India wakes to a Tibetan headache
By M K Bhadrakumar
DHARAMSALA, India - Within hours of the violence and vandalism breaking out
last Friday in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, the
township of Dharamsala, nestled against the Indian Himalayas, was spruced up
like an Old Dame anticipating a shipload of boisterous sailors who just docked
at the port after months of seafaring.
The township is the seat of the Tibetan so-called "government-in-exile",
presided over by the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader and temporal head of the
8,000-strong Tibetan community living here. (Dharamsala, also called "Little
Lhasa", literally means "Rest
House" and was established in 1849 by the British rulers of India as a garrison
town.)
The Dalai Lama would have reason to be satisfied with the attention he is
receiving from the hordes of Western media persons who have descended on
Dharamsala in the past 24 hours. He has become a revitalized cause celebre in
the international media ever since Lhasa erupted into violence. He scheduled a
special conference on Sunday afternoon, after the big sharks of the Western
media arrived. The occasion was pregnant with possibilities. At the conference,
the Dalai Lama launched a tirade against the Chinese authorities. Most
important, he point-blank refused to make any appeal for calm in Tibet in the
worst unrest in Tibet for nearly two decades.
Protests spread from Tibet into three neighboring provinces on Sunday as
Tibetans continued to defy a Chinese government crackdown. Angry demonstrations
broke out in Tibetan communities in Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces.
The Tibetan capital of Lhasa was tense on Monday ahead of a midnight deadline
for people who took part in the violent anti-Chinese uprising to surrender or
face severe punishment. Tibetan officials say 16 people have died and dozens
wounded in the violence, although other estimates put the figure much higher.
The Dalai Lama said, "The situation in Tibet has become volatile, and only a
miracle power can control it, not me."
He seems to realize this may well be his last waltz. The potential for
embarrassing China - and in particular, President Hu Jintao, who once headed
the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet - has never been as great as in the runup
to the Beijing Summer Olympic Games in August. The Dalai Lama accused China of
unleashing a "cultural genocide" in Tibet and demanded an international probe.
But, he said, "We want genuine autonomy and not independence [from China]."
Tibet has suddenly sailed into view. Violence has erupted in Lhasa after a gap
of two full decades. Such large-scale violence was last witnessed in 1987. How
much of the violence on Friday was pre-planned or orchestrated from outside
Tibet, it is difficult to assess from Dharamsala. The Chinese authorities have
alleged that the "Dalai Lama clique" instigated the violence. But one thing
stands out.
The complete coordination with which the apparatus of the Tibetan
"government-in-exile" has sprung into high-quality action on the political and
propaganda front leaves little doubt that it was at the very minimum
anticipating Friday's eruption. Tibetan activists here are more forthcoming.
They darkly hinted they were indeed expecting the disturbances. But they refuse
to elaborate how they knew or who their collaborators were or what they did
with what they knew.
Set against the Himalayan peaks which still wear a brooding wintry look
sprinkled with powdery snow, the Dalai Lama's palace and its surroundings
provide a stunning location for a drama-filled political cause that mixes
liberation theology yet defaces communism.
A dozen handsome-looking Tibetan youth with flowing hair and bold headbands
spread the red Chinese national flags on the streets of Dharamsala and trample
on them with a couple of Indian policemen silently watching. A shed has been
erected at the gates of the Dalai Lama's palace where a "relay fast" is
observed by Tibetan activists protesting against China's governance of Tibet.
Western television cameras eagerly lap up the images for beaming them to
drawing rooms in Europe and North America. The Dalai Lama's palace basks in the
warm spring sunshine of Western attention.
There is much excitement in the air in Dharamsala as the speaker of the United
States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is expected in this Himalayan
hamlet on Tuesday. It seems she is not having a stopover in Iraq and
Afghanistan but is heading straight for Dharamsala. Pelosi took the initiative
of arranging a Congressional medal for the Dalai Lama a few months ago, which
China robustly protested. Beijing warned the George W Bush administration that
such unfriendly acts could cast shadows on US-China relations.
The Dalai Lama insisted at the press conference that Pelosi's trip was long
scheduled. He described her as an old friend. But her visit nonetheless comes
at an awkward time for India. Delhi has adopted an attitude of "see no evil,
hear no evil". But it remains to be seen whether the Chinese are impressed.
Actually, a delicate three-way diplomatic tango is likely commencing -
involving the US and China, with India providing the turf - which can only turn
out to be messy for India. There is an old African saying that when elephants
clash, the grass gets crushed. China would see a pattern insofar as steadily
through recent months, sections of the Indian corporate media, which have been
traditionally known to serve as mouthpieces of American regional policy, have
been on overdrive stirring up dust in India-China relations.
