Integrity Score 390
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Hissing Dragon-Squirming Tiger:
Comparisons, Negotiations
and Attitudes
continues.....
The erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, dithered till the Maharaja’s hand was forced when armed Pathan tribesmen from the new Pakistan’s NWFP poured into the state committing rape, murder and
pillage, and his Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah urged him to accede to
India.
This has not been accepted by Pakistan, but their desire to acquire the state of J&K, shorn of Islamic rhetoric, has much to do with their felt need for a ‘buffer state’ protecting their northern Punjab plains and the important cities there.
But insofar as Tibet and India’s attitude to it is as a buffer-state is concerned, it has been a case of ‘give-and-give’ to China, rather than a case of ‘give-and-take’. This has been summarised well by Arun Shourie:
Each rationalization paves the way for the next ruinous step. Once the Indian Government says that India has ‘always accepted Chinese suzerainty over Tibet,’ it is but a short step to saying that it
has always accepted Chinese ‘sovereignty’ over Tibet.
Once it says that India has always accepted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, it is but a short step to signing the 1954 Agreement with China ‘on trade and intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India’ an Agreement which refers to Tibet as the ‘Tibet Region of China’ not once but six times. Once it signs off on ‘Tibet Region of China’ six times, it is but a step to signing on to ‘the Tibetan Autonomous
Region of China’ as was done in 2003, thereby accepting not just that Tibet is a region of China but that the ‘Tibet’ which is a region of China is what the Chinese Government says is ‘Tibet’ that is, a Tibet with two of its three parts lopped off…
To be continued........