By Wing Commander(Retd, Indian Air Force)
After being feted in New Delhi and elsewhere in India, Chinese President Hu Jintao has gone back home via Pakistan. Though one can never imagine protest marches during such visits in the cities of Pakistan, Mr Hu’s otherwise successful whirlwind sojourn was marred by occasional demonstrations in India by Tibetan refugees to highlight China’s iron-fisted hold on the socalled Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and accompanying, grave human rights abuses on its inhabitants.
The peaceful protests were against the Chinese tyrannical occupation of their homeland in the similar manner that these hapless people and their sympathisers do in all democratic countries wherever the Chinese leaders go on official tours. According to the Dharamsala-based Tibetan government-in-exile, nearly 1.4 million Tibetans have lost their lives in Communist China’s brutal repression of Tibetans in the past decades.
The People’s Republic of China, as it is terribly obsessed with Tibet, considers the culturally and historically distinct region an integral part of the ‘Middle Kingdom”. Ever since the People’s Liberation Army brutally occupied Tibet in 1950, the Chinese have vigorously formulated and implemented a cleverly visualised plan of swamping Tibetan culture with the aim of obliterating its identity. The Dalai Lama has lamented that Tibet is being destroyed by China by all possible means.
In the foregoing decades, more and more people from all parts of overcrowded China have migrated to the occupied territory and with the recent linking of Lhasa with the Chinese mainland by railway, this influx is likely to turn into a tide, rendering the sons and daughters of the soil into a minority in the land of their birth.
In May 2004, Beijing had issued a White Paper on Tibet, asking the Tibetan spiritual leader to drop his bid for his nation’s independence. But the Dalai Lama has time and again declared that he would be satisfied with genuine autonomy under the Chinese sovereignty. But Beijing harbours deep distrust of the Dalai Lama’s call for Tibetan autonomy.
Strangely, the White Paper also dismissed the possibility of granting autonomy under the controversial “one country, two systems” formula now in vogue in Hong Kong and Macao.
China’s wily Communist rulers seem to playing for time. They are of the view that the aging Dalai Lama, respected worldwide as the apostle of peace, having completed 70, is on his way out.
They assume that the current movement for free Tibet will die its own death after the spiritual leader’s physical disappearance from the scene in due course. But it is believed that Dalai Lamas always reincarnate in human form and the present incumbent asserts that he will not take rebirth in Tibet so long as the region remains enslaved under Beijing.
This probably is to pre-empt crafty Communist rulers to declare someone else of their liking born in the region as reincarnation of His Holiness as they have done in the case of the Panchen Lama.
The Dalai Lama’s followers also believe that he possesses the divine power over living and dying. He had once reportedly mentioned that he would live for 113 years, saying that the current plight of Tibet necessitates him to live long so that he could work for his subjects until the issue of his forcefully occupied homeland is resolved.
He calls it the issue of six million subjugated people, their endangered cultural heritage, religion, language, environment and their right to self-determination.
The whole of the Western world supports the Tibetan cause and the USA is its biggest champion. The US government, while acknowledging China’s sovereignty over the Tibetan territory, would like to see preservation of distinct identity, cultural, religious and ethnic autonomy of Tibetans.
In this context, the Tibetan Policy Act was also introduced in the US Congress in 2001. It is not surprising that the Dalai Lama is a frequent visitor to the USA, where he has a growing number of followers amongst the influential section of society that also includes several top Hollywood celebrities.
Since Beijing is planning to launch a multi-billion dollar cultural blitz by setting up Confucius Centres in the major capitals of the world, its record of repression of docile Tibetans and the planned destruction of their age-old heritage can harm China’s global reputation as an emerging world power.
Beijing has often been accusing the Dalai Lama of being “splitist”, insincere and misleading international public opinion, despite the fact that the world has come to hold the spiritual leader in high esteem for his pragmatic approach. But he indisputably represents the opinion of the vast majority of his subjugated people and his moral authority transcends Tibetan interests.
The international community has honoured him with the coveted Nobel Peace Prize and now realises the duplicity of the Chinese in subduing a helpless race.
His Holiness once pleaded that New Delhi take the Tibet issue as India’s own. With its long Himalayan borders, a free Tibet could assure India peace from the northern side. But the Tibetan leader has lately given up the call for his country’s independence and would be satisfied with TAR’s genuine autonomy, despite the disillusionment of many young Tibetans in exile.
In this context, his representatives have also been holding backdoor negotiations with the Chinese authorities to find an agreeable solution. He sincerely hopes in decades to come there would be change of heart among the rulers in Beijing on account of the continuing world pressure and slow advent of democratic norms.
One wonders why New Delhi, unlike the USA and the western world, has all along displayed uncalled for timidity in dealing with the Dragon on the Tibetan issue. Such a feeble stand has been mistaken as a weakness on India’s part.
On the other hand, with nearly 200,000 Tibetan refugees sheltered in several settlements, the country could have taken a stronger stand to urge China to create a congenial atmosphere by granting genuine autonomy to TAR to facilitate the refugees’ honourable return.
With the strengthening of friendly relations between India and China, New Delhi now has a unique opportunity to re-examine its passive stance on the Tibetan issue which needs to be exploited on a political and diplomatic plane.
