Each time an official Chinese delegation or senior leader visits the capital, the Government of India, bending over backwards, cracks down on free Tibet activists. The Chinese premier’s just concluded visit saw Government agencies crack down on Tibetan activists, clamping prohibitory orders and putting them under virtual house arrest. Locations such as Jantar Mantar in the heart of the capital, the symbolic venue for the free voice of Indian democracy, was kept out of bounds for them. An all-out effort was made to smother the voice of free Tibet in the world’s largest democracy.

We have increasingly started behaving like the Nepalese authorities who, under Chinese pressure, have been tightening up members of the Tibetan community saying that it will not tolerate any ‘anti-China activities’. But why are we repeatedly going to such extremes in trying to silence the expressions of the dream of a free Tibet? Who are we trying to please? A neighbour who, in any case, never counts us as equal in aspiration and capability and who respects nothing save, as Dean Acheson, Truman’s Secretary of State once remarked “situations of strength”?

We seem to erroneously stick to the line prescribed by KM Pannikar, Indian Ambassador to Beijing during the Nehruvian era:, “Shown consideration and friendship, Communist China will turn out to be a bulwark of peace in Asia.” The situation today is just the opposite, as Gordon Chang, longtime China-watcher says, “The less the Chinese exhibited desire to engage us, the more we felt the need to engage them. It is evident from Beijing’s recent actions that the old approach toward China is not working. If we do not begin to change our policies, our indulgence may end up creating the very thing we have desperately sought to avoid: an incurably aggressive Chinese state.”

It was indeed a great faux pas of Indian diplomacy to prevent the UN Security Council from raising the Tibet issue in November 1950 and from preventing a vote on the matter. On November 24, the UNSC voted unanimously to postpone consideration of the Tibet problem on the advice of the Indian representative BN Rau who naively indicated that his Government’s note from ‘Peiping’ pointed out that “hope still exists for peaceful settlement.” The US intended putting the issue to vote but for the intervention of Rau who in a ‘pre-meeting discussion’ with the US representative, informed him that the Chinese have displayed willingness to negotiate and that their “advance has not been beyond boundaries of China and Tibet, as CCP understands them.” The issue, argued Rau, would be most “effectively negotiated on bilateral basis outside the UN”. We thus lost one of the best opportunities to corner the fledgling PRC.

Intriguingly, it appears Girija Shankar Bajpai, then Secretary General in the MEA, was not taken into confidence on this entire move by Rau. Bajpai is said to have “expressed astonishment at the information” attributed by Rau to the Government of India. Describing Bajpai’s surprise, the then US Ambassador to India, in his telegram dated November 30, 1950, to the Secretary of State, wrote: “Presumably Rau freewheeling on [the] basis [of] his own interpretation [of the] final paragraph of the note … Bajpai openly suspicious and cynical re Peiping.” Strangely, we allowed our imagination a free flow when dealing with the Chinese.

Are things any different today? It is indeed shameful to witness this ingratiating kowtowing by the Indian Government. For fear of a backlash, we dare not differentiate between an ‘incident’ and an ‘incursion’ – we simply did not discuss that angle. I am not even discussing our inability to use the Tibet-Taiwan-Japan triangle to gain diplomatic leverage. We keep moaning about the use of Pakistan by the Chinese but we never display the gumption to silently draw and consolidate the alternate triangle, the image of which even now unsettles Beijing. In fact we have become so used to receiving homilies that we see that as the usual way of world diplomacy.

Interestingly, barring a few China lobbyists in Delhi and KM Pannikar and his mentor, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister combined; most of our stalwarts spoke freely and openly about the rights of Tibet and Tibetans. They had rightly gauged the situation. It would be interesting to run through some of the positions on Tibet that our non-Nehruvian leaders took during the early days of the crisis and later.

To start with a brief re-run from Sardar Patel’s famous note of November 7, 1950 would be relevant. Unlike the fashionable Foreign Minister, Patel, as his wont, was direct in perceiving the reality and the future when he wrote: “The Chinese Government have tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intentions … The final action of the Chinese, in my judgement, is little short of perfidy. The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put faith in us; they chose to be guided by us; and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence.”

Commenting on the Chinese reaction to India’s protest “against the entry of Chinese forces in Tibet” Patel wrote that it was an act of “gross discourtesy not only in the summary way it disposes of our protest … but also in the wild insinuation that our attitude is determined by foreign influences. It looks at though it is not a friend speaking in that language but a potential enemy.”

