Foreign relations of a country are an image carrier of its very being that encompasses protecting national interests, promoting its friendly relations with other states and providing consular services to foreigners and its own nationals abroad. In recent decades India has pursued an expansive foreign policy including ‘Neighbourhood –first policy’ embodied by SAARC and the much debatable ‘Gujral doctrine’ of the mid-1990s. In its bid to rectify its skewed relations with the Far East, it has embarked on a much touted ‘Look east policy’ primarily to forge more extensive economic and strategic relationship with the East Asian countries. It has also maintained a policy of ‘Strategic ambiguity’ which involves its ‘No first use ‘nuclear policy and its neutral stance on the ongoing Russo- Ukrainian war.
But more than these relations, it is the neighborhood of India that has become the proverbial Gordian’s knot for the country to untie and retie it as per our foreign policy with a little give and take on either side. It’s a source of a constant worry that despite having attained freedom for more than seven decades, our foreign relations are bedeviled with our neighbors on a maze of issues ranging from territorial disputes, river water sharing, illegal population migration, cross border smuggling of narcotics and such contrabands to name a few. Barring the first i.e. territorial disputes all other foreign disputes entangling India are doable, subject to a degree of accommodation of interests by either side.
Not that the first one can’t be resolved by putting the same template of mutual understanding and accommodation on it and thus moving forward. In fact the two most inimical neighbors of India, China & Pakistan fall under this ambit with little leeway on the territorial dispute with us for its early and complete resolution. It is also unthinkable that the past didn’t provide us with this leeway towards its resolution. It did provide, but was marred by dismal portrayal of ‘perception management’ in our foreign relations with our immediate countries which they took full advantage of disregarding our humongous geographical spread qualifying us as a sub-continent rather than as a country.
More than the lack of perception management of our foreign office players, it was the utter mismanagement and disregard to the force –multipliers that were already available in-situ to us along with other diplomatic initiatives to leverage ourselves in a favourable position vis a vis our neighbours . One such force multiplier that has been relegated to oblivion has been the border people of Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand and Ladakh etc who bear close affinity to the mass of humanity residing in occupied Tibet and could provide a perfect handle to India in blunting the edge that China desires to have over there.
The recent announcement made by Mr Dorjee Tshering Lepcha, the sitting Rajya Sabha MP from Sikkim in the country’s upper house that LAC (Line of actual control) be referred as ‘India –Tibet border’ and not as the ‘India-China border’ has encapsulated in a nut shell what India should have done long time back. Actually this statement of his when dissected in its historical perspective doesn’t seem to go haywire and has the backing of both the ‘historicity’ & usage of this very geographical line to belie its authenticity. His statement drew an instant uproar from six (6) different Tibetan organizations residing in Sikkim /India as well as the entire Tibetan diaspora from the world.
The words quote –‘On behalf of the entire Tibetan community of Sikkim and Tibetans residing across the globe, we would like to thank Rajya SabhaMP, Mr DT Lepcha for the immense love, support and for the bold statement. Sir your statement has brought so much joy and happiness in the faces of Tibetans residing all over the world’. Unquote. The press release was signed by presidents of the Tibetan freedom movement, Regional Tibetan youth congress, Gangtok, Domey association, Utsang association and DokhamChushiKhandruk.
The very fact that a sitting MP and that too from the ruling party having a majority stake holding (read BJP) has sounded a ‘clarion call’ that belies the official stand of the GOI on this issue has lend credence to the fact that more clarity is sought to be undertaken and implemented in this regard. This statement of the MP when seen in the light of the following postulations cum developments has the making of this Tibetan issue a major blow-up in the face of the Modi government—
Since 2017 the Chinese government has gone on an overdrive to rename few of the places in Arunachal Pradesh in their ‘Standardized geographical names’ i.e. Zangan (Chinese name for southern Tibet/ Arunachal Pradesh), followed by yet another list of fifteen places in 2021 and then another list of eleven places on 02 April 2023. A time tested Chinese method of checking the resolve of the Indian government & cartographical aggression first on the map and thereafter on ground.
The GOI too upped the ante and from May 2024 resolved to name 30 odd places in Tibetan autonomous region (TAR) in our Indian way as a countervailing measure to the above mentioned Chinese perfidy.
