It was a
time when I was pondering on to find a book on India-China relationship
that I came across ‘’ The Great game in
The Buddhist Himalayas” by Phunchok
Stobdan, former ambassador and former senior fellow at the Institute of
Defense studies and analysis. Ever since the recent Indo-China conflict erupted
in Ladakh, finding a reference book from the voluminous literature available on
the subject, was a difficult task. All books on the Sino-Indian relationship
looks through the point of view of either India or US and through the prism of Tibet and the Dalai Lama. However
what I found unique in this book is that it is dispassionate to any existing
form of strategic thinking and develops an Indian strategic response
considering the Chinese mind. While I will come across this part in the later
sections, let us look at the book in an overall perspective.
The sixteen chapters in the book sails us
through the growth of Buddhism in the Himalayan borders of India consisting of
practices in Tibet, Nepal, Tawang, Sikkim and Bhutan. Starting from the journey
of guru padmasambhava to Tibet in the 8th century and setting up a
cult of ‘’ Nyingmapa’ which later developed into lineages of Kagyu, Galupa and
Drukpa under the patronage of the Mongal and Chinese kings and how these
lineages further developed and split into multiple practises spread over the
Himalayas and beyond are covered in the initial chapters. Padmasambhava known in Tibet as Rinpoche
spread the vajrayana version of the buddhist practices and was later augmented
by other Indian gurus like Marpa and Milarepa from the Bengal plains besides
others. However quoting from the book ‘’
padmasambhava’s legacy remains the religious foundation of the people of the
entire Himalayan range”.
Out of the various sects and practises which
evolved from padmasambhava’s teaching,
the Gelugpa school in Tibet was encourage by Gushi Khan the mongol
ruler. It is from here the tradition of Dalai Lama as an incarnate developed
with political manifestation in the 17th century starting from the
fifth Dalai lama Lobong Gyatso. In Sikkim the local community called lepchas
and others adopted Buddhism and by the middle centuries rumyek and namchi monasteries were set up among
others and mostly they followed the Karma Kagyu lineage. In Bhutan the Drukpa lineage was consolidated
by Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal in the
16th century and he is regarded as the founder of Bhutan. In Nepal
too nyingmapa monasteries flourished
and in Tawang which the Chinese call as South Tibet the Kagyu traditions were
in majority. However in Ladakh Buddhism arrived directly from Indo Pak region
in the north and had influence from the Tibetan Buddhism but Sikkim politically
developed into a major Buddhist kingdom under Gyalpo Singge Namgyal in the late 15th and early 16th
century with the Drukpa Kagyu
tradition:
All these traditions in the Himalayan region
developed monasteries with taxing rights and developed their own administrative
mechanism with patronage of the respective kings. However most of the lineages
and traditions were in mutual conflict with fratricidal wars with boundaries
and areas of control being consistently redefined. It is into this stage of
geographical flux in the late 19th century and early 20th
century that British India emerged on one side of the Himalayas. On the other side the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911 with Mongolia, China and Tibet
becoming three centers of powers with the Czars of Russia now exerting
influence in the region. In a chapter named ‘’British
Game in the Himalayas’’, the author take us through the general British
apathy to the Himalayan region. During the time of Lord Curzon, worried about
the Tsarist Russians making inroads to Tibet, an expeditionary force was sent
to Lhasa under Colonel Francis Younghusband which resulted in bloodshed.
Tibetans considered it as British invasion of Tibet and they always looked at
the British with disenchantment and for the British, Himalayan region was
always a ‘’ worthless peace of
territory’’. This was followed by the expedition of the Chinese General
Zhao to Tibet to crush the Tibetan rebellion against the Chinese and the escape
of the 13th Dalai Lama into British India. The unrest later created
the tripartite discussion between British India, China and Tibet in Shimla in
1906 by which Tibet was considered as the buffer state between India and China
and in order to protect British India’s commercial interest in Tibet, a suzerainty
status of China over Tibet was accepted.
In Sikkim by the British creating a political
agency in Gangtok the Tibetan influence there, was minimised and Sikkim was
indirectly under the control of British India. Ladakh was already under British
control after a treaty with Tibet in 1842. The Shimla discussion accepted the 800
km line proposed by Henry McMahon , the foreign secretary of British India by
which Tawang the part of Tibet being
south of the line came under British control. It is this territory defined by
the McMahon line that independent India inherited. However the People Republic
of China later claimed that this boundary have
been made under duress with weak Tibetans and made their claim of Tawang
, later paving way for the war with India
in 1962. This dispute runs to date and which has resulted in multiple
skirmishes the latest being now in the Galwan valley.
