The recent celebrations in China commemorating the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party went almost unnoticed in New Delhi. However, the birthday of the Dalai Lama just five days later received heed directly from the top seat of Raisina Hills as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly conveyed his greetings to the spiritual leader for the first time since 2015. India’s renewed attention to the issue of Tibet raised many eyebrows and has opened various avenues for discussion. What factors pressed India to give the Tibetan issue a new life suddenly, and what implications might it have on India-China relations and larger international politics? Is it a well-calculated move, or is India skating on thin ice? The answer to this conundrum depends on the vantage point one takes or the person one asks.
Tibetan Factor in China-India Relations
Tibet has been a contentious issue between India and China since the 1950s when Mao’s communist army took control of the Tibetan administration despite the objections of the Potala Palace. The ‘peaceful liberation’, ‘invasion’ or ‘annexation’, whatever one may call it, was perceived by India as endangering its century-long cultural relations, economic interest and what Kanti Bajpai calls ‘quasi-diplomatic presence’ in Tibet. It also jeopardised India’s larger geopolitical aim of keeping Tibet as a buffer state between China and India.
India’s granting of asylum to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan refugees in 1959, the emergence of armed rebellion in eastern Tibet in the late 1950s and the United States’ support to Tibetan Khampas through its policy of communist containment were all seen by the Chinese as part of a plot by the Indo-US alliance to cripple Beijing’s power in Tibet and to maintain Tibet as a buffer state. For the US however, exerting pressure on communist China was geopolitically necessary to prevent the domino effect of Communist expansion in South Asia.
The accumulation of such antagonistic and fractured relations eventually led to the Sino-Indian war in 1962. Since then, Sino-Indian relations have been shaped by mutual suspicion, mistrust, and a zero-sum security rationality. The loss in the 1962 war, which India calls a Chinese ‘betrayal’ to Nehru’s idealistic ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’ policy, continues to remain a psychological stain on the Indian military and civilian polity. India houses thousands of Tibetan refugees and provides them with freedom of movement and livelihood which has induced further suspicion in China about the Indian role in Tibetan politics.
Xi, Modi and Tibet
Fast forward to 2013-14, the rise of China’s economic and political profile under Xi Jinping’s presidency and the landslide election victory of Narendra Modi raised expectations that bilateral relations would improve. However, despite growing trade interdependence and a series of confidence-building measures between the two militaries (in 1993, 1996, 2005, 2012, 2013), border disputes between India and China continued, with lingering claims and counter-claims of territory in the Western and Eastern Himalayan sectors. Beijing’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh and New Delhi’s refusal to accept China’s control of Aksai Chin have remained major points of contention.
It was in this context that Modi invited Lobsang Sangay from the Central Tibetan Administration to attend the inauguration ceremony of his first term in office, legitimising the authority of the exiled Tibetan leadership and elevating Sangay’s status to that of an equal with other accompanying heads of states. The hosting of the Dalai Lama at Rashtrapati Bhawan by President Pranab Mukherjee in 2016 further infuriated China.
In the meantime, China continued to tighten its grip in the border region resulting in five standoffs since Xi came to power in 2013. On the other hand, India proceeded carefully in Modi’s second term by telling its officials to avoid programmes planned by the Central Tibetan Administration and to skip public interactions with Tibetan leaders. However, India’s conciliatory posture towards China did not last long as the territorial dispute between these powers reached its boiling point in 2020 in the Galwan valley.
Anti-China sentiments in India spiked after the violent clashes in 2020, not least due to the loss of Indian lives along the border—a first since 1975. Faced with pressure to respond, New Delhi undertook a slew of new policy directions—from implementing restrictions on Chinese companies, to expanding security cooperation with like-minded partners, and aggressively conducting missile tests—all aimed at demonstrating India’s willingness and ability to stand up to China. Against this backdrop, the Dalai Lama’s birthday presented another opportunity for India to pressure China by putting the spotlight on Tibet.
Connotation and Implication of India’s Recent Moves on Tibet
Drawing attention to Tibet has several implications. First, it sends a symbolic message to Beijing to the effect that India is not happy with Chinese incursions into India’s first concentric circle of influence, i.e. its immediate neighbourhood—symbolic because India is well aware that the issue of Tibet does not hold much significance in reality as almost every country has accepted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Second, India also appears to be signalling to China that, if needed, it is willing to “touch upon matters that Beijing might consider sensitive” and will keep the Tibetan question alive so long as China continues to disregard India’s sensitivities and concerns regarding Kashmir and its border with China. Third, New Delhi’s harder line on Tibet may be suggesting that India is not willing to meet Chinese expectations on the Tibetan questions without a significant quid pro quo on the border, India’s primacy in its immediate neighbourhood, shared Asian leadership, or Chinese support for India’s bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council.
Bipin Ghimire is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of International Relation, South Asian University in New Delhi, India. He can be reached at decb64_YmlwaW5naGltaXJlMTRAZ21haWwuY29t_decb64 and @BipinGhi.
The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy or the National University of Singapore.
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Compiled and sent to you by Centre on Asia and Globalisation and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
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