In 1954, Zhou had told Nehru that the Indian ambassador had said to him that if ever the Dalai Lama sought asylum, India would have to give it, and the Chinese government had agreed. But five years later, Beijing protested the Indian decision, calling it an “unfriendly act” because the Tibetan revolt was “instigated and assisted” by American and Kuomintang elements. Beijing also alleged that Kalimpong was the “command center of the rebellion”, which this country refuted emphatically.

As acerbity in Chinese and Indian exchanges increased, Nehru, under trenchant criticism at home, asked Ajoy Ghosh — the last general secretary of the Communist Party of India who somehow kept the fractious party together and whose birth centenary is being observed right now — to inquire from Mao, during his (Ghosh’s) impending visit to Beijing, whether China would want the Dalai Lama to live in Europe rather than India. Mao told Ghosh: “It is better that he (the Dalai Lama) remains in Nehru’s India than go to any European country”. (Ajoy Ghosh told Nikhil Chakravarthy who graciously shared the information with this writer.)

No account of the momentous events of those days can be complete without a reference to the world media that descended on India like a swarm of locusts, and indulged in antics that left the characters in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop flat on the doormat. Since Tezpur was the last outpost they were allowed in, the vast crowd of pen pushers and camerapersons had nothing to do except to wait for the Dalai Lama’s arrival and enjoy the hospitality of usually bored tea planters happy to have so many guests amidst them. One day, however, angry cables from their bosses shook them and their idyll.

... contd.