The Tibet Question Revisited
- Pranjali Bandhu
--
The following piece sent to the Open Page editor of The Hindu in May 2008 was rejected for publication. In general The Hindu, one of the less sensationalist and serious newspapers of India presents an unacceptable bias on the issue of Tibet. We are reproducing here this article —Director .
--
In The Hindu editorial (March 26), articles by N. Ram and in Letters to the Editor (April 11, 2008) on the issue of Tibet, some statements have been made that are based on factual errors and which I would like to clarify.
The Dalai Lama in his Strasbourg Proposal of 1988 laid claim to the whole of Tibet (Cholka-Sum) including the Tibetan provinces of U-Tsang, Amdo and Kham as a self-governing democratic region within China. This demand has been projected as a ‘splittist’ one by the Chinese government. Let us check out the historical background to the Dalai’s claim for a ‘Greater Tibet’ that includes not just the present TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region) but also Tibetan inhabited regions presently incorporated into neighbouring provinces.
Let us first take the case of Qinghai. Called Amdo by Tibetans this has long been a multi-ethnic region with a population composed of Han Chinese, Hui Muslims, Tibetans and Mongols. Its small population of Kazakh nomads was relocated to Sinkiang after communist Chinese ‘peaceful liberation’ of Tibet from 1949-51. This region had long been contested by Chinese and Tibetan centralising forces. The eastern part had a moderate Chinese majority while the western part was the habitat of pastoral Tibetan, Mongolian and Kazakh nomads. The latter—like the Tibetan nomads in the Kham region—consistently resisted any rule either by the Chinese or by Lhasa. Only communist China could fully conquer this region through force of arms and incorporate it fully as a Chinese province called Qinghai, which had already been attempted after the 1911 republican revolution in China.
Post-1951 the Tibetan province of Kham was incorporated into the neighbouring Chinese provinces of Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan. Other parts of Eastern Tibet were parcelled out to Quinghai and Gansu. The present TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region), a region a little less than half of the entire Tibetan inhabited territory, was proclaimed only in 1965 after the Tibetan rebellion was substantially quelled. Subsequently, a policy of Chinese in-migration was adopted both into the TAR and into the Tibetan regions of Kham and Amdo that were now part of Chinese provinces. Because the migrant Chinese are perceived as the privileged and dominating group the base for ethnic clashes exists.
Another claim often made by the Chinese government to justify its presence in Tibet is regarding the high rate of development and growth of Tibet under the Chinese as compared to earlier theocratic times. Enough convincing factual evidence is there with regard to the kind of development that has taken place and who its beneficiaries are. Infrastructure development of roads, railways, airports, bridges etc. serve military purposes and the purpose of resource extraction. It has facilitated the development of tourism (largely in Chinese hands) and the import of Chinese made goods and population. Tibet is being used to penetrate the markets of neighbouring countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tibetan language and culture have been decimated, sinicised and marginalised. Abandonment of earlier more sustainable nomadic pastoral practices has led to ecological devastation, so has deforestation for commercial purposes. The beneficiaries of Chinese government invest- ments in Tibet are mainly Chinese (and some Tibetans), and there is a net capital outflow as in the case of any colonial/neo-colonial situation of exploitation.
The Tibetan mass resistance to Chinese rule is claimed to be an imperialist conspiracy right from the beginning. The Chinese communists claim to have ‘liberated’ Tibet from imperialism. But if we look at the reality we find them behaving in the same imperialistic manner towards Tibetans. Since the 1970s they have compromised with the advanced capitalist countries, have restored capitalism in China and have opened it to international finance and capital. Whatever aid the Tibetan rebellion may receive from the CIA and other western governments, it would be a travesty of truth to claim that the problem in Tibet is their creation. In fact, the Chinese themselves have created the problem by their overbearing chauvinistic behaviour not based on a true implementation of internationalism. By pursuing nationalist aims in Tibet they are meeting with equally nationalist responses. Violent repression of the resistance is certainly not going to solve the problem.