By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, April 5: India’s Tibet Policy was sharply criticized by former Indian diplomats and experts accusing the government of “buckling under Chinese pressure” and compromising on principles in a bid to placate China over the issue.
“We shouldn’t give the impression that we are buckling under the Chinese pressure,” India’s former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal said at a seminar on the situation in Tibet in New Delhi today.
“We should make it plain to the Chinese how our system works. Tibetans can hold peaceful demonstrations in India. The symbolism of the Olympic torch is incompatible with what is happening in Tibet,” Mr Sibal said.
“We must create space for ourselves. It’s regrettable we are not thinking ahead,” he said.
“We should have a more vigorous Tibet policy. It is at the core of our nationhood and our relations with China,” Sibal asserted.
A former Indian envoy to Pakistan Mr G. Parthasarathy said, “It’s shocking that we have asked the Dalai Lama to resist from political activities.”
He was referring to a recent statement by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee saying that while the Dalai Lama was an honoured guest in India, he and his followers should not indulge in anti-China activities or any other activity on Indian territory that can hurt India’s ties with other countries.
“Let’s not forget that the Dalai Lama fled from the Chinese persecution when he came to India in 1959. How can we expect him to keep his mouth shut?” Mr Parthasarathy asked. He charged that the Indian government was “bending over backwards” to please China over the Tibetan issue.
Mr Parthasarathy also strongly objected to the summoning of the Indian ambassador by Beijing past midnight to express concerns over Tibetan protests in India.
“Why should we keep blindly repeating that Tibet is part of China?” he asked.
“India’s ambassador is summoned at 2 a.m. in the morning and we don’t protest,” he said expressing dissatisfaction over New Delhi’s diplomatic silence over Beijing’s summoning of Indian ambassador Nirupama Rao by the Chinese foreign office very recently.
He advised the Indian Government to “stop being apologetic and work in the international community under international law” and asked it to show “spine” by speaking out on gross human rights violations in Tibet.
Soli Sorabjee, a former attorney general, criticized the government’s response to the crackdown on Tibetan protesters as a sign of submission to Beijing. Sorbajee also asked Beijing to stop brutal repression in Tibet.
India is home to over 100,000 Tibetan exiles. The exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile are based in India since 1959.
On Thursday, about 30 Indians from different parts of the country, mostly from IIT and IIM centres, held a press conference in Dharamsala, the administrative capital of Tibetan exiles, to convey the feelings of Indian citizens on the ongoing Chinese brutality and to renounce the Indian Government’s stance on the plight of Tibetan people.
The group in their statement said they “deplore the statement made by the Minister of External Affairs, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, calling upon the Dalai Lama to not indulge in political activity.” “It is a statement, and a policy, that we ordinary citizens of India, feel obliged to disown” the statement added.
The group also called for a nation-wide dialogue “to determine whether the Olympic torch, which represents everything that is negated by the Chinese action in Tibet, should travel over Indian soil to Beijing.” They also urged Indian torchbearers to reconsider their decision to associate themselves with the torch relay of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, saying it was “bound to live notoriously in history”.