Referring to the disappearance of the Tibetan buffer, Patel presciently observed, “Recent and bitter history tells us that Communism is no shield against imperialism and that Communists are as good or as bad Imperialists as any other. Chinese ambitions in this respect not only cover the Himalayan slopes on our side but also include important parts of Assam.” Our then widely travelled and articulate Prime Minister, of course, did not read the issue along these lines. Patel’s requested meeting to discuss the Chinese issue did not take place, as K.M.Munshi, then member of the cabinet notes, “to my knowledge the meeting suggested by Sardar did not take place. Comment is hardly necessary.”

Rajendra Prasad, whom Nehru perpetually considered obscurantist and not suited to the “high office of the President of India” and whom he repeatedly sidelined in national affairs, was equally forthright on the Tibetan issue. From the confines of the modest Sadakat Ashram, Prasad wrote to Sri Prakasa on November 18 1962, a day before the Chinese declared the ceasefire, that in the matter of Tibet, “we acted not only un-chivalrously but even against our own interest in not maintaining the position of a buffer state for it and thus exposing a frontier of about 2,500 miles to the Chinese … I have very strong feelings about it. I feel that the blood of Tibet is on our head and we must do prayaschit which is already being forced on us …But the Prime Minister does not like the name of Tibet to be mentioned even now and regards any mention of its liberation as “manifest nonsense.” No one suggests that we should march our armies into Tibet. But is there anything wrong in wishing well of Tibet?”

Equally forthright and incisive was another nationalist stalwart, who by 1950 was already forty years into retirement from public life. Sri Aurobindo, with deep insight had, like Patel, made a clear analysis of the situation around the same time as the latter drafted his note to the Prime Minister. Through the medium of a political-cultural fortnightly published by one of his disciples from Bombay, Sri Aurobindo formulated and approved of a scathing editorial condemning Chinese aggression of Tibet. Some of its sections remain as relevant to the situation today as they were then. It is worth revisiting some excerpts reflective of his position.

Regarding Tibet’s desire to be free and India’s attitude, the editorial noted: “Even had Tibet once been altogether under China’s thumb, the unmistakable desire she has evidenced throughout her history to be independent should enlist India on her side as a champion of national freedom against past imperialist traditions. Unless we wish to put aside our conscience, stamp upon our ideals and become fawning lackeys of Mao Tse-tung we must confront in no uncertain terms the red invasion of Tibet. Terms like “surprise” and “regret” are not manly enough: at least they do not befit a great spiritual nation.”

Commenting on India’s China policy, the editorial was quite frank when it said: “It is an elementary fact of world politics that India persistently goes out of her way to make a fool of her herself over Red China.” Our present leaders have not stopped making a fool of themselves when it comes to China. Displaying remarkable prescience on the future designs of the Chinese, Sri Aurobindo’s editorial argued that the “basic significance of Mao’s Tibetan adventure [was] to advance China’s frontiers right down to India and stand poised there to strike at the right moment and with the right strategy … We must burn it into our minds that the primary motive of Mao’s attack on Tibet is to threaten India as soon as possible.”

With the gobbling of Tibet by the Chinese, Sri Aurobindo clearly saw the advancement of both the “military and ideological frontiers with regard to India.” With Tibet in China, “we shall have Mao touching Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Assam. Our physical frontiers with China will lengthen by hundreds of miles. Ideologically, infiltration will increase enormously. An independent Tibet was the best physical barrier for the Indian mind” and its loss would open India to hostile northern winds.

Calling for taking courage in both hands and standing by the Tibetan people, the editorial supported the Tibetan suggestion that India refer the invasion issue to the Security Council, “The suggestion is sound and we should carry it out immediately.” The sage had no illusions, unlike Rau, of Chinese protestations of friendship and moderation.

But the editorial was most categorical when calling for resisting Chinese aggression in Tibet, calling upon the Government of India to display its democratic spirit and intention: “There is hardly an Indian anywhere who doubts the right of the Tibetan people to autonomy. The logical implication of this right is the utter wrongness on the part of another country to carry on military operations against Tibet. Such operations would be a case of clear aggression and must be resolutely opposed by us not only with words but also deeds. That is the view of every thinking Indian who has not surrendered his mind to Communism. If our Government fails to reflect and express this view in toto, there is certainly something amiss with its capacity of being representative and of straightforward thought and of democratic intention.”

There continues to be something amiss even today, this Government, in its handling of the recent Chinese incursion has failed to display resoluteness and by smothering the voices of free Tibet has failed to reflect its “democratic intention.”

Our stalwarts were clear on the Tibet issue and on the way forward in handling China, but their voices have always fallen on deaf years and we continue to pay a heavy price.