22 January 2017

Brahma Chellaney: India should rein in China's dangerous antics in Tibet


New Delhi's accomodative stance has encouraged dangerous Chinese adventurism

The impact has been exacerbated by Indian blunders that have compounded the country's "China problem" and undercut its leverage. New Delhi was one of the first capitals to embrace the Mao Zedong-led regime in Beijing after the Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949. But just months later, Mao began annexing the historical buffer of Tibet, eliminating India's outer line of defense by 1951.

Led by Jawaharlal Nehru, a romantic who viewed China sympathetically as a fellow post-colonial state, India went on to surrender extraterritorial rights in Tibet inherited from the U.K., its former colonial master. It also acknowledged the "Tibet region of China," without getting Beijing to recognize the existing Indo-Tibetan border. Ironically, the pact that recognized China's rights in Tibet was named after the Tibetan Buddhist doctrine of Panchsheela, the five principles of peaceful coexistence.

Almost half a century later, India went further still, using the legal term "recognize" in a document signed by the heads of government of the two countries in 2003 that formally accepted Tibet as "part of the territory of the People's Republic of China."

DICTATING TERMS Meanwhile, China has sought to crimp the Dalai Lama's freedom within a democratic India. Initially, Beijing objected to official discussions between the Dalai Lama and foreign heads of state or government. But China has progressed over the years to protesting his presence at any state-linked event, and even visits to other countries, such as a purely religious trip to Mongolia in November.

The New Delhi event that riled Beijing in December was organized for children's welfare by Nobel laureates, a group that includes the Dalai Lama. Demanding that India respect China's "core interests" and refrain from causing "any disturbance" to bilateral ties, China couched its protest in imperious terms. Instead of censuring Beijing for seeking to dictate terms to India, New Delhi responded almost apologetically that the meeting was a "nonpolitical event."

The Potala Palace, in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, once served as the Dalai Lama's main residence. © AP

The more accommodative that India has become of China's claims and concerns over Tibet, the more assertive Beijing has been in upping the ante. For example, in ratcheting up the Arunachal Pradesh issue in recent years, Beijing has contended that the region -- almost three times larger than Taiwan -- must be "reunified" with the Chinese state to respect Tibetan sentiment. The flimsy basis of its historical claim has been exposed by the Dalai Lama, who has publicly declared that Arunachal was never part of Tibet.

By bringing its position on Tibet into alignment with China's claim, India has not won Chinese gratitude; rather, it has boosted Beijing's clout and encouraged Chinese re-engineering of transboundary river flows, on which India is critically dependent.

According to Aquastat, a database maintained by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, 718 billion cu. meters of surface water a year flows out of the Tibetan plateau and the Chinese regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia to neighboring countries. Of that amount, 48.33% runs directly into India. In addition, Nepal's Tibet-originating rivers drain into India's Gangetic basin. So no country is more vulnerable than India to China's current focus on building cascades of large dams on international rivers.

India can reclaim its Tibet leverage by emphasizing that its acceptance of China's claim over Tibet hinged on a grant of genuine autonomy to the region. Instead of autonomy, Tibet has experienced tightening political control and increasing repression, triggering grassroots desperation and a wave of self-immolations.

A braver Indian approach would include showing Tibet in its official maps in a different color from the rest of China and using expressions such as "the Indo-Tibet border," instead of "the India-China border." Using measures such as this, India can subtly reopen Tibet as an outstanding issue without having to formally renounce any of its previously stated positions.

Whatever it does, India must not shy away from urging China to begin a process of reconciliation and healing in Tibet. Having ceased to be a political buffer between China and India, Tibet can still become a political bridge between the world's demographic titans if Beijing initiates a process of genuine reconciliation there to ease the feelings of estrangement among Tibetans. Otherwise, Tibet will remain at the core of the China-India divide.

India has played an important role in aiding the survival of Tibetan culture by funding Tibetan schools for the large number of exiles it hosts. By recalibrating its policy, India could elevate Tibet as a strategic and environmental issue that impinges on international security and climatic and hydrological stability.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including "Water: Asia's New Battleground," the winner of the Bernard Schwartz Award.

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