Talk to China with Chin Up

The sympathy and support for the oppressed that the nation saw during the crisis in Vietnam is conspicuous by absence today, when the Tibetans are locked in a life and death struggle. It was also conspicuous by absence when the Soviet Union attacked the land-locked Afghanistan. It was also conspicuous by absence when, at a latter stage, the United States and its allies raped Afghanistan. It was, again, conspicuous by absence when the coalition partners of Mr. George W. Bush assaulted Iraq and ultimately reduced it to smithereens. But that was not the case when Bharat decided to send peace-keeping force to Sri Lanka. Earlier we got liberated Bangladesh also!

Without going into the criterion or merits of active intervention, what passes our understanding is positive disinterest in the suffering of Tibetans, so much so that even a word of sympathy for the persecuted it not forthcoming from New Delhi. Does over-a-billion strong Bharat suffer from the draught of moral courage?

The details of the silent and not-so-silent persecutions of the Tibetans are: China had, after the anti-Chinese disturbances, two decades ago, been trying to smother Tibetan identity. For the purpose, the Communist Party of China has also been endeavouring to infiltrate into the Buddhist clergy. Money is also being used to de-Buddhise the Buddhist Tibetans.

Secondly, the Tibetan way of life is being sought to be altered by the authorities, sitting in Beijing. With a view to changing demography, the Hun Chinese are also being transplanted in Tibet. Ethnic Tibetans are deprived of the position of profit. This is part of a long-term policy.

Thirdly, as President Hu Jintau, who had directed the 1989 crackdown, considers the region as his base, every effort is being made to plug all avenues of dissent in religious matters. To quote Jim Yardley from New York Times (March 22): The Communist Party, atheistic by doctrine, has insisted that it has the sole authority to approve incarnation – the (so-called) divine process by which a “living Buddha” is chosen in boyhood. Beijing had already selected a boy as its own Panchem Lama, the second ranking figure in Tibetan Buddhism, and reportedly jailed a boy chosen by the Dalai Lama. “The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need,” Mr. Zhang said last year. He later added: “The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.” By 2006, Mr. Zhang had revived an “anti-Dalai” campaign and intensified “patriotic education’ at Buddhist monasteries. Monks are now required to attend long sessions listening to recitations of China’s interpretation of Tibetan history and also denounce the Dalai Lama.

As far as the Dalai Lama is concerned, he, in fact, lost the battle for Tibet’s freedom or autonomy the day he opted for refuge in Bharat, 49 years ago. It was a step that lacked imagination and vision. He should have fought his battle from the Chinese mainland as did, for example, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman of Bangladesh. He could have escaped to Bharat. But he did not.

Dalai Lama’s cadres, friends and admirers abroad lack in guts to have their say in an effective manner. Mere black-flag demonstrations against the visiting Chinese dignitaries in various countries have never brought revolution. Something else is needed as one disapprovingly sees in the case of the Sri Lanka rebels.

His global pro-Tibet lobby has achieved little because of inconsistency in his standpoint. Sometimes we are told he wants only autonomy within the framework of the Chinese constitution and territory. One cannot say for sure when he would improve further his list of demands. From London we often hear about Free Tibet. Has the Dalai Lama ever denounced it?

Perhaps, his only contribution appears to be Holy-hoodisation of Tibet. But films are just films, a means for cheap or not-so-cheap entertainment.

Let us be clear, China is a Communist straitjacket, in which, as Das Kapital envisages, everything is, and has to be, centralised. The Communist Party is supreme. Its word is the last word. In a model Communist State there is no question of what they call autonomy. Recall what happened, and why happened, in our West Bengal’s Nandigram?

In today’s China, there is an innate belief in the superiority of Hun race. This notion is reflected in each and every action of the Chinese. Hence the prejudice towards non-Huns. And that is why the unrest in non-Huns or the Chinese minority areas. We see, for this reason, unrest in the South-West of China. But here smaller, isolated minorities live. Still there live Mongols and Manchus, the former invaders of China. But now they are overwhelmingly Hun. To quote Phillip Browning from Herald Tribune (September 19): but they are now overwhelming Hun. But Tibet – with its long history of isolation, immense cultural, linguistic and religious differences and on-and-off independence – is a   different matter. So too is Xinjiang, which means “new territory” in Chinese. It saw brief independence as East Turkistan, or Uighurstan, in 1933 and part of it was again under Soviet tutelage from 1945 to 1949. Its population is still roughly 55 per cent non-Hun – Uighurs and Kazakhs whose Turkish speaking cousins stretch all the way to the Black Sea. Moreover, it also has an ethnic Korean minority in the northeast that would likely be agitating to be reunited with Korea if the divided peninsula were a united and prosperous state…. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China’s security dilemma has gotten worse. Newly independent states like Kazakhstan may be friendly, for now. But they naturally sympathise with minorities under the Hun yoke and Chinese efforts to present Uighur separatists as Muslim terrorists are weaning thin.

True to its genes, the United States is now trying to exploit the Tibet crisis spreading fast. The US Speaker of the House of Representatives was recently in New Delhi. Ms Nancy Pelosi advised the world to probe the truth about Tibet.

By the way, would the third most important official of the United States, after the President and Vice-President, mind if the world decides to probe Afghanistan and Iraq also?

With China in mind, now Washington is trying to rally Asia to its advantage. Its Defence Secretary Mr. Robert Gate’s visit to the Asian region was meant to despatch a clear sign to China that the US is back at its old game and has no intention to cede strategic space to Beijing.

Whatever be the future of Tibet, nothing is possible without internal pressure coupled with external public opinion in favour of the Tibetan cause. But much before that, clarity is a “must” on the part of the Tibetan leadership. At the moment there appears to be confusion from which the US is likely to benefit for the encirclement of China.

China would also do well to remember that power no more emerges from the barrel of the gun. Now throughout the civilised world it emerges from ballot boxes.

Let there be a strenuous effort to take the issue to the United Nations and its Security Council and other world fora. India is, rather was, genuinely expected to take up the Tibetan cause. But it seems to have disappointed one and all.

What New Delhi is doing? Besides postponing Mr. Kamal Nath’s visit to Beijing, it is expressing “distress” at what is happening in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet. This is the reply that New Delhi chose to give to those Tibetans who look with hope towards India’s capital.

Does this pusillanimity rather timidity befit Bharat? What has compelled New Delhi to keep quiet on gross violation of human rights in and around the capital of Tibet? By not standing up to China, India did a disservice to itself. We should have behaved like a morally robust nation.

As far as tiff over Arunachal Pradesh is concerned, a morally browbeaten China cannot talk to Bharat from a strong position. Beijing is in the dock. Why India chose to act like a subservient? Is this not a humiliating deference by India, which is a rising giant of Asia? It corrodes our credentials and compromises bonafides. What is the rationale of fear of offending a bellicose country? Is it with this morally shattered wherewithal that we aspire for a role as global power?