Many Indians have had a wishful thought that India would be free of all problems only if Tibet stayed independent of China. Tibet, it is supposed, would thus be a “buffer state” between the two empires of India and China like the way Afghanistan and Iran were between the USSR and the British Empire. In such a case, India would not have any border with China and this thought can be captivating. Indians, of course, cannot even wipe their own noses unless Jawaharlal Nehru wiped it for them and must blame every problem on Jawaharlal Nehru. Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy mirrored that psychology in a recently tweeted rant.
Blaming Nehru
Tathagatha Roy and other BJP think tanks of the past like SK Sinha blame Nehru for supposedly not stopping China from annexing Tibet in 1950. They claim that if Sardar Patel were the Prime Minister, he would have somehow stopped China! But how? They neither answer nor did anybody ever ask them that question! Likes of SK Sinha and Tathagatha Roy drop these fantastic theories and pass off as intellectuals and military masterminds while throwing Indians into an eternal depression of being doomed by Nehru’s incompetence.
Let us assume that Nehru was indeed incompetent and naive. Why haven’t the BJP and other non-Congress governments since 1977 liberated Tibet and handed it to Dalai Lama so that we Indians could breathe free of China? Why didn’t Lal Bahadur Shastri make such an attempt in 1965 when we supposedly became very strong, thanks to lessons learned from 1962? Indira Gandhi delayed the invasion of Bangladesh until December month in 1971 so that Tibetan mountain passes would be covered in snow preempting China’s intervention. Could she liberate Tibet from China?
Likes of Tathagatha Roy conveniently fail to mention that in 2003, it was Vajpayee who officially conceded that Tibet was an integral part of China. Why didn’t Vajpayee launch an invasion instead and liberate Tibet? More relevantly, why doesn’t our 56-inch chest incumbent Prime Minister, whom Mr. Roy owes allegiance to, launch invasion and restore the reign of Dalai Lama?
Tibet and China
I would be happy if Tibet becomes independent, but one should not be delusional and play ignorance to reality. It is claimed that Tibet was independent of China for many years which is only half-truth. In 1911, all the provinces of China declared independence under the leadership and instructions of Dr. Sun Wen (also known as Sun Yat-sen). However, they declared independence from the Qing Dynasty but not from China. Qing Dynasty hailed from Manchuria and hence was considered “foreign” by Dr. Sun. Tibet too declared independence in 1911 along with other provinces and expelled the delegation of child emperor Pu Yi from Lhasa.
In the years that followed, there was chaos and civil war in China only to be interrupted by the Japanese Invasion, which the Tibetans took advantage of. Tibet being in the outer rim of the Chinese empire had an advantage. All through the civil war, neither Kuomintang nor Communists ever lost sight of Tibet and continued to claim it. In 1962, Taiwan which was ruled by Kuomintang’s Chiang Kai Shek helped Nehru fight China but maintained that Tibet belonged to China.
One may argue that Tibet has the right to stay independent since it was independent since 1911 until invaded by China in 1950. But then such an argument can be extended to 40% of Indian territory which was spread across 560 Princely States including Kashmir, and supposedly occupied by Sardar Patel.
Nehru and Tibet
Claim that Sardar Patel could have resisted China better than Nehru has no foundations in fact. Patel knew nothing outside Gujarat nor did he possess any greater military skills than Nehru. The much-hyped letter he wrote to Nehru in November 1950 was filled with an ignorant jingoistic rant. Patel’s claims such as China invading Burma first because they could not have recognised border like India’s McMahon Line proved false. China not only resolved the border dispute with Burma peacefully but said to have been very generous.
Short of sending the army to Tibet to take on China’s mighty People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the northern border of Tibet, there was nothing Nehru did not do. In 1950s likes of Sardar Patel probably wondered why Nehru was reluctant to send the army into Tibet? That question, however, was answered in 1962 and should not have been asked since.
Even to this day, Indian Army claims that they were not ready to fight China in 1962 and blame Nehru for being reckless by sending them to war. Let us remember that this war was fought well south of Tibet. If Nehru were to “resist” Chinese invasion of Tibet, he had to send the Indian Army way up North that too 12 years earlier. If the Indian Army was not ready in 1962, how could they have been ready in 1950? If they were defeated so pathetically in Arunachal Pradesh, what would be their fate in northern rims of Tibet? Would Sardar Patel or SK Sinha or Tathagatha Roy take responsibility for such a pointless loss of Indian life? Or would they turn around and blame Nehru for being reckless?
After 56 years, not a single “historian” tried to reconcile the two arguments of General SK Sinha’s or Tathagatha Roy’s “Nehru should definitely have intervened in Tibet” and General HS Panag’s or AVM Arjun Subramaniam’s “Nehru should NEVER have intervened in Tibet”. “Historians” probably don’t even understand the difference between the two arguments since their only goal is to drag Nehru or VK Krishna Menon through mud whichever way they can. The day credible historians start to reconcile these two mutually exclusive theories, Indians might emerge from this eternal confusion.
Dalai Lama and Viceroy’s House
In response to an innocent question about making prudent decisions, His Holiness Dalai Lama showed off his knowledge of the movie Viceroy’s House and claimed that Nehru denied Jinnah’s right to become the Prime Minister of India. A holy man like Dalai Lama indulging in such loose talk is unfortunate even if he did not have an agenda. Dalai Lama was wrong about Nehru while Jinnah’s only interest was in handing India to “back to” Muslims. Jinnah had no interest in becoming the Prime Minister himself especially in a Parliament (Constituent Assembly) that was overwhelmingly represented by the Congress Party.
What Dalai Lama called a “mistake” not just saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans but kept his religion and culture alive. Would Jinnah or Liaquat Ali shelter Dalai Lama if they were Prime Ministers of India? Dalai Lama too may be unhappy with Nehru just like SK Sinha and Tathagatha Roy for not sending our soldiers to die in Tibet. But would Ayub Khan do so for sake of Dalai Lama?