India-China-Tibet issue

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

India’s boundary dispute with China is intrinsically linked to Tibet. New Delhi’s recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet was contingent upon China’s acceptance of Tibetan autonomy. 

• The Dalai Lama gave up the quest for independence in exchange for genuine autonomy. Beijing has squashed autonomy and has not kept its side of the bargain with Tibet and India.
• Beijing has squashed autonomy and has not kept its side of the bargain with Tibet and India. 
• In 1965, Prime Minister LalBahadurShastri had informed the Tibet Government in Exile (TGE) that he would recognise it, but he died prematurely. 
• But the original sin was committed by India’s failure to prevent the annexation of Tibet, India’s vital area. 

Background:

• Following a brief military conflict between China and Tibet at the start of the 20th century, Tibet declared itself as an independent nation in 1912. 
• It functioned as an autonomous region until 1950. 
• In 1949, the Communists under Mao Zedong’s leadership gained power and in 1950 seized control of Tibet. 
• In 1951, the Dalai Lama’s representatives signed a seventeen-point agreement that granted China sovereignty over Tibet for the first time. 
• The Chinese claim that this document is proof of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet while Tibet says that it was coerced into signing this document.
• When China invaded Tibet on October 7, 1950, to incorporate Tibet into the just proclaimed People’s Republic of China, it presented India with an acute dilemma – what should newly independent India do?
  • The 17-point agreement signed between Tibet and China on May 23, 1951, ended any hopes of genuine autonomy for Tibet. 
  • Further, the signing of the 1954 India-China agreement symbolised the complete formalisation of all developments since the invasion of Tibet by China and the total elimination of Indian political influence in Tibet.
  • For the first time ever, India, in a formal document, recognised Tibet as an integral part of China.

Chinese strategy

• Negotiations between India and China on relations between India and Tibet opened in Beijing on December 31, 1953. 
• China had suggested in September 1951 that India’s position in Tibet should be regularised and the ‘boundary with Tibet stabilised’. 
• China wanted to redefine the boundary with India. 
• India was clearly inviting trouble when it was decided that the border issue would not figure in the negotiations on Tibet. 
• Responding positively to the Chinese move for an agreement on Tibet was seen essentially as a means of reducing Chinese pressure on the border, and as ‘helping’ the Tibetans within a larger policy framework of coaxing the Chinese out of their isolation.
• The Indian government had made it clear in Parliament that not only the direct frontier with Tibet, but also the frontiers of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, should remain unchanged. 

India’s stand on the issue

• Tibet had become more a ‘psychological’ buffer from a political one during British rule — psychological because Nehru was convinced that any military attack on India from Tibet was not feasible. 
• For him, the status of Tibet and Tibetan autonomy, as also Indian interests in Tibet inherited from the British were issues for discussion with China.
• The problem lay in the fact that, except for Sikkim, the border had not been demarcated — jointly with China — on the ground; the boundary in the western and middle sectors had not been defined in detail by treaty. 
• The McMahon Line was shown only on a map that the Chinese government had initialled in 1914 but not subsequently accepted. 
• Wrong advice: K.M. Panikkar, the then Indian Ambassador to China, advised that the issue would pose no difficulty. 
  • He suggested that the political office in Lhasa should be regularised by its transformation into an Indian Consulate-General. 
  • Other posts and institutions like the telegraph lines set up in the British era, the military escort at Yadong in the Chumbi Valley, ‘were to be abolished quietly in time’.
  • It was an obsession with the big picture of two big Asian nations forging deeper understanding and cooperation. It was a strategic miscalculation that would have serious consequences.
  • It was assumed by India that there was no territorial dispute between India and China.
• While negotiations for an agreement between India and China on Tibet were necessary, they should have also included a border settlement. There should have been a quid pro quo for India’s recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.

Now, India should inform China that in the light of the recent events on the border, especially in East Ladakh, and New Delhi’s rethink of its Tibet policy, fresh facts had emerged. Sovereignty claim over Tibet had been fudged, as Tibet was taken by force and, therefore, sovereignty was inherited. Illegal occupation of Tibet through invasion, misrepresentation of facts and altering the historical narrative did not provide legitimacy. This first step in reopening the Tibet issue will attract a stiff Chinese reaction. But, India has to internationalise the issue of Tibetan freedom in concert with other democracies. The US Congress and the EU Parliament are believed to have recognised Tibet as an occupied country.

The Hindu Link:

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-perils-of-an-unresolved-boundary/article37168241.ece

Question- Unresolved issues about Tibet autonomy give rise to the Indo-China border dispute. Comment.