Chaitra Krushna Navami
The view expressed in the article is of writer & need not be taken as HJS’s views – Editor
By Ashoke Pandit
The author is a film-maker and social activist. A Kashmiri Pandit, he is a refugee in his own country.
The children of Tibetan refugees have a far more secure future in India than the children of Kashmiri Pandits, refugees in their own country, will ever have. Even after 20 years of their exodus, they are languishing in a filthy refugee camp.
With the advent of the Olympics, one topic that is heating up more than the Games is that of Tibet. It’s been years since Tibet has been the epicentre of world discussion. It’s a conflict whose price India has been paying for more than half-a-century.
India acquiesced in the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950 and accepted the Sino-Tibetan Agreement of 1951 that proclaimed Tibet as a part of China. After this India allowed the Dalai Lama to enter the country and provided refuge to 11,000 of his followers, although they had waged war against China.
It has never made sense to me as to why India, having accepted Tibet as an integral part of China, agreed to go against Beijing and support the rebels. This despite the fact that India faces the same problem which China has been facing in giving Tibet political autonomy.
India has given up Dharamsala to the Tibetian refugees to settle and form a parallel Tibetian Government. If one visits Dharamsala, one will realise that inhabitants of a foreign land have made India their own property. It is surprising that India has gone all-out to support a few thousand foreign refugees but never given a damn about the same strata of unfortunates of this country.
The royal treatment the Tibetans get has been denied to 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits who at least call themselves Indians. They have not got special sanctions and especially endowed areas to settle and flourish.
The children of Tibetans have a far more secure future in India than the children of Kashmiri Pandits will ever have. Even after 20 years of their exodus from the Kashmir Valley, they are still languishing in a filthy refugee camp in Jammu.
Internationally, the common definition of a refugee is someone who takes refuge in another country after being displaced from his or her homeland. Tibetans in India fit this definition. But tragically, Kashmiri Pandits are refugees in their own country and yet they are treated worse than their Tibetan counterparts.
When India lent a helping hand to the Tibetans in 1951, it was reeling under one of the worst economic crises. Yet, without bothering about its own woes, India acted with a ‘big’ heart. Since then, it has been sharing its harvest with the Tibetans who do not acknowledge themselves as Indians even after so many decades, even at the cost of those starving Indians who feel proud to be citizens of a country which does not give a damn about its own people.
The spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetans, the Dalai Lama, has risen to international fame for being a cut-out version of Tibet’s Gandhi. The US has nurtured and nourished the Dalai Lama to play its sly cards well.
The Dalai Lama was once requested by Kashmiri Pandits to come on a platform to speak about how they had become refugees in their own country. The general view was that there could be no public figure who could better identify with the plight of the displaced Pandits more than the Dalai Lama. But everyone was surprised when they got this response from his office: "His highness would not like to be associated with such a ‘controversial’ topic." This answer from his office exposed the man behind the halo.
The Dalai Lama, though himself a refugee, can never understand the pain and the troubles of a refugee because he has played to the international gallery portraying himself as a have-not. He has always loved portraying himself as the ‘New Age Gandhi’ and has been accordingly rewarded for it.
The Dalai Lama, no doubt, has been successful in creating global sympathy for the cause of Tibet, but his so-called middle path has been raising questions in the minds of young Tibetans who are out on the streets fighting for their homeland.
No country in the world, including the US, has the guts to confront China upfront; it is a formidable power. So, it is convenient for the US to strengthen the enemies of China. For the US, the enemies of its enemy are its friends. So, when the Dalai Lama visited the US, the Tibetan flag was hoisted to welcome him, providing an under-the-table recognition to Tibet.
The US knows very well that if today it is successful in creating a physical divide between China and Tibet, and in showering Tibet with separate autonomy, then it will be setting a historic precedent. Next will be India.
India is already finding it hard to keep China away from Arunachal Pradesh. Many people in Arunachal Pradesh, like those in Jammu & Kashmir, do not consider themselves as Indians and would be happy to get a separate state. Soon India would be fragmented and within no time this country would go the way of the USSR, which has been reduced to Russia with a fraction of the superpowerdom it once enjoyed. After China, India is considered to be a rising power and it is to the advantage of the US to keep such powers subservient to its superpowerdom.
My sympathies are with the Tibetan refugees because no one understands the pain of being displaced better than a Kashmiri Pandit. But at the same time, I feel irritated by the fact that India has been dragged into a controversy that does not concern its well-being.
China is on it way to becoming a superpower and it will be stupid to create enmity with the Chinese with whom we share a love-and-hate relationship. A monster called Pakistan is enough; we really do not need to create more monsters for ourselves.
Though I do not advocate the view that India should be subservient to China, it is not very intelligent to show your bravery by standing in front of a hungry lion. If the lion makes a meal of you, nobody is going to blame it. But you will be blamed for your foolishness.
Source: www.dailypioneer.com
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