The US Congressional delegation having come to India recently to Dharamshala and meeting HH Dalai Lama coupled with their ratifying the RTA (Resolve Tibet act) in the US Congress bespoke about hardening of their stance as well as a perceptible shift in the American position vis-à-vis Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Why shifting of Indian position over Tibet by trying to rename few places in that autonomous region with Indian names, and that too as an afterthought after the Chinese having done the same to us for the last seven years?
What is India’s locus standii on Tibet by announcing its decision to rename certain places in TAR by Indian names if India had accepted the Chinese full autonomy over Tibet way back in 2003; after jettisoning its long held official position of ‘Chinese suzerainty’ ? Doesn’t it amount to interference in Chinese internal affairs?
Does it sound both diplomatically and strategically sound to rename few places in Tibet with Indian names when the line itself demarcating the boundary between India and Tibet has been categorized as LAC ( Line of actual control) , signifying thereby that the land beyond the LAC is a contested one? As a corollary taking alibi of age old historical linkages between India and Tibet as also leveraging our stand as espoused by me in the preceding paragraphs ,first the misnomer of LAC should have been removed and then renaming of names in Tibet resorted to by India to reflect its genuineness of exercising the option of renaming.
The fact that this support & statement by Mr Lepcha, a Sikkim’s permanent resident urging India to reclassify the LAC as ‘India-Tibet border’tantamount to trashing the ‘Five fingers of Tibet’ theory of Mao Tse Tung of which Sikkim too forms part of should not be lost on the majority of Chinese and the world at large.
The way the various Tibetan federations in Sikkim have reacted in unison and spontaneity to the statement of Mr Lepcha reflects their hidden angst against the Indian government to drag its feet on a subject which holds true to their heart. Whereas at the same time their silence on Indian government’s decision in May 2024 of renaming some places in Tibet with Indian names as a tit for tat for the Chinese actions since 2017 reflects the coming of their age and a profound sense of pragmatism plus a sense of disillusionment with their host country i.e. India.
The world over such contentious boundary lines have been in existence some times by design and many times by default. In our own western neighborhood, the much contested ‘Durand line’ a legacy of the British Raj days continues to draw blood from both its sides i.e. Pakistan and Afghanistan with no end to sight to its amicable resolution even after more than a century. Similarly the ‘38th parallel’ line between N. Korea & S. Korea as also the 17th parallel between N. Vietnam & S.Vietnam drew their quota of tensions spanning their respective countries eventually settling down to a well-documented international agreement that recognized two sovereign countries in the former and a unified country in the latter case. But in the case of Sino –Indian relations with Tibet buffeted as a major stakeholder beholding India to up its cause, the only viable options which may seem plausible to us can be the following—
Taking the alibi of RTA( Resolve Tibet act) just ratified by the US congress, India too can suitably change its foreign policy with regard to China by replacing its stance of ‘Chinese autonomy’ over Tibet to ‘Chinese suzerainty’ over Tibet.
The above stance of ours will lay open the question of Chinese occupation of Tibet for revision since 1950, as that amounting to illegal and therefore the reverting back of LAC terminology to India-Tibet border.
Whether or not the present Indian dispensation takes such a momentous leap forward in its foreign policy, only the future happenings can tell. But the very fact that one of the sitting MPs of the ruling party has espoused the cause of millions of displaced Tibetan diaspora in the world as well as in Tibet too, goes to prove that either the government is using him as its paw to nuance its own foreign policy or there are bigger rumblings in the government itself of internal dissensions that don’t portend well for India. It would do well for us to go back to the pages of history and know how the same rumblings in the form of Mr KM Panickker our former ambassador to China way back in the 1950s had trashed our stand on ‘Chinese suzerainty’ over Tibet and reinforced ‘Chinese autonomy’ in the hope of buying Chinese closeness. But did his stated stand help us?
The lessons of history are only useful if they help us overcome that visual incapacity and understand not only those aspects on which a blinding bright light tends to shine typically but also the rest of the picture that exists in the shadows. How close was our former foreign secretary Mr Jagat Singh Mehta to the present times when he uttered those prophetic lines—‘To the line, the Indian line, faithful and vigilant stands, the watch on the Mac-Mohan line.
(Author is regular columnist of RK and retired army officer. Feedback: [email protected])
