Kashmir, Tibet, India-China War & Nehru by Rajnikant Puranik

Author:Rajnikant Puranik [Puranik, Rajnikant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-15T18:30:00+00:00

Independent India’s Indifferent Approach

Given the critical importance of Tibet, India should have exerted its utmost to ensure Tibet retained its independent status. But, did India do so? Did India come to the rescue of its good neighbour, facing extinction as an independent entity? Did India fulfil its obligation as a friend and a neighbour? Did we come good on the trust that our weaker neighbour, Tibet, reposed in us? Did Nehru walk the talk on anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism? Did India try to save its neighbour from being colonised? Did India try to protect its own crucial interests? What role did India play?

What was independent India’s or Nehru’s Tibet policy? None. It was actually a defeatist policy—throw up your hands and declare there is nothing India can do to save Tibet. While the independent India was an indifferent India—indifferent to its own security—British-India had done all it could to keep India’s northern borders secure by ensuring Tibet remained free from foreign powers.

India was in desperate need of a Patel to drive its strategic thinking. Nehru, by stating on 1 November 1950 in an interview to the Unites Press that “India has neither the resources nor the inclination to send armed assistance to Tibet”{Arpi/374} and that “We can’t save Tibet” seemed to wash his hands off the whole affair so critical to India’s security, and seemed to suggest that other than armed intervention, which India didn’t wish to undertake, there was nothing India could do!

Even if India did not have the military strength to confront and prevent China, there were so many other steps that India could have taken: express disapproval; provide moral support to Tibet; lodge protest in the UN; mobilise world opinion against Chinese action; grant recognition to Tibet as an independent nation; persuade other nations to also do so; demand plebiscite in Tibet to ascertain the opinion of the public—China had agreed for a plebiscite in Mongolia, that led to its independence; work towards ensuring complete independence for Tibet through peaceful means. Even if the final favourable outcome took decades it didn’t matter—at least there would have been hope.

Had India taken the initiative many nations would have supported India. In fact, many did pass resolution in favour of Tibet in the UN later, which India, the affected country, did not support!

Had India been still British-India in 1950, Britain would certainly have resisted China in Tibet in some way or the other and would have ensured Tibet remained free from China.

One could argue that doing so would have made China an enemy of India? Well, if China were to attack Bhutan or Burma or some other country tomorrow, should India keep quiet lest it should cost us China’s friendship? Did China care for our friendship when it attacked our friend and neighbour Tibet? Are friendships only one-sided? And, even if friendship with China was broken because of our moral support to Tibet and China had become our enemy, so what? If it suited China to act against us, it would have found a reason for doing so, friendship or no friendship, like it did later.

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