We must also be clear that China is just not going to make any conciliatory move in regard to Tibet. In fact, one sure road for Chinese leadership to ascend has been through Tibet: the present president of China won his spurs by the systematic oppression of Tibet which he directed and over which he presided. China only goes through the pretence of talking to the Dalai Lama’s delegations from time to time — as it did, for instance, in the run-up to the Olympic Games. It is only waiting for the Dalai Lama to pass away, knowing that, with this centre of gravity gone, the Tibetans will be reduced to an even more helpless situation. 

It is for this reason that we can expect that, in the coming months, China will put the kind of pressure on India which it has put recently on South Africa — pressure to either silence the Dalai Lama completely or to evict him from India. And, I’m afraid, there will be no shortage of rationalisers who will say, “Why should we let one man, howsoever eminent and pious, come in the way of improving relations between China and India, as improving those relations is required for India’s own security?” 

There is another feature about India’s stance towards Tibet, a feature that reveals a lot about us as a people, a feature that goes beyond the attitude of successive Indian governments. As is well known, the Buddhist tradition was forgotten in India; in fact, the Buddha himself seems to have been forgotten and the Buddhist sites erased from our collective memory till a few Britishers took it upon themselves to hunt them down and excavate them. Among the places in the world, where this great heritage of mankind, and the Buddha’s doctrine and practice, were preserved has been Tibet. The great Tibetan masters have been with us and amidst us now for 50 years. It is indeed true that Panditji helped set up institutions in which higher Tibetan learning and Tibetan arts and culture could be preserved and nourished. And there is no doubt that the Tibetans themselves feel that these institutions have been instrumental in helping save their culture and religion. But it is equally true that, as a people, we have not thought it necessary to learn from the Tibetan masters. In this sense, the policy of successive governments of India, the policy of shutting our eyes to what is happening in Tibet and what China is doing around India is representative of the way we have shut our eyes to the presence of Tibetan masters in our midst. 

... contd.