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BOOK
REVIEW
Graveyard of Indian
idealism
Tibet. The Lost
Frontier by Claude
Arpi
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Although the absorption of Tibet into
China since 1950 has been copiously discussed from
different angles, there is a dearth of
understanding about the regional politics
surrounding the "roof of the world". Since time
immemorial, Tibet’s fate has been intertwined with
that of its two giant neighbors, China and India.
French scholar Claude Arpi's new book teases out
the complex workings of this triangle and throws
light on how Indian idealism came a cropper
against Chinese realpolitik.
Arpi begins
with a historical distillation about the nature of
the triangle: "Tibet and China always had a
relation based on force and power, while Tibet and
India had more of a cultural relationship based on
shared spiritual values." (p 25) In the Medieval
age, Indian and Tibetan Buddhist seers and
translators
crisscrossed
their respective borders in a constant exchange of
knowledge and wisdom. Arpi classifies Tibet as "a
child of Indian civilization".
However,
the decline and disappearance of Buddhism in India
pushed Tibet to find new protectors to preserve
the Dharma and this set the stage for
priest-patron relationships with Mongol and
Chinese emperors. This politico-spiritual system
lasted for centuries until Manchu troops invaded
Tibet in 1908.
 Up until the beginning of
the 20th century, Manchu representatives in Lhasa
forced Tibet to shut foreigners out from gaining
trading benefits. By 1904, though, Chinese
suzerainty over Tibet became a "constitutional
fiction" and the British penetrated the land of
snows with boots on the ground. When the Chinese
saw that London was vacillating after its initial
foray, they adopted a policy of reintegrating
Tibet into the Manchu Empire by brute force. In an
effort to "Sinicize" Kham (eastern Tibet), Chinese
General Zhao Erfeng razed monasteries and beheaded
monks with unprecedented brutality.
The
Chinese assault forced the 13th Dalai Lama into
political asylum in British India in 1910.
Desperate for public legitimacy, the occupying
Chinese tried to pit the Panchen Lama against the
Dalai Lama, but this only raised the ire of
Tibetans. Once Chinese troops were driven out of
Tibet, the Dalai Lama returned and formally
proclaimed independence in 1913. He saw the need
to have a balance in relations with the great
powers in the neighborhood and also believed in
"using force where force is necessary". (p 93)
The stubborn obstruction of the Dalai
Lama's modernizing reforms by big orthodox
monasteries led to his prophecy in 1932 that
"Tibetans shall be slaves of the conquerors". The
opportunity for Tibet to assert its independence
and build a strong army was also missed due to
infighting between the Khampas and Lhaseans, which
softened the state for communist raiders.
Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang considered
Tibet a part of China and bequeathed this legacy
to the succeeding communists. Chairman Mao Zedong
was well aware of the strategic importance of
Tibet as a gateway through which the Indian
sub-continent could be threatened. His
"liberation" of Tibet from 1950 onward was a
"demonstration to the world of who the real leader
of Asia was" and a humiliation of India as a
"paper tiger". (p 18)
For some time, newly
independent India followed the British line of
recognizing Tibet as a de facto sovereign state.
Even up to the early part of 1949, prime minister
Jawaharlal Nehru held that Tibet was a separate
entity with a separate government. New Delhi
supplied light arms and ammunition to the Tibetan
government without informing the Chinese and
stated its "readiness to help Lhasa with its
security concerns". (p 134)
But by late
1949, Nehru did a volte-face and accepted the fait
accompli that Tibet would be invaded by communist
China. The Indian army chief, General Cariappa,
said his forces would be unable to engage the
Chinese in a full-fledged high-altitude war as he
was hard pressed on the Pakistan front. Britain
and the United States regretted India’s tendency
to "throw up its hands and say nothing could be
done [to save Tibet] and retire to its own
frontiers". (p 143) Due to the compulsions of
geopolitics, the rest of the world placed the onus
on India to act before it was too late.
Nehru sacrificed Tibet on the altar of a
chimerical "eternal friendship" with China. A week
before the People's Liberation Army (PLA) marched
into Tibet, India's ambassador in Beijing, K M
Panikkar, consciously changed the word
"suzerainty" to "sovereignty" to define the status
of Tibet vis-a-vis China. Arpi deduces that
"perhaps the Chinese received indirect [or direct]
assurances from Panikkar that India would not
intervene". (p 166)
When the Tibetan
parliament decided to appeal to the United Nations
(UN) against Chinese aggression, India refused to
sponsor it for fear of "upsetting the Chinese". (p
176) Nehru was not keen on criticizing China
regarding Tibet, in the hope that he might "play a
more helpful role in mediating between communist
and Western powers" over the Korean War. He worked
to defer consideration of the immediate concern of
Tibet at the UN in order to obtain a ceasefire in
distant Korea. India, which had a direct stake in
Tibet's future, acted unclearly about its own
national interests at a momentous juncture in its
history.
