Arun Shourie on Tibet
Post 2014 Lok Sabha elections India has witness drift from the Nehruvian policies that have influenced India since independence. This raises a question and a hope about India’s policy towards its neighbour Tibet which has acted as a buffer state between India and China. Arun Shourie, the noted politician and the recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for journalism in his book “We must have no price” has dedicated an entire chapter on India’s Tibet Policy.
Mr. Shourie mentions how under Nehru’s firm hand, the Indian Government shut its eyes to the roads and other infrastructure which were being built in Tibet. He states that,
“Indeed, the “policy” was carried further. The view was taken, and enforced, that we should not only not ourselves raise, we should oppose efforts by others to raise in a forum like the United Nations what was being done to Tibetans. This, Panditji laid down, is what would be in the best interests of the Tibetans themselves.”
Just as Mr. Shourie has forewarned us we see that the net result of shutting eyes to Tibet was that the Chinese having already swallowed Tibet are now making systematic inroad onto the southern slopes of the Himalayas. There is another feature about India’s stance towards Tibet as per Mr. Shourie which is a feature that reveals a lot about us as a people, a feature that goes beyond the attitude of successive Indian governments.
He says that the Buddhist tradition was forgotten in India, however, among the places in the world, where this great heritage of mankind, and the Buddha’s doctrine and practice, were preserved has been Tibet. The great Tibetan masters have been with us and amidst us now for 50 years. Mr. Shourie says that,
“It is often said, “But we had no option in 1949-50.” Take that to be true for a moment. They tragedy is that six long decades later, we remain a country without options.”
Mr. Shourie says that it is weakness that lies at the root. The rest, accepting Chinese “suzerainty” one day, “sovereignty” the next; accepting Tibet as an autonomous region within China one day and as in internal affair of China the next; these are just successive steps to “operationalise” that weakness, so to say.
Mr. Shourie rightly says,
“Unless we acquire strength comparable to that of China; unless we build up an alliance system with other countries that are concerned about Chinese intentions and might, we will be left with hope as our only policy: the hope that “ultimately truth triumphs,” that “ultimately tyrannies dissolve,” the hope that like all else “ultimately China too will evolve towards freedom and democracy.”
After witnessing the moves of China in the recent year it is very clear what China wants to be. It is obvious that China wants to be the dominant power in Asia and one of the two major powers in the world. It regards India as a potential nuisance; a nuisance that must be confined within South Asia. The onus is now on the Indian Government as to how it wants to review its Tibet Policy. While the new Indian Government decides on its Tibet Policy it must know that for China conquering and suppressing Tibet, militarising Tibet and stationing air and nuclear bases in Tibet are part of China’s larger policy.