oneworldtalk

Tawang is part of Tibet historically and culturally. However, in return for providing shelter and challenge China, the Dalai Lama has to bend over backwards to please the Indian government and betray Tibetan interest in the process. A politicised monk may be leaving behind a legacy of hatred and feud for future generations of Chinese and Indians.

- Wikipedia

If Tawang in northeast India has historically been part of Tibet, it follows that it should be part of China. Unfortunately, Tawang has been used as a pawn to settle scores on larger issues. The dispute should be settle by negotiation and peaceful means, not through the use of arms to destroy each other.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo refers to Tawang as a "Tibetan area controlled by India and claimed by China", in a recent piece he wrote for the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation.



The 14th Dalai Lama is now 74 years old. In a recent TV interview, he said that he was born to accomplish certain tasks, and as those tasks were not completed, it was 'logical’ that he would be reincarnated outside China. Many believe that 'outside China' means Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh where the 6th Dalai Lama came from, a Tibetan area controlled by India but claimed by China. This would greatly complicate the border demarcation between China and India. Beijing, of course, insists on the old rule that the appointment of high lamas must have its approval.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/between-china-and-india-tibet-wedge-or-link

The international community that has calling on developing countries to observe international law based on documents and reasoning, should not renege on the guidelines and attempt to distort historical facts.

In the History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951, Melvyn Goldstein cited documents which showed that up till the declaration in 1914 Tawang was and had always been and undeniably Tibetan. China had refused to recognise the unfavourable demarcation of boundaries by the British.

There was nothing put in writing by Tibetan officials or Qing government to validate the McMahon Line. Tibetans enjoyed a fair degree of autonomy and deferred to the emperor in China, exercised jurisdiction over Tawang. Tibetans who had been brainwashed by the exiled renegade secessionists and Indian government may have been programmed to forget or not to learn history. Tawang was a symbol of disgrace to ethnic Tibetans and other groups living there for generations.

Let us not detract from the veiled scheme of the Indian government continuing its land grabbing activities handed down from the former greedy British imperial colonialists. An expansionist India is effectively working as the proxy of big powers to annex neighbouring lands and build a semblance of an empire or buffer against a growing China? India and its underlings are willing to mercenarise itself as pawns of imperialists to undermine China by causing internal rifts. Just because India calls itself "democratic" does not immune itself from censure if they do not respect international law and good neigbourly relations.

More discussions in : http://www.oneworldtalk.freeforums.org/is-india-a-veiled-threat-or-good-neighbor-t2656.html

China could not simply accept that Tawang was part of India because it is not. It is ludicrous that some Indian officials are proposing joint administration of Tawang. The area does not belong to India, full stop. There would not have been any dispute had there been no interference from foreign powers. China had suffered tremendous humiliation from foreign powers exploiting its resources under unfair terms.

Even though the Dalai Lama is willing to become an Indian citizen, the Tibetan people accept Indian government control over Tawang because it is so sacred to their culture and heritage. Tibetans do not want to be Indian citizens because they will be worse off - they know that in their hearts.

If the Dalai Lama is truly an Indian citizen now, he would have to renounce his Chinese citizenship. He is not a Tibetan and could not claim to represent or speak for the Tibetans. He would not return to Chinese territory as a Tibetan exile but as a foreigner.

Dalai is sinking deeper eversince he offered himself as a pawn for the CIA patrons and Indian host. As a man of high principles, objectivity and pragmatism, President Obama has refused to meet Dalai Lama. The well read would know that many of the allegations made by the Free Tibet clique are falsehoods for their separatist and revenue raising causes. This is the first time since 1991 that the Dalai Lama has come to Washington without a meeting with the US president. As the Dalai Lama's clout in USA wanes, he has only India to rely on in his last years.

Democratic India forbids foreign journalists from covering Dalai Lama's visit to Tawang, because of tension building up -- no questions asked. Why isn't the media not chiding India in the same manner when China restricted foreign journalists on security grounds in the aftermath of killings in March 2008.

Himalayan histrionics

Oct 29th 2009
From The Economist

Asia's two giants still cannot agree where one stops and the other begins

IF THIS is to be Asia’s century, a small prerequisite is that its two rising powers rub along together. Yet recent bonding between China and India has turned to repulsion. Breathless Indian commentary talks of irreconcilable rivalry, even future conflict. As for the Chinese, few had bothered much about India. The superiority of China’s economic and political models was taken as read. That makes an October editorial on the website of the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, all the more striking.

The editorial cranked out insults not levelled in decades. India’s superpower dreams, it said, might appear to be justified. But they are mingled “with the thought of hegemony”. This was setting India on the road to “repeated failure”. Damnable, too, was India’s policy of “befriending the far and attacking the near”. Indian hegemony, the editorial decided, was “100% the result of British colonialism”, when the Raj ruled from Pakistan to Burma. Now, the victim was trying to out-empire even the British.

After wondering where all this leaves China—past colonial victim of Jurchen, Mongol, Manchu, Western and Japanese aggression—it suggests the relationship is pretty dire. Yet, although it has its problems, none seems unmanageable. Trade frictions have increased as Chinese goods have penetrated Indian markets. India has lodged more anti-dumping actions against China than has any other country. It also temporarily banned Chinese toys, citing safety concerns. India’s signature last year of a nuclear co-operation pact with the United States has created distrust in China. Many Indians, for their part, see China’s building of roads, ports and pipelines in friendly countries around the Indian Ocean as a “string of pearls” strategy designed to choke India. They even worry about its involvement in Afghanistan. A rabid Indian press is fed by retired military officers and some serving ones. Some scaremongers are out to earn a buck from American defence contractors hunting for business. China seems to accept this. Until recently, it turned a deaf ear to most of the commentary, and Chinese bloggers give as good as they get.

