It is therefore both astonishing and shocking that Beijing should have denounced, indeed maligned, the Dalai Lama in most intemperate language. It continues to accuse him of being the “mastermind” of the violent upheaval while the reality is that his adherence to non-violence is sincere and unshakeable. He went so far as to declare that he would resign if the agitation “spun out of control”. Not for nothing did Prime Minister Manmohan Singh call him the “embodiment of peace”.

Repeatedly and unambiguously the Dalai Lama has stated that he wants “genuine autonomy” for Tibet, not independence. But Chinese leaders go on calling him a separatist. One of them has even described him as a “wolf in a monk’s clothing”.

Obviously, it is not mere arrogance of power that is motivating Beijing. It has good reasons to believe that its power — military, economic and soft — is having its effect. The Dalai Lama’s angry followers in India, still planning a march to the China border, have apparently been encouraged by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi’s meeting with the Dalai Lama and her appeal to the “world conscience” over Tibet. But what is all this worth, when President George W. Bush’s spokesperson reaffirms that he would attend the Olympics at Beijing? In any case, the economic and political stakes of the United States and the West in China are too complex to allow for the kind of boycott that was enforced at the time of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Moreover, many — not in China alone — are asking whether China’s action in Tibet is different from that of the US in Iraq.

All things considered, this country’s reaction to the developments in Tibet has been unexceptionable. Like most other countries, it expressed its “distress” and — as it has done in the case of other chronic and painful conflicts such as the one in Palestine —appealed to both sides to solve the problem through peaceful dialogue. Come to think of it, the statement of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is mild by comparison. Yet the UPA government has drawn criticism — especially from the principal opposition party, the BJP, as well as others — that in relation to China’s “unacceptable repression “ in Tibet it has been “weak-kneed” and “chicken hearted”. Even before the eruption in Lhasa, the government here was being charged with being “slurred” and “stilted” in replying to China’s aggressively asserted claims on Arunachal Pradesh, particularly the Tawang tract. This is a result partly of the inflamed polarisation of the Indian polity and partly of the complexity and delicacy of the country’s Tibet policy, right from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, that has often been under fire, not always without reason.

Historically, Tibet had only a tributary relationship with the Chinese empire that never directly ruled it. On the other hand, not a single country had ever recognised Tibet to be sovereign. Ironically, it was Britain, then ruling India, which pushed Tibet into the Chinese orbit out of fear of Russia’s imperial designs. After the Younghusband Expedition to Lhasa (1904), British India on the one hand and Tibet and China on the other signed the Shimla Convention of 1914 that delineated the MacMahon Line.

After Indian independence and the Chinese Revolution, which were roughly simultaneous, things were bound to change — and change they did. India’s initial reaction to the march of the People’s Liberation Army into Lhasa was sharp. China responded even more acrimoniously and refused to countenance any “interference” in its internal affairs. No country in the world contested China’s claim. The British who had started the whole thing were the first to wash their hands of Tibet. They were worrying about Hong Kong! In the circumstances, India accepted the inevitable but insisted that Tibet’s autonomy be protected. The Chinese readily concurred and even signed an agreement with the young Dalai Lama in 1953, which they cynically reneged on.

In accepting the Chinese assurance on Tibetan autonomy, Nehru rejected the advice of Sardar Patel and Rajagopalachari (then Union minister without portfolio) for a “clean break” with China, and ignored a “vague hint” by the American ambassador, Loy Henderson, that the State Department would be “glad to help, if asked”. Those who continue to curse Nehru for “not resisting” the Chinese occupation of Tibet are talking nonsense. India did not have the power to do so, and was itself under heavy pressure at the UN over Kashmir where an uneasy cease-fire was in its early stages.

Nehru’s cardinal mistake, of course, was the 1954 agreement on the Tibet region of China, accepting Chinese sovereignty over “autonomous Tibet” without any quid pro quo in terms of Chinese acceptance of this country’s “long-settled”, “long-established” border. This story of Nehru falling between the two stools of trusting and distrusting China and the Chinese successfully fooling the Indian side is much too complex and convoluted. In this, the role of then Indian ambassador to China, K.M. Panikkar, was not just disastrous but diabolical.

Almost all countries have accepted Tibet to be part of China. Under the circumstances, everyone has to walk a tightrope balancing one’s support to the cause of Tibetan autonomy and one’s relationship with China.

The Tibetan uprising of 1959, the Dalai Lama’s flight and the grant of asylum to him in this country inevitably worsened India-China relations. The brief but brutal 1962 war followed. The rest, as they say, is history.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator

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