India waving SFF and Tibet cards won’t scare China. Can’t pull levers you don’t have
Bending foreign policy to serve domestic politics is proving to be costly for India. Hyping the use of the Tibetan-majority SFF against China is one such example
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SHYAM SARAN 14 September, 2020 10:47 am IST
The Tibet issue played a major role in precipitating the India-China war of 1962. There were localised skirmishes along the border, but these began to be seen in a more ominous light by China in the wake of the Tibetan revolt of 1959 followed by the exile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to India. The setting up of Indian posts and increased patrolling on our borders were seen as part of a sinister Indian design to subvert Chinese rule in Tibet. The status of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan issue have remained a shadow over India-China relations even though New Delhi has recognised Chinese sovereignty over Tibet and has under-played official relations with the Dalai Lama.
The Tibet government-in-exile is allowed to function at Dharamsala but is not recognised by the Indian government. For China, Tibet is a “core issue” just as Taiwan and Xinjiang are.
A changing relationship
During the tenure of the Narendra Modi government, there have been instances of open courtship of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Its ‘Prime Minister’ Lobsang Sangay was an
invitee to the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Modi in 2014. The Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Pema Khandu, declared that his state had a border with Tibet and not with China, in 2017.
But after the Modi-Xi Jinping summit in Wuhan in April 2018, there appeared a rethink on the Tibet issue with the Ministry of External Affairs reissuing
instructions to government functionaries to avoid public association with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan representatives of the government-in-exile. An international Buddhist conference, which the Dalai Lama had been encouraged to convene, was cancelled. The Tibetans were
advised that the 60th anniversary, in 2019, of the Dalai Lama’s entry into India, should be a low-key affair.
The second Modi-Xi summit in Mamallapuram in October 2019 reinforced this trend. The Modi government was signalling that it was prepared to put the Tibet issue in cold storage while advancing bilateral relations with China.
The wrong card
During the recent clashes between the Indian and Chinese armed forces on the border in eastern Ladakh, the Tibet issue has resurfaced and will add to mutual distrust and suspicion. A deliberately leaked report to the media revealed that the secretive
Special Frontier Force (SFF), recruited mainly from the Tibetan community in India, was used in the operations in southern Pangong Tso. One of its soldiers, Tenzin Nyima, died in a mine blast and at his funeral, independent Tibet’s flags were displayed. BJP leader Ram Madhav attended the funeral and tweeted about it. He subsequently took it
down, presumably at the behest of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Bending foreign policy to serve domestic politics is proving to be costly for India. Hyping the use of the Tibetan-majority SFF against China is one such example.
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