Tibet : Roof rights of the world

Phalgun Krushna Dashami

By Sandhya Jain

On October 26, 1947, Hari Singh, Maharajadhiraj of Jammu & Kashmir and Naresh Tatha Tibbet adi Deshadhipathi, executed the Instrument of Accession to India, which was accepted the next day by Louis Mountbatten, Governor-General of India. Its most remarkable — and unspoken — aspect is that it pertains exclusively to Jammu & Kashmir and maintains inexplicable silence on Tibet.

Apparently, when the ruler merged the state with India, he created a "strategic vacuum" whereby Mountbatten could help the West regain control of the roof of the world, won by Francis Younghusband with the most brutal massacre of Tibetans four decades ago. Strangely, I have never seen any version of Indian history, diplomatic memoir or strategic analysis that could explain how Hari Singh became ‘Tibet Naresh’. But it now seems apparent that Pakistan was created not merely to give the West a foothold to overlook the oil-rich Gulf and Afghanistan, but to provide access to the Tibetan plateau to checkmate the Soviet Union and Communist China.

Like Pakistan, Jammu & Kashmir was also a pawn in this game. It was not given to Mohammed Ali Jinnah as a large Pakistan would be too independent for British comfort; hence two wings, dependent on the West. The issue of Accession was wrenched from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and deliberately waffled by the omission of Tibet. Some months later, Pakistan invaded Jammu & Kashmir and India was ‘persuaded’ by Mountbatten to take the dispute to the UN; this facilitated Pakistan’s retention of the Northern Areas, vital for control of Tibet.

It was only when the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan was found altering posts along the ceasefire line that Jawaharlal Nehru realised he had been taken for a ride and ruled out plebiscite in Jammu & Kashmir. Nehru’s tragic awareness that colonialism had made way not for freedom but neo-colonialism, may account for his otherwise inexplicable swerve towards the USSR and China.

Western neo-colonialism would have been perceived in other world capitals also; hence Kremlin’s rush to bring the Baltic and Balkan nations under its sway. Non-alignment was the brainwave of Yugoslavia’s Josip Tito, though he generously shared authorship with President Nasser of Egypt and Nehru to accommodate non-Communist nations in a non-Western orbit. Chairman Mao, possibly prodded by Moscow, probably decided to avert Western presence in Lhasa by occupying Tibet.

It was a wise precaution. Tibet is a large nation, with borders touching Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Sikkim, India; its boundary with China is gigantic. No Government in Beijing, regardless of ideology, could risk the presence of troops of hostile civilisations in such close proximity. Beijing built the Karakoram Highway courtesy Pakistan, not merely to outflank India but to also reach out to the West-oppressed Gulf and Afghanistan. Its friendship with Iran is also a reason for the unrest in Lhasa.

I think once Nehru realised that loss of critical Kashmiri territory made it impossible for India to access, let alone protect, Tibet, he acquiesced in a civilisational sister assuming this responsibility. It was realpolitik — the holding of Asian territory by Asian powers. Whatever the demerits of such occupation, the ‘Sons of Heaven’ are more acceptable than the sons of Abraham.

Analysts say the current violence by Drepung Monastery monks coincided with the regular session of the All-China Assembly of People’s Representatives, embarrassing Beijing and compelling it to use force. Simultaneous eruptions in Tibetan dominated regions of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai show the protests were coordinated. Andrei Areshev notes a parallel with the way Western media covered Kosovo in 1998, before the NATO aggression — information comes from Tibetan émigrés in neighbouring countries and Western human rights NGOs.

Interestingly, India has permitted two Israelis, Yahel Ben David, a Silicon Valley technocrat with Mossad training, and Michael Ginguld, with a background with international development agencies, to settle in Dharamshala and create in 2005 a Wi-Fi network connecting over 2000 computers with broadband internet access, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services, and video conferencing. News about the unrest was disseminated through Tenzin Norgay, Personnel for UN Affairs at the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, Dharamshala.

Tibet must be seen in the backdrop of the Dalai Lama accepting the Gold Medal of US Congress in October 2007. This parallels the award of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize to East Timorese Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo and secessionist émigré leader Jose Ramos Horta. The US Catholics Bishops Conference in 1998 asked Bishop Belo to make the promise of the Peace Prize a reality and sent a copy of this missive to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright! A few months later, riots broke out and the UN announced a referendum on autonomy for East Timor; riots intensified and the August 1999 UN-sponsored referendum voted for independence.

Now, the Dalai Lama has obliged his American friends by calling for an international inquiry into the "cultural genocide" and accusing New Delhi, his host for nearly five decades, of timidity towards China! Washington’s involvement goes back to CIA’s "secret war" after the annexation of Tibet in 1949 and Hamand and Amdo in 1956. In October 1957, Tibetans trained by the CIA were airlifted to Lhasa from Dhaka to make contact with local insurgents. The Lhasa uprising started soon afterwards and the Dalai Lama fled.

Hundreds of Tibetans were trained in Colorado. From 1958, CIA flew in weapons, ordnance and trained militants from a secret base in Thailand. By the early-1960s, CIA annually spent $ 1.7 million in Tibet, and $ 180,000 for the Dalai Lama’s personal needs. If Washington succeeds in landing troops in Tibet, Moscow expects it to exert further pressure on China’s unity, notably in Xiangyang-Uighur and Inner Mongolia.

Reports suggest the ‘Friends of Tibet’ met in Delhi in June 2007 and proposed a march of Tibetan exiles in India and Nepal to Lhasa to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games. US Under-secretary of State Paula Dobryansky, involved in the coloured revolutions in former Soviet republics, met the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala last November. Recently, US Congress Speaker Nancy Pelosi met him. As he is functioning as a politician and engaging in politics on Indian soil, he should be asked to leave along with his people.

Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/

Also See
» Hindu Genocide in Kashmir