Appeasement might not be a bad policy if it actually succeeded in keeping Beijing satisfied, but it doesn’t. There is not a shred of evidence that it has ever moderated Chinese behaviour. Whenever Tibetan exiles have engaged in minor protests, Beijing has sternly rebuked India for allowing them to engage in political activities. Faced with Beijing’s continued expressions of discontent, New Delhi has rarely missed an opportunity to genuflect before the Middle Kingdom. The Tibetan crackdown is only the latest example.

This humiliating deference undermines India’s national interests as a rising Asian power and corrodes its credentials as a liberal democracy. If China can so easily cow Indian policymakers, then India’s claims to great power status in Asia, let alone beyond, appear utterly hollow. It shows that Indian policymakers have been, to use a term from the cold war era, Finlandised — constrained by a foreign power. Some policy options cannot even be considered for fear of offending China. India, for example, has had little to say about China’s penetration of much of Burma and its ongoing quest for military bases in that country. India has also exercised great caution in pursuing any significant commercial ties with Taiwan for fear of incurring the wrath of the mainland. What does it say about India as a democracy if the authorities harass law-abiding Tibetans who are only engaging in peaceful protests? Such actions are fundamentally contrary to the principles of a liberal democracy that enshrines the right of public political dissent.

It is all but certain that the heavy hand of the Chinese state will successfully crush the demonstrations that have swept across much of Tibet. China is well aware that the great powers will issue some predictable communiqués demanding an end to repression and calling for political dialogue. They are most unlikely to bolster these pious sentiments with any viable actions that would prove costly to the regime in Beijing, such as the imposition of sanctions or the boycott of Chinese goods. India has long, albeit fitfully, sought to uphold human rights both at home and abroad. Today, when it has aspirations of regional and global leadership, it needs to demonstrate the self-confidence to condemn China’s repression of its Tibetan minority and to provide comfort to the Tibetan diaspora. Any policy that falls short of these steps amounts to an abetment of China’s abject treatment of a disenfranchised minority. If India’s political leadership wishes to be seen as the exemplars of a major democratic state with global aspirations, at a minimum it should grant the Tibetans the right to peaceful protest. It should also consider deferring the mostly desultory border talks, which have, in any case, moved at a glacial pace.

... contd.