Nehru’s Folly and the ‘Loss’ of Tibet:
China-India Relations 1949-1962,
American Involvement in Tibet, and
Pakistan’s Joint Defence Offer begins.....

Our Prime Minister is depending on the Panchsheel which has been adopted by Comrade Mao and the Panchsheel in which one of the clauses is the No-Aggression Treaty on Tibet. I am indeed surprised that our Hon'ble Prime Minister is taking this ‘Panchsheel’ seriously.

Panchsheel has no place in politics. The truth inherent in Pansheel is that Morality is forever changing. You can abide by your promises in accordance with today’s Morality and by the same property you may violate your own promise simply because tomorrow's Morality will have different demands ... in my opinion our Prime Minister will realize the truth in my words when the situation matures further.

By letting China take control over Lhasa the Prime Minister has in a way helped the Chinese to bring their armieson to the Indian borders.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution, speaking in Parliament in 1954, during the debate after the Indian Government signed the Panchsheel Agreenment with China.

Instead of according recognition to China in 1949, had India accorded this recognition to Tibet, there would have been no Sino￾Indian conflict.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

India’s present unfavourable security scenario, with an unsettled Kashmir problem continuing like a festering sore for 75 years, and an uncomfortable strategic equation vis-à-vis a militarily resurgent and economically strong China, is the result of the disastrous military strategic decisions of one man: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, former Prime
Minister of India.

The loss of the so-called historic ‘buffer’ is a fact, though Tibet was a ‘buffer’ only in the context of the competition for imperialist conquest in Asia, or the ‘Great Game’ as it has been called. Tibet was never a buffer between India and China, for the simple reason that Indian and Chinese empires of the past had only once very briefly been in conflict, in the time of Kanishka in AD 100, and that too in a fringe area for both, in eastern Turkestan , which was at the time a centre of Indian Buddhist culture.

To be continued...