Nehru’s Folly and the ‘Loss’ of Tibet continues....

The Indian government’s toeing of the
Chinese Communist line was carried even further by India’s own ambassador to China, K.M. Pannicker. He outdid even Nehru in his appeasement of China, to the extent of changing the word ‘suzerainty’ in an official Indian communiqué to ‘sovereignty’ as a formal Indian acceptance of China’s position in Tibet. Thus, in the end, it was India who let down the Tibetans, and wrote off Tibetan independence, at a time when the world was looking for a lead from India and Britain. It was India who prevented the case coming up in the UN General Assembly. The voluminous diplomatic records of the period make
pathetic reading of a lost opportunity, diplomatic certainly, and perhaps even military, both of which would have far-reaching strategic geopolitical consequences.

Had India actually intervened in time, with American aid, there would have been no permanent missile threat looming over all of India from Chinese missiles based in Tibet. India would, of course, have incurred great Chinese displeasure and bought Chinese hostility, but that it managed to do anyway, by trying to be clever. The official Indian permission to the Dalai Lama to stay in India infuriated the Chinese Government, who were soon looking for a way to ‘teach India a lesson’.

India, trying to be diplomatic, came up with the compromise policy of not allowing the Dalai Lama or his ‘Government-in-exile’ any political
activity against the Chinese while he was in India, thus trying to please everybody.

This, of course, neither satisfied the Chinese, nor did it allow India to get any political mileage it could have got from the presence of thousands of Tibetan refugees it now sheltered. It was one of the ‘clever’ policy decisions that India is prone to come up with, which achieve nothing favourable.

To be continued...