by Rakshat Puri - The HINDUSTAN TIMES, November 27, 1996

Why did Prime Minister Deve Gowda put away national self-respect and hastened humbly to give gratuitous assurance to the Chinese Prime Minister in Rome that India would stick to the policy of considering Tibet as part of China? Was there need for this? India is under no treaty obligation to continue recognising Tibet as Chinese. Tibet was an independent country when the Chinese army invaded and annexed it in 1950. Nor does there seem any material or strategic advantage to be gained from fawning ludicrously upon the Chinese leadership. The independent status of Tibet has been discussed and established at a number of forums, including the International Commission of Jurist in Geneva. U.N. resolutions in 1950,1961 and 1965 have deplored the "Continued violation of the fundamental rights and freedom of the people of Tibet". They have called of the "cessation of practised which deprived the Tibetan people of their fundamental human rights and freedoms, including their right to self determination". The 1954 agreem

ent between India and China,which initiated the five principles of peaceful co-existence and which was signed in the midst of the Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai euphoria, does refer to Tibet as the "Tibet region of China". But, as stipulated in Article VI of the agreement, its duration was to be no more than eight years. It's extension could have been "negotiated by the two parties if either (requested) for it six months prior to the expiry of the agreement and the request (were) agreed to by the other party". Two years after the agreement was signed, the Chinese sneaked into and occupied Aksai Chin, which was presumably left unguarded because among other reasons Jawaharlal Nehru was naive enough to trust Beijing's assurance of "traditional friendship". In the unfriendly years that followed there was hardly any questions of either party requesting extension of the 1954 agreement. The agreement consequently lapsed. So, why did the Indian prime minister have to renew assurance that India recognised Tibet as Chinese and

in effect connive at Beijing's enjoying the fruits of aggression? This needs to be answered squarely and in detail because this kind of assurance has led New Delhi to contradict itself ridiculously in the evidence that it puts forward in the discussion with China on the Indo-Tibetan boundary.On the one hand India argues for the validity of the Mcmahon line and the 1914 treaty from which that line emerged because Tibet, it says correctly, was an equal participant with Britain and China in the negotiation that took place at the Shimla conference. On the other, it repeats assurance of recognising Tibet as part of China. Prior to the 1962 clash the Chinese regime questioned the validity of the 1914 agreements. The Indian government replied in a note of 12th February, 1960 that at the Shimla conference the Tibetan and Chinese plenipotentiaries met on an equal footing .This position was explicitly and unequivocally accepted by the Chinese government. The credentials of the Tibetan representative issued by the Dal

ai Lama made it clear that Tibet was an equal party at the conference with the right to decide all matters that may be beneficial to Tibet, and the Chinese representative accepted the credentials of the Tibetan representative as being in order.

Incidentally, this seems to tie down also Britain which has tended to make ambiguous statements about the status of Tibet after that country's annexations by China in 1950. Michael C. van Walt van Praag observes in his THE STATUS OF TIBET (1987) that "the legal effect of Great Britain's recognition of Tibet's full independence (at the Shimla conference) and of it's refusal to recognise Chinese suzerainty was to preclude itself from challenging that independence in the future; in other words, it created an estoppel..... Following the Shimla conference, no significant changes took place in the status of Tibet and its relations with China sufficient to warrant a modification of the British recognition of the Tibetan independence".

As things are, Beijing has moved close to overcoming the uninterrupted but now sporadic Tibetan resistance to its occupation. The resistance is still stubborn, though, matching increased brutalisation of Chinese suppression. Last May, for instance, news filtered out about 80 Tibetan monks and nuns being killed or injured when Chinese troops came down heavily on them for defiantly displaying photographs of the Dalai Lama.

While India's Prime Minister is humbly assuring the Chinese of Delhi's continuing recognition of Tibet as part of China, the Chinese have been and are busy turning Tibet into a vast military and nuclear complex. Dozens of Chinese nuclear warheads are said to be stationed in Tibet, and southward facing missiles have been based there. From all accounts, a nuclear weapons research centre known as the Ninth Academy is also located in Tibet which is estimated to have the world's largest uranium reserves. Latest reports says China plans to divert Brahmaputra rivers towards the Gobi desert by resort to nuclear explosions.

Presumably, the concerned ministries and agencies of the Indian government are aware of all this. Prime Minister Deve Gowda nevertheless humbly and gratuitously assures Beijing that India continues to recognise Tibet as part of China. Will he and his government also have the courage to inform the Indian public honestly and in detail about how the Beijing regime is consolidating Tibet as a missile base and nuclear weapons zone, about Chinese plans to divert the Brahmaputra with the help of nuclear explosions and about the implicit and explicit threat from these to the security and stability of this country?