Another significant matter which the author
explains in the later chapters are about Pt Nehru’s thinking on China leading to the ‘Panchsheel’
principle and Nehru strongly advocating that Tibet is indeed a Chinese
territory and about his support for permanent membership of Chinese into the
UN. The author makes a critical balancing act in analysing the actions of Prime
Minister Nehru .This need to be understood on the background that the popular new generation opinion in
India, especially the Bharatiya Janata Party which is in power, is
that it was Nehru who indeed
goofed up the China issue. However according to the author there were
significant benefits in Nehru’s mind especially on trade and religious interest
of India in accepting the Chinese position on Tibet. Quoting letters that were
exchanged between Nehru and Zhou-Enlai, the author points out that the then
Prime Minister was very clear on his stand on the McMahon line and while
accepting the Chinese position on Tibet , Nehru allowed Dalai Lama to be given
asylum and set up his government in exile in India. He also had to tactfully
handle the CIA which orchestrated the Dalai Lama’s exit to India, uphold his
position as a leader of the nonaligned movement and at the same time balance
himself from his critics from the
opposition and face a rising sense of anti-china nationalism. Quoting from the
book, ‘’ Nehru had turned seventy by 1959
and his declining physical and mental health meant people with lesser integrity
began to dominate the government”, and thus shifts the point of doubt on
the then Prime minister to his officialdom which may not be agreeable to the
readers.
It is beginning from chapter 9, the process of
deriving the need of a strategic shift in India’s China policy is discussed.
According to the author, the institution of Lamaism predominantly represented
by the Dalai Lama was started by the Mongols and the Chinese Qing dynasty.
Similarly the concept of an incarnation based administrative and spiritual
lineage is also part of the Himalayan Buddhist legacy. Hence the Dalai Lama and
Tibet falls under the grand Chinese ambit. We have accepted this position and
reiterated by successive prime ministerial visits to Beijing. Under such
circumstance there is a question on the status of Arunachal Pradesh which China
claims as South Tibet and India refutes the claim. India faces this dichotomy
and until very recently, the Dalai Lama itself did not accept it as part of
India. At the same time we were encouraging the Dalai Lama visit Arunachal
Pradesh as a strategic muscle flexing. The author is critical of this view and
he believes that the Dalai Lama card in India is not a sustainable card to play
with as the Chinese is waiting for his reincarnation to be claimed from China.
Hence making Dalai Lama as the centre of our political negotiation and
intimidation is not the right strategy as per this book.
Secondly the book points out that the actions
of the current government have given an impression of a strategic shift of
India towards its Tibet narrative. The Modi government started reaching out to
other Buddhist nations in South Asia while accepting the fact that China is in fact a
part of the Asian growth story. According to the author a major shift to the US
will create an unbalance in our China-Russia axis. The other Himalayan nations
like Bhutan and Sikkim is controlled by sects opposed to the Dalai Lama Moreover the Central Tibetan administration
even though administered from India is virtually funded by the US (Incidentally
it was in this month in July that the US senate sanctioned 1 million US dollars
on direct funding to CTA) . Hence a unitary Himalayan boundary policy cannot be
Dalai Lama centric and brings in the criticism that Government of India is
acting without a ‘’ telescopic big
picture thinking”. Finally the book gives a call to have a credible
institution which will emphasize India’s rich tradition of Buddhism be used as
a soft power in the Asian geopolitics
and counter balance the Buddhist narrative being build up by China in
its favor.
Well, ambassador Stobdan has done a fantastic work in collating significant
references which gives the readers a holistic picture for analysis and will
help students of international relations a wider perspective . As stated above
the most important aspect of the book is on thinking beyond the Dalai Lama which is a point to be noted by the
Indian think tank. On a critical side the book does give an impression that the
Chinese have handled the conflict in a better way and Indian strategic
responses were not equally worthy. There is no mention of the missing Karmappa
who was allegedly taken on custody when he was a child and on the Chinese human
right abuses on the Tibetans and how India can create a narrative there. May be
giving a view considering the Chinese perspective will help the Indian policy
makers. Both ways a good read at a time when both nations are seeing eye balls
to eye balls.
