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From Tibet to China’s Tibet: Is history an ally for Tibet?

The recent protests by Tibetans and China’s predictable reaction to them have once again brought the question of Tibet into the international limelight. There are heated discussions on ethnic violence, human rights abuses, brutal state policies, China’s moral authority to hold the Olympics, the Dalai Lama’s authority, good Chinese/bad Tibetans (within China) or bad Chinese/good Tibetans (elsewhere). However, at the back of all these lies the essentially p olitical question of what is Tibet’s status vis-À-vis China. The framing of the Tibetan issue in human rights paradigm reflects the fact of real politik since all the states in the world recognise Tibet as part of China. However, a visible group of Tibetans and their supporters reject the status quo and argue that China does not have sovereignty over Tibet and hence the current control of China over Tibet is a colonial, illegal occupation. This anti-Chinese-sovereignty claim is multifaceted: history, religion, democracy, morality, development, decolonisation, self-determination, international law, nationalism, transnationalism, human rights, and several other resources are marshalled to assert a historically distinctive identity for Tibet and Tibetans with an implication that such an identity makes Tibet deserving of a distinct political identity deserving a state of their own. Is history their ally then?

The Dalai Lama’s position is indeed a ‘middle way’ since without giving up the notion of historical independence of Tibet, he is willing to accept Tibet’s present and future inside China. Is he making a virtue out of a necessity or does he realise that Tibet’s history has always been inter-linked with China and as a subsidiary? A critical study of Tibet’s modern history complicates any Tibetan claims to independence but it also challenges Chinese assertion of sovereignty.

When taking advantage of civil wars within China, Tibetans threw out Chinese officials and troops and Tibet became de facto independent in 1913-1949, it was not recognised by anyone as an independent state. The British who were in the best position to do so (and hence follow the Russian precedent of recognising outer Mongolia as an independent Mongolia) consciously discouraged any Tibetan attempt to gain international recognition. A close study of British colonial documents reveals that while an autonomous Tibet was useful as a buffer state to secure British India’s northern frontiers, there was no wish to encourage Tibetan independence since it would anger the Chinese elite, upset other European powers, and not serve any strategic interest. Russia with whom Britain played the ‘great game’ in central Asia at the start of the century became an ally against rising Germany. Then after the first world war, Britain did not want to offend the Americans who were close to the Nationalists in China. Most importantly, Britain had its own colonial prerogatives. For instance, in 1905, Brodrick, the Secretary of State for India, observed that “the right of limitrophe States to have diplomatic relations, independently of their Suzerain Power, though no doubt it is historically true that it has been exercised by Tibet, is hardly one which it would be expedient for His Majesty’s Government to urge, in view of the position which they claim in regard to the foreign regulations of Afghanistan.” Much later, a secret letter from the British Indian government dated September 19, 1945 affirmed the policy that had been consistently followed over the last three decades — the British must not intervene in Tibet’s internal affairs since any modernisation would challenge the monastic order and throw it into the hands of the Chinese as a “slow process of evolution is suited to Tibetan mentality and to our interests.”

Thus, de jure Chinese claims of political supremacy went unchallenged at the only time in modern period when Tibet was practically independent (1913-1949). The blame lies as much with their British ’friends’ as the Tibetan’s own inability to modernise and recognise that the rules of the geopolitical game were rapidly changing.

China thus has historical and legal claims over Tibet that went uncontested even when Tibetans were in best position to do so. At the same time, the political control was never an absolute one before 1951. Tibet had a special place for China-based emperors who were often Buddhists and found the Tibetan lamas useful allies to pacify the Buddhist Mongols. The relationship was one of patron-priest and had religio-symbolic-political content that was alien to absolutist terms of sovereignty or independence.

Chinese control over Tibet can be understood through two different imperial trajectories — one Chinese and one western. While the People’s Republic of China focuses primarily on historical imperial ties to legitimise control over Tibet, the fact that it uses the modern concept of sovereignty — a product of European universalisation through imperialism and decolonisation — shows the significance of the western imperialist trajectory in the scripting of modern Tibet.

Thus, the Tibet question is intractable not due to historical animosity or antagonistic cultures but a product of geopolitical changes in the first half of the 20th century when Chinese nationalism emerged well before Tibetan nationalism and British policy ensured isolation for Tibet.

Those like the Tibetans who lost out at the crucial moment of decolonisation find it hard to struggle for a separate nation-state unless there is a break-up of an existing state or the powerful states support secession. In the case of Tibet, neither of these conditions is in the realm of possibility, leaving the diasporic Tibetans under the Dalai Lama with little room for manoeuvre. Therefore, their best option is to struggle within the constitutional framework of China, which allows significant autonomy to minority nationalities in principle. Instead of struggling for ‘Free Tibet’, Tibetans may find it easier to make “China’s Tibet” work for Chinese as well as for Tibetans. Of course, this first requires a big change of heart inside China. Beijing should realise that it cannot buy off Tibetans into a submissive role within China and therefore needs to accommodate their aspirations within the Chinese state. China’s Tibet need not be a repressive place; it can be turned into a genuine showcase for the rising dragon’s inclusive nationalism.

(Dr. Dibyesh Anand is a Reader in International Relations at Westminster University and the author of Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination.)

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