On July 8, just before he boarded a flight at Kangra airport in Himachal Pradesh for New Delhi, the Dalai Lama told media persons that China, “… officially or unofficially,” wants to “contact” him.
“Now China is changing … Now China also realizes that the spirit of the Tibetan people is very strong,” said the leader who is unarguably the personification of Tibetan resistance against China. “So, in order to deal with Tibetan problems, they want to contact me. I am also ready. We are not seeking independence. We have decided since many years that we remain part of the People's Republic of China.”
A dénouement will have lessened years of unease between China and the Tibetan administration-in-exile that has, since 1959, been based in McLeod Ganj, uphill from the Himachal town of Dharamshala. That's the year the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, escaped China-occupied Tibet and to India. India's premier at the time, Jawaharlal Nehru, offered him and his people refuge.
It will also close a loop that has involved, to various degrees, India, Nepal, Bangladesh in its East Pakistan avatar, and the United States.
It's not the first time the 14th Dalai Lama has spoken of working with China instead of confronting it. Indeed, he said as much to me during an interview in the mid-1990s at his residence in McLeod Ganj. He also mentioned that he was looking for a political, not spiritual, successor. (For spiritual continuity there would be a well-established if convoluted way of selecting a reincarnation as the 15th Dalai Lama.)
At that interview he acknowledged that the chance of regaining Tibet from China was slim if not non-existent, and the realpolitik lay in working with China to secure the best possible future for all Tibetans.
Indeed, the Dalai Lama acknowledged that perpetual exile in India was a poor option. The problem wasn't so much with highly educated Tibetans or those settled in the West. “The problem,” he maintained, “is those who have little or some knowledge and want to remain in our settlements.”
It was a squeeze. Outside the community they couldn't get “proper jobs” because of relatively low education, and isolation. And if they lived in Tibetan settlements -- across northern, eastern India, and even southern India; and a handful in Nepal -- monthly earnings averaged INR 2,000-3,000 for a family. “And that is impossible to live with these days.”
Twenty-five years on, much has changed. While the Dalai Lama continues to be a venerated elder and spiritual leader, Tibetans-in-exile elected Lobsang Sangay, a Delhi University and Harvard alum, first as kalon tripa, or chief of cabinet of the government-in-exile (usually called CTA or Central Tibetan Administration), and then sikyong -- political leader. Sangay, a US citizen, was sikyong until 2021.
Tibetan refugee numbers in India have declined from about 150,000 to around half that. There are several reasons.
Their status in India severely limited accessing loans, owning property and securing jobs. It restricted them largely to handloom and handicrafts and the travel trade. By the time a new policy in 2014 offered mitigation, numerous Tibetans had moved on to opportunities in Europe, North America and elsewhere, using their India-issued yellow-coloured passports to travel -- and then eventually adopt the colours of their destinations.
China also stanched the run of Tibetan refugees across the old McMahon Line and the so-called Line of Actual Control, or LAC, with India. And China squeezed its border with Nepal; it was a major route of those escaping the Tibetan Autonomous Region -- what China prefers to call Xizang Autonomous Region. Nepal deported several escapees to TAR.
Even as news of major and minor protests and atrocities against Tibetans regularly travel beyond TAR, China's development in TAR's heartland around Lhasa; the region's growing links with eastern and southern China; and strenuous attempts to “integrate” Tibetans to China's way has also slowed the movement of escapee-émigrés.
To many Tibetans, the battle to regain a “free Tibet” was lost in 2003. The ironical reason: India.
On June 23 that year, Atal Behari Vajpayee, India's premier at the time, and his counterpart, Wen Jiabao, signed a declaration in Beijing during Vajpayee's visit. Among other things, the declaration recognized Tibet as a part of China; and India undertook to prevent “anti-China political activities” in India by Tibetans.
It was a massive climb down from India's earlier position, and done primarily for the sake of attempting to secure its own borders with China; attempting to lessen China's help to Pakistan; secure China's diplomatic heft for pro-India or neutral gestures in multilateral arenas; and boost trade and economic ties. (Besides trade and some investment it has largely failed; more on that another time.)
Among other things, the Vajpayee-Wen pact dampened militancy among Tibetan youngsters, and some middle-aged leaders who still held hope from their time as guerrillas trained by the United States and India.
It's a true story. After India's loss to China in a war in 1962, India's intelligence establishment partnered with the Central Intelligence Agency to train several thousand Tibetan guerrillas, drawn from the refugee population, to run operations in Tibet. India trained such operatives in Chakrata, near Dehradun. They were based in Mustang, Nepal, an established CIA staging area.
Before India came on board, from the mid-1950s the Americans used a network that involved smuggling Tibetan recruits across the border in West Bengal into East Pakistan, and then ferrying them from Kurmitola air strip in Dhaka in converted WWII-era bombers. An initial group was taken for training to Saipan. The programme later shifted to a facility in Colorado.
It all flamed out in a decade. But a vestige continues. In the autumn of 2020, a member of the Special Frontier Force was killed at the LAC along a lake, Pangong Tso, during a border flare-up with China. SFF is run by the Research and Analysis Wing or R&AW, India's overseas intelligence arm. The trooper killed was a middle-aged SFF Tibetan-origin commando, Nyima Tenzin. His body was ceremoniously wrapped in Tibetan and Indian flags.
As such great games continue, the Dalai Lama's play for his people, who are geostrategic collateral damage, is to secure their futures as well as transitions from one Dalai Lama -- and other key lamas -- to the next.
Equally, China would look to gain from dialogue with the Dalai Lama and gen-next Tibetan leaders-in-exile. It would lessen one of China's several ethnic and regional headaches.
Tibetan pre-schoolers-in-exile are taught to chant jangchup chok ki sem ni kaygy nay/ semchen tamche dhagi dondu nyer. It is to ensure that, like the Buddha, they develop compassion in their hearts, and keep all sentient beings in their hearts. They will need to cling to this faith for the uncertain -- or perhaps, certain -- future that awaits them.
Sudeep Chakravarti is Director, Center for South Asian Studies at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He has authored several books on history, ethnography, conflict resolution, and Eastern South Asia. His most recent book is ‘The Eastern Gate: War and Peace in Nagaland, Manipur and India's Far East' (Simon and Schuster).