Indian deputy prime minister
Sardar Patel bemoaned Nehru's "lack of firmness
and unnecessarily apologetic" tone towards China
on Tibet. He warned of the dire threat posed by
"the disappearance of Tibet and the expansion of
China almost up to our gates". (p 192)
Parliamentarians urged New Delhi to strengthen
India's borders in view of Chinese maps
incorporating Assam and Ladakh. But their
prescient words fell on deaf ears. Nehru was
intent on appeasing China and winning a friendship
at any cost on the grounds that "the future of
Asia depended on it". (p 203) Ironically, Arpi
notes, "By abandoning Tibetans, he [Nehru] could
no longer claim to be the hero of the trampled and
the downtrodden." (p 229)
G S Bajpai, then
head of India's Foreign Ministry, said ambassador
Panikkar had "allowed himself to be influenced
more by the Chinese point of view, Chinese claims,
Chinese maps and regards for Chinese
susceptibilities than by India's interests". Mao
and his premier, Chou Enlai, exploited Nehru and
Panikkar's anti-imperialist instincts to China's
advantage. To Arpi, "The lack of courage and
self-confidence of Indian leaders, demonstrated by
their need to please the Chinese at any price,
cost India her chance to be a leader of the
so-called Third World." (p 211)
With all
doors of assistance - Indian or Western - closed,
Tibetans had little choice but to consent to be a
province of the "Great Chinese Motherland". India
was reportedly "somewhat shocked" at the extent of
Tibetan capitulation to China in the 17-point
agreement of 1951, but was thereafter "inclined to
adopt an attitude of philosophic acquiescence". (p
243)
The Indian representative in Lhasa
was redesignated a consul-general under the Indian
Embassy in Beijing. Indian diplomats bent backward
to accommodate Chinese demands and conceded rights
in Tibet that were inherited from the Simla
Convention of 1914. Panikkar recommended that
India should dismantle its "colonial rights" in
Tibet and offer them to China as a necessary
gesture of goodwill. India even began supplying
rice to the PLA forces in Tibet from 1952 to help
Beijing consolidate its conquest. True autonomy
for Tibet, which would have assured security for
India's borders, was jettisoned.
When a
farsighted Indian Foreign Service officer wrote
ominously about Chinese military designs on the
northeast frontier of India, Nehru dismissed it as
"not quite an objective or balanced view as it was
colored very much by certain conceptions". (p 263)
At the 1953-54 Beijing conference, Indian
diplomats obsessed with "broader perspectives" and
"larger issues", such as creation of a neutral
"third pole" in world affairs, while the Chinese
side came with the hardnosed goal of formalizing
its occupation and ownership of Tibet.
The
Five Principles (Panchsheel) Agreement of 1954
gave Beijing what it wanted and saw New Delhi
surrender its "old advantages" in Tibet. India
could not even get a confirmation of the McMahon
Line as the undisputed border with China. From
June 1954, with no traditional Tibetan buffer
left, Chinese military incursions into Indian
territories commenced. Indian traders and pilgrims
were harassed in Tibet by the new "revolutionary"
authorities. About 1955, China embarked on
building a highway through Indian territory in the
Aksai Chin area to connect Tibet with Xinjiang.
Mesmerized by Chou's guile, Nehru
justified these Chinese actions without taking
retaliatory measures or issuing timely protests.
In 1957, Chou told Nehru that though the McMahon
Line was "unfair to us, we feel that there is no
better way than to recognize it". (p 301) But the
Chinese leadership had already decided to "teach
India a lesson" for encouraging and ultimately
offering asylum to the 14th Dalai Lama and his
people. The PLA's onslaught on India across the
McMahon Line in 1962 pricked the bubble of "Asian
brotherhood".
Nehru's successor, Lal
Bahadur Shastri, took a tougher stand and voted in
favor of the 1965 UN resolution for
self-determination in Tibet. In 1967, the Indian
army repulsed Chinese troops trying to intrude
into Sikkim, in the eastern Himalayas. The
incident "made Beijing think twice" and ushered in
frosty Sino-Indian relations for decades. In 1986,
the PLA was thwarted from nibbling at Indian
territory in Arunachal Pradesh in the Sumdorong
Chu incident. This again gave the Beijing
leadership pause for thought since it "had earlier
always considered India to be a weak nation". (p
307) Yet, as of 2008, India’s defense
infrastructure along the Chinese border remains
below par.
The Sino-Indian border row is
unsolved to this day, even as Tibetan autonomy has
vanished. Arpi mocks recent optimism about China
among "Panikkar's children" in the corridors of
Indian foreign policymaking. He nails down the
main problem as follows: "While the Chinese remain
pragmatic, most of the Indian leaders are
sentimental." (p 313)
The moral from
history for India is that atmospherics are
superficial facades behind which China is an
unpredictable and wily bargainer. With the destiny
of Tibet already sealed as a graveyard of Indian
idealism, New Delhi is now left to strive for its
own territorial integrity against a surging
Beijing. A bilateral settlement that could not be
reached in 1954 has much less chance of
materializing today when China's power is on the
ascendant.
Tibet. The Lost Frontier
by Claude Arpi. Lancer Publishers, Olympia Fields
(October 2008). ISBN: 0-9815378-4-7. Price: US$27,
338 pages.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times
Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales,
syndication and republishing.)
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