May 25, 2015
http://www.asianage.com/columnists/rangzen-myth-697
Young Tibetans are desperate to return, but it should be clear to them that India has too much at stake to take any risks. Urging them to fight with nary a thought of who to fight, how or where is the farthest it will go...
Listening to speeches at the Internatio-nal Rangzen Confere-nce on “Tibet and India’s Security” over the weekend reminded me of a conversation with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman nearly 50 years ago. That was before Bangladesh. Mujib was visiting London as a Pakistani, and I remember him saying apropos of the future of the two Bengals, “Kavi Guru” (Rabindranath Tagore) “has written that the same hand that writes history also erases it!”
I don’t know whether Tagore ever made that prediction but the hope of rangzen or freedom sustained the Tibetan conference on the 64th anniversary of the signing of the fatal 17-point agreement. Roads, railways and floods of tourists have drastically altered Tibet since then, so that China’s focus has shifted from Aksai Chin to Tawang. The conference ignored this. In fact, India’s security was barely mentioned. Instead, Vijay Kranti, author of a comic book on the Dalai Lama, who chaired the proceedings, set the optimistic ball rolling by saying (not very accurately) that no one could have thought in 1945 that India would become independent in 1947.
Laudatory references to Ukraine were even more misleading. Far from being patriots, the fighters there are Russian proxies bent on destabilising the independence of a country that shook off the shackles of Soviet rule. Surely the last thing dashing Tenzin Tsundue, the Friends of Tibet (India) general secretary, wants is to be bracketed with men Ukrainians consider traitors? With his trademark scarlet head band to match the “Free Tibet” banners he unfurled when Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao visited India, Tenzin moderated the event.
Claude Arpi, the French-born Tibetologist, helped to justify optimism with the reminder that “no dynasty, not even China’s Communists, lasts forever”. “Are they really Communist?” asked another panellist in an astounding non sequitor. In fact, the absurdities of which only well-meaning armchair strategists are capable of uttering ricocheted round Delhi’s India International Centre auditorium.
In spite of the Dalai Lama’s khada-draped photograph, His Holiness was not the hero of the occasion. One speaker jeered at his Middle Path as the surest prescription for being run over by a truck. Another accused Lobsang Sangay, the exiled Tibetan government’s Prime Minister, of selling out rangzen at a US Congress committee meeting. A third indicated that the 122 Tibetan monasteries in the Himalayas could be battle headquarters. Someone recommended that the Special Frontier Force (Establishment 22) in Dehra Dun should take up the gauntlet. Invocations of General de Gaulle and the Free French resistance sounded less illogical. At the same time, we were warned not to expect too much of a Tibetan Tibet: Bangladesh shows that even a sponsored regime isn’t always friendly.
As befits a former ambassador to important countries who resigned his post but is still in the swim of things, T.C.A. Rangachari skirted diplomatically round the issues of Tibetan rangzen and Indian security to speak of causes and values without saying anything or committing himself. His reference to identity posed unaddressed questions. Should Tibetans who are born in this country take up Indian nationality? Should they become American or Canadian like some of the delegates? Was Mr Rangachari hinting they go back and become loyal Chinese-Tibetan nationals? There’s also the unmentioned option of Taiwan where I have met Tibetan legislators. The alternative of a virtual country with a diasporic citizenship is probably too imaginative to be considered. He mentioned the Karmapa Lama whom India tolerates but doesn’t recognise without explaining why.
It dawned on me that for all their expertise, none of those experts had a clue about what to advise Tenzin and his comrades. George Fernandes, who first involved me in the Tibet question, regarded it as a tremendous coup when Zail Singh walked into one of his Tibet conferences. But Zail Singh did so only to spite Rajiv Gandhi and made no tangible contribution. It was like US Presidents “accidentally” bumping into the Dalai Lama whenever something goes wrong in Sino-American relations. The conference in London under Lord David Ennals’ aegis that I attended thanks to Mr Fernandes listened to one horror story after another about Chinese repression without even trying to discuss any remedy. When I suggested that only the American senators present could pressure China, they hastily refused any role. The senators were attending in a personal capacity and didn’t want even their presence mentioned in conference documents.
The sad truth is that not many people want to know. Many young Tibetans are obviously desperate to return with honour to their liberated homeland but it should be clear to them that the elderly Indians who appear to sponsor their cause have too much at stake in the official establishment to take any risks. Urging Tibetans to fight with nary a thought of who to fight, how or where is the farthest they will go.
Perhaps Vikram Sood, RAW’s former chief, who was billed as a speaker but wasn’t there, could have told us about the possibility of the Khampa resistance in which India and the CIA had a role being repeated. Perhaps the very fact of such a conference so soon after Narendra Modi’s triumphant bridge-building tour was an act of defiance. But it was defiance of India’s government, not China’s, and can’t endear militant young Tibetans to either New Delhi or Dharamsala. Beijing is probably laughing up its sleeve at this evidence of disarray in the opposition ranks.
I hope Mujib was right and Tagore did write what he claimed. But much as I would like it to happen, I can’t see how Tibet’s conquest can be rolled back unless over-confidence and excessive wealth force China to implode from within. Mr Modi’s passionate courtship of Xi Jinping is neither here nor there.
The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author
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