Dilip Sinha's book explores how Tibet became an abandoned kingdom in exile

Imperial Games in Tibet: The Struggle for Statehood and Sovereignty

Author: Dilip Sinha

Publisher:  Macmillan

Pages: 304

Price: Rs 599

China’s attack on Tibet in October 1950 represents a tragic chapter in modern history. The invasion not only underlined the failures of the United Nations but also posed infinite security consequences for India, writes veteran scholarly diplomat Ambassador Dilip Sinha in Imperial Games in Tibet: The Struggle for statehood and sovereignty . The book attempts to disseminate a historical perspective of how Tibet became an abandoned kingdom in exile.

Ambassador Sinha uses archival evidence to persuasively establish Tibet’s independent status historically as a kingdom enjoying vibrant religious and cultural contacts with China. The mighty Ming dynasty that ruled China for over three centuries, during which parts of the Great Wall of China were built primarily to thwart Mongol attacks, is said to have held Tibetan spiritual leaders in great reverence. At the beginning of the Qing dynasty in 1653, the 5th Dalai Lama, accompanied by 3,000 monks, visited China to meet Emperor Shunzhi. The British officers’ accounts of the times validate the author’s contention that Chinese suzerainty over Tibet was in name only and the common objective for both, if any, was to keep foreigners out of their territories.

The book elucidates how games of the three imperial powers — Britain, China and Russia — and mistrust amongst them fundamentally shaped Tibet’s international status. For Britain safeguarding its “Jewel in the Crown”, India, was primordial. Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805 reassured Britain of its ability to forestall challenges to its empire. Fearing Russia’s closeness to Tibet would threaten India, Britain recognised China’s suzerainty over Tibet through a Convention in April 1906 through which it also extracted trade concessions. The revolt this agreement triggered in Tibet resulted in the expulsion of Chinese forces from its territory.

The rise of Japan at the dawn of the 20th century had a bearing on Tibet’s future, the author explains. Russia’s humiliating defeat at its hands in 1905 signalled the rise of an Asian power that could challenge the traditional European colonial powers.  Sensing trouble on the horizon, Britain hurriedly entered into a border settlement with Tibet along the Himalayan watershed in July 1914, creating what is known as the McMahon Line. Expectedly, China rejected the settlement, stating it conceded to India 90,000 square km of Chinese territory in violation of a thousand-year old traditional boundary line between India and China.

These specious territorial claims by China, the author points out, form a familiar pattern of cherry-picking dynastic rules when they suited it; references to rules under the Mongols and the Manchus, largely perceived to be outsiders by the Chinese, were made to raise claims to territories beyond its mainland, in both its immediate and extended neighbourhood. The creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea, although a new tactic, forms part of its toolkit aimed at seeking legitimacy for its extraterritorial claims, disregarding potential risks for global peace and stability.

With no support forthcoming from anyone, Tibet stood abandoned and helpless at the time of China’s invasion. Even its request for UN membership was turned down by Britain on the feeble excuse that the Security Council would veto it. Ambassador Sinha questions the rationale of India’s stand on Tibet, underlining that if it recognised Tibet as an autonomous part of China, implying acknowledgement of its suzerainty, then the Chinese military entering Tibet could not be deemed an invasion. This apparent laxity was opportune enough for Mao Zedong to brutally suppress the popular Tibetan uprising in which about 1.2 million Tibetans were killed. Soon after, in March 1959, Dalai Lama fled to India along with about 30,000 Tibetans.

The book examines in detail the Indian leadership’s faux pas  in handling the Tibetan tragedy. Jawaharlal Nehru’s desire to forge close friendship with China seemed like a juvenile infatuation that failed to spot the sinister designs behind the seductive smiles. Disregarding strong objections from his Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabbhai Patel and criticism of his own parliamentarians, he went on to encourage exchange of visits, including his own to Beijing in 1954 and a return visit by Zhou Enlai two years later for the commemorative celebrations of 2,500th birth anniversary of Buddha.

If the price had to be paid anyway, Ambassador Sinha argues, Nehru could have at least extracted concessions on the border, such as recognition of the McMahon Line as the boundary between India and China. But contextualising Nehru’s handling of the Tibet issue to his times may yield a more sympathetic view; he might have been pragmatic about genuine security risks for the newly independent India exposed to the Tibetan cause, where the imperial powers had left behind an intractable mess that India could neither fix nor reverse.

This must-read book minces no words about what is to come. Ambassador Sinha concludes that China’s increasing military strength, augmented by its economic power, correspondingly weakens the Tibetan government in exile’s fight for autonomy and independence. His advocacy for India and the US to display less ambivalence about their support towards Tibet is, however, fraught with serious limitations.

The reviewer is an Indian Foreign Service officer