In truth, the real problem remains the two countries’ long, shared border. Disputes over the western and eastern ends have been unresolved since a bloody war in 1962. In the west, India claims Aksai Chin, a high plateau controlled by China, as part of Kashmir. In the east, China disputes the McMahon Line, agreed by British India and a Tibet then under British rather than Chinese sway. The line is in effect the border today, but China claims a large chunk of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls South Tibet. It includes a revered Buddhist monastery at Tawang, near the 17th-century birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama.

In a “good neighbour” policy, China has now resolved every serious land-border dispute, bar this one. A solution had seemed within reach. In 2005 the two sides laid out the approach. Principles would be agreed, then compromises made, and lastly a line drawn. Only marginal adjustments were expected to the present border. But the prospects of such a deal have crumbled as China has hardened its position. Earlier this year Chinese soldiers crossed the presumed line of control in the west and sent a herder family packing. China has blocked a water project in Arunachal Pradesh financed by the Asian Development Bank. In October it grew shrill over an electioneering trip to the state by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. China has also begun issuing different visas for Indians from Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir.

What has changed the equation is restive Tibet. Anti-Chinese riots last year highlighted the vulnerabilities for China of the vague, porous Tibetan lands. The Communist government, borrowing its impulse from the reviled Manchus of the Qing dynasty, wants once and for all to hammer down the borders of its supersized empire. All the ambiguities of borderlands and the people who wander about them must submit to the central will.

China’s urgency is reinforced by the Dalai Lama. His flight from Tibet in 1959, via Tawang, fed into border tensions then and he backs India’s border claims today. He plans to visit Tawang on November 8th. There is even talk that his reincarnation might one day be found there. That would be an excruciating outcome for the Chinese Communists, who demand the right to control Tibetans’ relations with the divine. For they could hardly declare such a reincarnation illegitimate on territorial grounds.

Seize the hour

Hence the People’s Daily’s strong words. China may feel that now is a good time to get a border settlement on its terms. After all, India grows economically stronger by the day. And recent signs of American readiness to appease China will have encouraged China to think that America will not do much to back India. Before his first trip to China as president in mid-November, Barack Obama declined to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington. China’s polemics are also designed to resonate with India’s smaller neighbours, who have their own gripes about its overbearing style. They also enjoy China’s material support. The part of the former kingdom of Jammu & Kashmir controlled by Pakistan, for example, is criss-crossed with Chinese infrastructure projects.

In recent days both China and India have called for cool heads and warm hearts. A former Chinese ambassador to India blamed all the two countries’ serious differences on the Indian media. In Thailand on October 24th Mr Singh and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao even made common cause on climate change, before December’s Copenhagen summit. Yet as with earlier alliances over global trade talks, this looks like a tactical marriage in the face of rich-country demands. As for whether India and China can bury the hatchet over the border: that depends as much on China’s understanding of its internal threats as on its robust, sometimes rabid, southern neighbour.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=14744905

Dalai Lama is helping India to rewrite history on Sino-Indian territorial dispute. The ball is in India's court but the aggressors with a political agenda have instead made allegations on Chinese irridentism.

Forum posters have cited some interesting articles in another thread.
http://www.oneworldtalk.freeforums.org/singapore-backs-china-s-tawang-claim-angers-india-t2809.html

The Dalai Lama arrived in Tawang for a five day visit. Why is there so much excitment? I thought religious men should avoid publicity and fame and diminish their ego.

If the Dalai Lama is really a spiritual leader, he should be apolitical and promote peace, not provoke violence and stir up quarrels between peoples and states.

Only wizards and witches speak in equivocal riddles and delude others. I'm not sure if you really believe Dalai Lama when he said he was for peace, he was not seeking a successor in Tawang ...

Where did Dalai Lama get thousands of dollars to give away to the peasants in Tawang?

Is the Dalai Lama really indepedent? He is acting on the behest of India and western supporters. India is interferring in the domestic affairs of another country. It has border disputes with so many neighbours! China has settled most of the territorial issues with other countries except India. Doesn't that tell you something about hostile neighbours?

One could not expect miracles from a self proclaimed living God if he could not control his subordinate radicals who advocate and participate in violence and destruction.

Fabio:


Well, the god-king of the yellow-hat Buddhist sect receives his funding from generous donations from "Hollywood stars" like Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, etc, from royalties from his published books and mostly from CIA funded National Endowment for Democracy. He used to receive under the table about US $120,000 a month prior to Nixon's visit to China in 1976, until China exposed his links to the CIA. From then onwards, US Congress decides to fund all anti-Chinese activities with more benign fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy or the Heritage Foundation. The Chinese government have yet to fund any anti-American activities, past or present...the Black Panthers or the American Indian Movement. Well...the Chinese have more pressing matters to attend to than to mess around with other's internal affairs.

India just found its "new found pride and power", whether real or sustainable is another tale for all of us to find out. Its media have taken a fancy and frenzy as it has managed to copy a lot of their techniques from western press. Tell lies a few hundred times, and it will become a truth in someone's mind. The Indian public has bought these lies wholesale and Dalai lama is one of the puppets that the media control. Both sides enjoy this indulgence...the Dalai gets his publicity and the Indian media receive their increase in circulation and western (mainly US) support

Indian politicians and media have been harping on "rhetoric" on the Chinese side and the 1962 border war. However, they should do some soul searching and really come clean about their own rhetoric. The border dispute goes way back before 1962. Isn't it obvious that empty vessels make the most noise to drown out reason.