STRATEGIC AFFAIRS march 28, 2015 vol L no 13 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 10 Immanent Crisis over Tibet Itty Abraham Itty Abraham (itty123@gmail.com) is a scholar of international relations and nuclear histories based at the National University of Singapore. Even as Chinese opinion insists that there can be no negotiation with the Tibetan diaspora over the region’s political union with China, a flashpoint is slowly coming closer. India’s festering dispute with China over the border will get more complicated once the issue of Dalai Lama’s succession comes up. How well prepared is the Indian establishment to deal with such an eventuality? T he recent blip in United States (US)–China relations that follo- wed President Barack Obama’s namaste to the Dalai Lama at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, was the product of a familiar and predictable script. The Chinese embassy protested vociferously; Tibet-followers in the US approved (and wondered why the President could not meet the Dalai Lama in his official capacity); the White House reiterated that this symbolic ges- ture indicated no change in the current US policy of recognising the Tibetan Auto- nomous Region as an inalienable territory of the People’s Republic. The familiarity of this routine had the effect of making us forget the high stakes involved, at least until the events of two weeks ago. At the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, officials of the Communist Party of China (CPC) reacted furiously to the Dalai Lama’s suggestion that he may choose not to be reincarnated. The New York Times reports a CPC official saying—with no trace of irony detectable—“the Dalai Lama has taken a frivolous and dis- respectful attitude…towards his own succession,” that is, reincarnation. The official went on to note, “decision mak- ing power over reincarnation… resides in the central government of China.” Such is the power of an officially atheis- tic state. The farcical nature of this exchange aside, these events, taken together, remind us why Tibet continues to play an important role in shaping con- temporary geopolitics; in particular, how it will shape the future of the vexed relationship between China and India. Early Tibet Policy All this could scarcely have been imag- ined over half a century ago, when the young Dalai Lama and his entourage cro- ssed over into India, escaping from the estimated 1.2 lakh Chinese troops that had flooded into Tibet. Contemporary reports tell of the Dalai Lama being shown patriotic films at the political officer’s residence where he took refuge, including him cheering when he saw the British flag coming down to be replaced with the Indian tricolour. Nehru would write to the Dalai Lama advising caution and patience. Calling the Chinese take- over of Tibet a “tragedy,” Nehru advised facing it with “calm and courage;” this was not a passive policy, he reiterated, rather it was designed to keep the Chi- nese guessing. A year later, in discussions with Nasser, Nehru would detail Indian frustrations with and worries about China. Noting that Mao had “casually” men- tioned to him China’s willingness to lose as many as 100 million men in pursuit of its territorial goals, he noted somberly, in a few years Tibet will not be Tibet at all … Before the Chinese came to Tibet, we had no trouble… [now] the frontier which was dead for thousands of years has become alive … it is going to [remain] alive even if there is an agreement with China. The geopolitical tensions that emerged with the Chinese annexation of Tibet are all too well known today. What is often obscured in the anxieties that emerge when Tibet’s status comes into question are the views of non-official China. The well-known Chinese intellectual, Wang Hui, who is critical of the Chinese turn to a neo-liberal economic model and repre- sents a leftist tendency within the Chinese intelligentsia, is a case in point. In an essay written some years ago, Wang out- lines his understanding of the “Tibetan Question East and West.” The essay was written after the March 2008 riots in Lhasa and the worldwide demonstrations and counter-reactions surrounding the passage of the Olympic torch to Beijing. Wang is unequivocal about tracing the roots of the current unrest in Tibet to a familiar foreign hand. The origins of Western support for Tibet, Wang argues, come from the Oriental fantasy of Tibet as Shangri La, buttressed by Theosophy’s fascination with Tibetan mysticism: “an ideal and surreal image of Tibet—a place unpolluted by civilisation, marked by spirituality and mysticism, without