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.

... contd.