are conspicuously muzzled and the book presents many details in this regard. Foreign journalists too are kept under tight surveillance although Beijing did indicate that they would be allowed to travel freely throughout China in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. Moreover, it is Beijing’s policy to provide journalists free and comfortable trips to China and Tibet in order to solicit favourable ground-level reports. In this way a number of positive reports on the Lhasa-Golmud railway appeared in the Indian press after the line was commissioned in 2006. Similarly, now in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, the spotlight being on China and its human rights record, we have had glowing reports lauding Tibetan development after some more such sponsored trips.

The fact that Chinese-led ‘development’ in ‘minority’ areas like that of the TAR, Sinkiang and Inner Mongolia is leading to a growing alienation of the Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongols has been corroborated by a recent report of the London-based Minority Rights Group International. The Chinese imposed development, particularly of roads and railways, is leading to resource extraction and greater Han Chinese military and civilian presence in these areas. The result is a general dilution of local cultures and lifestyles increasing the levels of resentment among the local populations.

The Appendix provides a useful overview of the general trajectory of Communist Party politics from the time it came to power in 1949 to the present. With a couple of maps, Chronology, Index and Bibliography, The Tibetan Saga for National Liberation is recommended useful reference material for all those interested in national liberation movements in the current era taking the case of Tibet as it does for detailed examination.