Influential voices in the Indian strategic community have also jumped into the
fray, including former diplomats who served at the highest level in the Indian
foreign policy establishment and are close to the ruling Congress party. Their
plea is that Tibet is at the core of India's intractable border dispute with
China. They claim China is displaying the iron in its soul by pressing its
claims in the border dispute. According to them, China is deliberately
"provoking" India because it is in no mood to settle the border dispute with
Delhi until Beijing has "subdued" Tibet on its terms. They see the odds as
heavily favoring China in its current shadow boxing with India, whereas, Tibet
is Delhi's only leverage.
At the same time, there has been a pro-US shift in Indian foreign-policy
orientations in general in recent years. The present government has worked hard
to harmonize its regional policies with the US policy almost across the board.
It has left virtually no stone unturned - be it over Kosovo, the Palestinian
problem or Afghanistan.
From this perspective, the strong Indian reaction to the Lhasa violence assumes
significance. First, it is not clear whether an Indian reaction was warranted
on an issue which is patently China's internal matter. The question is of
diplomatic propriety - and not the rights and wrongs of what took place in
Lhasa. Second, Delhi cannot adopt double standards. Delhi is not going to be
amused if any world capital makes it a point to begin pronouncing on incidents
of violence that rock India from time to time. Delhi used to show irritation
whenever Pakistan took note of Hindu-Muslim violence in India.
The Indian Foreign Ministry expressed its "distress" over the "unsettled
situation and violence" in Lhasa. It called on "all those involved" (meaning,
Tibetan agitators as well as Chinese authorities) to "improve the situation and
remove causes of such trouble in Tibet".
Without doubt, Delhi has chosen to be prescriptive on an internal matter of
China. But it can boomerang, even if it pleases Washington in the present
instance. Ironically, news just trickled in that the 60-member Organization of
Islamic Conference (OIC) passed a resolution by consensus at its summit meeting
in Dakar, Senegal, on Friday expressing "concern about the long-lingering,
oldest unresolved dispute of Kashmir" and underscoring the organization's
support of the Kashmiri people's right of self-determination.
The Indian Foreign Ministry promptly dismissed the OIC statement, saying, "The
OIC has no locus standi [standing] in matters concerning India's
internal affairs, including Jammu and Kashmir, which is an integral part of
India. We [Indian government] strongly reject all such comments," the Indian
Foreign Ministry pointed out.
Of course, Delhi did the right thing. No government in Delhi will countenance a
dilution of India's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Equally, the central
issue is whether the Dharamsala folks have a future. Indian strategists are
exceedingly foolish to pretend Delhi holds a "Tibet card". A visit to
Dharamsala will at once bring them face-to-face with the sobering reality that
the Tibetan community here faces disarray once the 73-year-old Dalai Lama
departs from the scene. He dominates the landscape with his sheer physical
presence.
While hundreds of Tibetan demonstrators marched in the town center on Sunday,
local Indians went on with their daily lives. The Indians and the Tibetan
Buddhists live in water-tight compartments in Dharamsala. Even after 49 years,
they hardly intermix. The Indians complain that the relatively more affluent
Tibetan "refugees" are disdainful. This is especially so among
second-generation Tibetans who otherwise feel comfortable with the Western
nationals who throng to this exotic town in the Himalayas for a variety of
reasons.
The local Indians complain wealthy Tibetans are buying up property at fancy
prices. No matter what Indian strategists in their ivory towers may write,
Tibet is not a "popular" issue among ordinary Indians. Therefore, there is a
touch of surreality about the whole situation. There is a "civilizational"
angle insofar as Indians are largely indifferent towards Buddhism. Western
nationals throng the Buddhist monasteries in Dharamsala curious to know about
Tibetan medicine, yoga, mysticism and of course Buddhist philosophy. But there
are hardly any Indians to be seen in the monasteries except the odd tourist
escaping the heat of the Indian plains.
The sad reality of Indian history is that the country gave birth to Buddhism,
but in the name of "Hindu revivalism", it subsequently decimated Buddhism and
ruthlessly removed all traces of it from the Indian cultural consciousness,
though Buddhism still remains the finest flower of the Indian civilization in a
philosophical sense.
It, therefore, becomes difficult for ordinary Indians to champion the issue of
Tibet. The issue needs to be "oxygenated" in Indian opinion constantly, which
is eventually bound to become tedious. But that is looking ahead. For the
present, a lot of money is undoubtedly pouring into this little town under the
rubric of "donations".
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan
(1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
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