Prafull Goradia

A seven-member American delegation led by Michael McCaul, and Nancy Pelosi, both leading lights of the US House of Representatives, recently met the Dalai Lama at Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh; this is a particularly significant event.

They delivered a clear message that the USA no longer accepts Tibet as a part of China; and the US Congress will be soon passing an Act to be made into a law, called the “Resolve Tibet-China Act”.The delegation told the Tibetan spiritual leader that “things have changed now”. This American message has unmistakably resisted in Chinese ears.

This US delegation first called on His Holiness at Dharmashala, indicating they were calling on the Tibetan government-in-exile, calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi only thereafter. The Government of India has not hesitated to welcome the delegation. Xi Jinping may have forgotten that Mao Zedong’s regime had first claimed ‘suzerainty’ over Tibet.

Before long, it asserted that Tibet was a Chinese province, before attempting to erase Tibet’s culture, heritage and language.These events have their roots in what happened towards the end of World War II. By allowing Stalin’s Red Army to enter Berlin first and occupy it, the US made the Russians believe that they were the prime victors of WWII. In 1949, the Soviet Communist regime, by hook or crook, acquired the atom bomb.

This made them believe even more they were now a superpower. Eco-militarily though, the Soviet Union was no ‘super’ but only a Eurasian power, as it had historically been.

Similarly, the US overestimated the Communist Chinese as well. Compared to Chiang Kai Shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) on the mainland, the Maoists were much more committed. That, however, was no reason to dump the KMT as well as Formosa, now Taiwan from the UN as an official member.

In fact, India should have been the correct replacement, but the Nehru government was insistent on giving the right of way to Red China, believe it or not.

The USA, or at least its State Department continued to believe for years that the Soviets and the Chinese were a single communist bloc. The extent of the animosity between the two was fully realized only after the Sino-Soviet clash along the Ussuri River in 1969.

It was only thereafter that President Nixon decided to call on Chinese Premier Mao Zedong in 1972, which brought a great deal of prestige to Dr. Henry Kissinger. The ultimate beneficiary of this resumption of relations was China, when Deng Xiao Ping introduced economic reforms, emphasizing manufacturing and exports.

The surplus of trillions of dollars accumulated by China came largely through exports to America.The course of these events explains why the State Department of the USA until now ignored the treatment of the hapless Tibetans by successive Chinese regimes over the last seven decades, beginning in 1959.

The question is: is this because of repeated provocations over Taiwan, or could there be some larger reason unknown to us? The intentions should become clearer with the unfolding of time.India’s stand has also been important. Unfortunately, the Leftists and communists in the country had clamoured for the (then) newly formed Red Chinese regime, which had requested its recognition within a few days of its winning the civil war.

Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel, on the other hand, was of the clear view that there was no hurry to recognize the new Chinese regime. In November 1949, Patel invited the American charge d’affairs Donovan to verify if there was an urgency in the recognition of Red China.

Knowing the Sardar through his long correspondence with Jawaharlal Nehru on the subject of China, uppermost in his mind must have been the concern that the Sino-Indian border should be mutually recognized. But Jawaharlal Nehru was in a hurry and without consulting the Sardar, informed the Chinese of India’s decision to recognize their regime in the December of that year itself.

While expressing its delight at Nehru’s message, China also laid down a few preconditions. India would pass on to the new regime all properties and assets of China. Secondly, India would not recognize any members of the KMT.

Thirdly, India should support the expulsion of Nationalist China from the UNO, as well as its replacement by the communist regime.China’s perfidious intentions can be gauged from the fact that its communist regime announced the ‘liberation’ of Tibet as the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) task just one day before the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The Tibetans had expelled the Chinese Amban, although he had been a Kuomintang government appointee.

The Chinese blamed India for it, abusing Nehru as “a lackey of British imperialism” and complicit in the British humiliation of China, which Mao sought to reverse.The People’s Daily of China in an editorial denounced the concept of suzerainty as feudal and oppressive—the very thing China demanded over Tibet. It even called on the UNO to examine India’s relationship with Bhutan.

The reality, which the Nehru government chose to ignore despite even Ambassador K.M. Pannikar’s warnings was that China was eyeing Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan too. But India’s first prime minister, a votary of international peace and brotherhood was oblivious to this. The sufferers were from Tibet and India.

(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal)