The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : A reality check on Tibet

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Saturday, Aug 21, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

A reality check on Tibet

By Amit Baruah

India should have little hesitation in accommodating Chinese sensitivities on Tibet.

IT IS time to open up. The Tibet Autonomous Region of China is on the move. A cooperative relationship between India and China can bring enormous benefits to people on both sides of the border. The border trade agreement signed in June 2003 between India and China, through Sikkim and the TAR, needs to be implemented at the earliest. People-to-people contact in the form of a Gangtok-Lhasa bus service or a New Delhi-Lhasa flight must be promoted.

The Chinese today are keen on showcasing their achievements in Tibet — from growth in income to the preservation and restoration of religious and cultural monuments. This is a sign of their rising confidence when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world on Tibet.

If one were to go by TAR Government figures (in the absence of any other statistics), the per capita income of a Tibetan farmer stands at 1,680 Renminbi ($1 equals 8.21 Renminbi) today. In 1965, it stood at 240 RMB.

Tuden Tsewang, TAR Vice-Chairman, said recently that Tibet had a 41,000-km road network and 80 per cent of all villages had electricity. It has three functioning airports, a fourth is under construction and a fifth is in the planning stage.

Ninety 90 per cent of the children have been admitted to schools. Life expectancy stood at 67 years in 2003 as opposed to 35 in the early 1960s. In 1965 (the year TAR was formed by China), the Tibetan population stood at 1.2 million while the figure was 2.5 million according to 2003 figures.

Infrastructure and agriculture are two areas on which the TAR is focussed. A senior official from the Shannan Prefecture (the prefectures of Ali, Shigatse, Nagchu, Nyingtiri, and Chamdo along with the municipality of Lhasa constitute the rest of TAR), Tsam Trom, told Indian journalists that her province was actively engaged in attracting investment from other parts of China into Tibet since the area had few industries.

Like the rest of China, construction is booming in TAR. It is evident that the Chinese Central Government and the Communist Party leadership have focussed on Tibet and its development. Billions of RMB have been poured into TAR.

Forty-two years after China's border conflict with India and 45 years after the Dalai Lama fled to India, India and Indians must come to terms with the fact that Beijing is the route through which New Delhi must deal with Lhasa.

This correspondent, who visited Tibet recently as part of an Indian press delegation invited by the official China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture, flew to Beijing from New Delhi and then on to Chengdu and Lhasa. There was a clear message in the route chosen. We could have, for instance, taken the more direct flight path from New Delhi to Kathmandu and then on to Lhasa. But we did not and neither did our Chinese hosts suggest it.

It was an indication that while India and China address their longstanding border dispute and even open up trade through Tibet and Sikkim, the Chinese Central Government has residual suspicions about Indian intentions vis-à-vis Tibet. There is little doubt that the continuing presence of the Dalai Lama's "government-in-exile" in Dharmasala have much to do with this.

Considerable effort has gone into consolidating China's hold on Tibet. In Beijing, the Assistant Minister for the China Association, Zhu Weigun, told us that in the last five years the Chinese Central Government had provided 69.1 billion RMB to TAR, of which 37.9 billion RMB was in the form of subsidies. Another two billion RMB had come from other provinces.

"There is no ceiling on Central assistance. Such preferential polices [as towards TAR] don't exist for other provinces," Mr. Zhu, a former journalist with the People's Daily , stated.

It is evident that if India wants to enhance linkages with Tibet, there has to be an increase in comfort levels as far as China is concerned. For the Chinese, the Dalai Lama and the considerable support that he enjoys in the West are not just a problem for Tibet, but for the larger question of Taiwan being a part of China.

Official after official repeated to us what the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, said in an interview to the Washington Post, on the Dalai Lama and Tibet in November 2003: "So long as he genuinely abandons his position on seeking Tibetan independence and publicly recognises Tibet and Taiwan as inalienable parts of Chinese territory, then contacts and discussions between him and the Central Government can resume. The door to communication between the Central Government and the Dalai Lama is wide open."

To the credit of the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and his foreign policy team, Indian formulations on Tibet during his June 2003 visit to China seem to have partly addressed Beijing's concerns on the issue.

The Chinese feel that India for the first time explicitly recognised TAR to be part of the territory of the People's Republic of China in the joint declaration issued on June 25, 2003: "The Indian side recognises that the Tibet Autonomous Region is part of the territory of the People's Republic of China."

However, during Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's celebrated visit to Beijing in 1988 India reiterated the "long-standing and consistent policy of the Government of India that Tibet is an autonomous region of China."

In 1954, the title of the accord signed between India and China said everything it had to on India's idea of the status of Tibet: "Agreement between the Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the People's Republic of China on Trade and Inter-Course between Tibet Region of China and India."

The key phrase here is "Tibet Region of China." In a sign that the India-China honeymoon was on, the 1954 agreement spoke of the Chinese establishing trade agencies in New Delhi, Calcutta and Kalimpong and India at Yatung, Gyantse and Gartok.

Article V of the Treaty said, "Traders of both countries known to be customarily and specifically engaged in trade between the Tibet region of China and India, their wives and children, who are dependent on them for livelihood and their attendants will be allowed entry for purposes of trade into India or the Tibet region of China, as the case may be, in accordance with custom on the production of certificates duly issued by the local Government of their own country by its duly authorised agents and examined by the border check posts of the other party.

"Inhabitants of the border districts of the two countries, who cross borders to carry on petty trade or to visit friends and relatives, may proceed to the border districts of the other party as they have customarily done heretofore."

Much has changed since 1954, but today India and China have yet another opportunity to drive their relations into a new and exciting phase. With bilateral trade on the increase and expected to reach the $10 billion figure this year, the onus is on both Beijing and New Delhi to take their relations to a higher level.

And, for that, contacts between India and the Tibet Region are essential.

India recognised the realities of Tibet 50 years ago. Today there is little doubt that TAR and other parts of the Tibetan plateau are firmly under the sovereignty and control of the Chinese Central Government.

Not many in India are aware of the nuances that governments might employ from time to time when it comes to the finer points of diplomatic expression. The "burden of 1962" is history.

The fact of the matter is that Tibet is not a card that India can play. It is a part of China. However, if Chinese comfort levels can be enhanced by the choice of words, then India should have little hesitation in using them in return for Chinese recognition of ground realities elsewhere.

India and Tibet have a long history of association and intercourse. It is time a modern, forward-looking form of these linkages took firm root between India and China's Tibet.

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