Opinions

Younghusband

Well, talking about Tibetan football, here’s a short history. The Tibetan word for football or for that matter for any ball has been colonised by the British Raj as polo. And hence the horseback sport.

The recent Chinese intrusions into the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh underscore the need for Delhi to afford more urgency to the delineation of its disputed frontier with Beijing.

In my last column, and in the aftermath of the recent high-level Sino-Indian talks in Beijing, we dealt with the issue of Tibet from a historical perspective. A parallel analytical exercise with regard to Sikkim would perhaps prove equally interesting.

Terrorism and fundamentalism currently are on the world's radar. But in the zest to hunt down the Husseins and bin Ladens, the world may have forgotten the path to change via non-violent means regarding Tibet.

The satisfaction over Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's visit to China stands diminished in Indian public perception by the confrontation between the Chinese and Indian border personnel when Vajpayee was still in China.

With India's recognition of the Tibet Autonomous Region as a part of China -- a corollary result of the recent talks in Beijing between Chinese and Indian leaders -- the region has ceased to be viewed as a historical buffer state between two Asian giants.

While Vajpayee's Lahore visit was followed by Pakistani aggression, his latest China tour, like in 1979, came gift-wrapped with a Chinese military surprise.

Indians are basically good people. That is the main problem! Recently, during Prime Minister Vajpayee's trip to China, I happened to be in France. Far away from India, I tried to analyze the reasons why India is not doing better in international circles.

Some events are really hard to forget throughout life. Imagine a place where you are being surrounded by tall and big mountains with dense forests. Seeing from your room the whole panorama of the beauty that nature has been kind enough to create with utmost care and caution