Relations between newly-independent India and reunited China started off with India’s colossal misreading of new China’s true geopolitical ambitions. In its early years of existence, China was happy to play along with India’s genuine sentiments of Hindi Chini Bhai, Bhai (India and China are brothers) and Nehru’s vision of non-alignment of all decolonized nations. Nehru opted for a policy of accommodation with new China because, as Nehru saw and articulated in 1950, “I attach great importance to India and China being friends. I believe the future of Asia and to some extent of the world depends on this.”
In this policy of friendship, Nehru was encouraged by Krishna Menon, his foreign minister, and KM Panikkar, his ambassador to new China, who according to some observers, was more keen to promote the interests of China to his country than of India’s to his host country.
However, in Nehru’s top leadership there were strong dissenting voices. One was that of deputy prime minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who was clear-eyed, hard-nosed and a realist to the marrow of his statesman’s bones. In a long letter to his prime minister, Vallabhbhai Patel wrote, “The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put their faith in us; they chose to be guided by us; and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence… Their last telegram (Chinese) is an act of gross discourtesy not only in the summary way it disposes of our protest against the entry of Chinese forces into Tibet, but also in the wild insinuation that our attitude is determined by foreign influences. It looks as though it is not a friend speaking in that language, but a potential enemy.”
That “potential enemy” became real in 1962 when China stabbed India in the back.
{{/usCountry}}That “potential enemy” became real in 1962 when China stabbed India in the back.
{{/usCountry}}The tragedy for India and the Tibetan people was that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel died a little more than a month after he wrote this long, prescient letter. If he had lived longer, it could have been possible for India to craft a balanced response and construct a secure guardrail against China’s growing adventurism in Tibet and all along the Himalaya.
Nirupama Rao’s massive and masterly The Fractured Himalaya revisits the early and formative years of India’s relations with China. In the Great Game played out in the pages of The Fractured Himalaya, the players have changed. Tsarist Russia became the Soviet Union, and is now an unsure compromise between a half democracy and half dictatorship. China lurched from an empire to a republic and is now an empire in all but name. The British Raj became the democratic union of India.
With China in full control of the Tibetan Plateau, Tibet is no longer the buffer zone that kept the peace between Tsarist Russia, the British Raj and Manchu China. Between 1903 and 1905, British India dispatched the Younghusband expedition to Tibet to ward off Tsarist Russian influence there. However, Nirupama Rao quotes Olaf Caroe, British India’s foreign secretary, who says the intention was to strengthen the colonial military presence in Tibet to prevent its occupation by any Great Powers.
Rao’s The Fractured Himalaya is a hard-headed examination of how central Tibet is to the relationship between India and China. In doing this she is advancing the argument long made by the late eminent scholar, Dawa Norbu, that Tibet was central to any changes in the relations between the two Asian giants. The days of the geopolitical gamble that Tibet does not exist are over. Tibet as a geopolitical reality is staring India in its face and China is taking full advantage of this.
Of especial importance is China’s untiring roll out of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a version of ancient China’s Silk Road on which commerce flourished and ideas were exchanged. Modern China is using the BRI to expand its global influence. China wants to be the Middle Kingdom surrounded by tributary states. Should the world be accepting of such an imperial recreation?
Nirupama Rao’s examination of this question merits the undivided attention of all parties. The Great Game will not end by expressions of hollow friendship but will be won by the pursuit of one’s national interests. We have Nirupama Rao to thank for pointing out this grim reality to us.
Thubten Samphel is a former director of the Tibet Policy Institute, a research centre of the Central Tibetan Administration and author of two works of fiction, Falling Through the Roof and Copper Mountain.