India’s response to the harsh Chinese crackdown on legitimate Tibetan protests in Lhasa and elsewhere has been dispiriting. In Parliament the seasoned politician and foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee could only express distress at the plight of the hapless Tibetans. Worse still, Indian security forces swooped down on non-violent Tibetan protestors at Dharamsala, the principal refuge of the Tibetan diaspora, and incarcerated them for 14 days using India’s preventive detention laws, a colonial relic.

India does itself a disservice by not standing up to China over its treatment of Tibet. If India wishes to be considered a great power, it needs to display a greater degree of independence and not kowtow to Beijing. With rapid economic growth, a substantial military establishment and robust political institutions, India should stop behaving in a subservient fashion and forthrightly stand up and defend certain inalienable rights of the Tibetan minority in its midst — rights that should obtain in any humane and democratic state.

New Delhi’s reluctance to challenge China over Tibet goes back to Beijing’s brutal repression of the Khampa revolt 50 years ago, when the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal head of the Tibetans, fled to India. Although China sharply reproved India for providing refuge to the Dalai Lama, India stood its ground. Shortly thereafter, following a breakdown of negotiations over a disputed border, China attacked and defeated India in October 1962. Even though India’s army has since been modernised and prepared for mountain warfare, the memory of this rout still haunts Indian military planners and policymakers.

... contd.