Last week, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao visited Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh and met the Dalai Lama and top officials of his government in exile for over an hour.
As expected in these kinds of situations, neither the Ministry of External Affairs nor the Dalai Lama’s office provided any details about what was discussed. But Tibetan sources said privately the Dalai Lama’s security arrangements and the welfare of Tibetan refugees in India came up for discussion at the meeting, which was also attended by the Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
The Rao-Dalai Lama meeting has huge political and diplomatic significance as it happened days after three important developments: National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon’s July 3-6 visit to China; reports of Beijing’s decision to construct a railway line to Xinjiang passing through Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-administered Kashmir; and China’s decision to sell two more nuclear reactors to Pakistan for its Chasma atomic complex. (Interestingly, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari was in China for a July 6-11 visit when Rao called on the Dalai Lama).
India is, as others have said here, miffed that China has declared its intention to sell two nuclear reactors to Pakistan and construct a railway line traversing crossing the Gilgit-Baltistan area as both issues have grave implications for India’s security. But at the same time, there’s nothing much India can do as China and Pakistan are well within their rights to conduct their bilateral relations as they see fit.
It’s against this backdrop that Rao’s meeting with the Dalai Lama and his top aides in Dharamsala should be seen—it’s an open secret that Chinese officials squirm every time an Indian official or minister lends his or her ear to the Dalai Lama. India has therefore made a not very subtle point to China.
There’s a tit-for-tat element to bilateral relations. If China needles India on Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, visas or water issues, India can tick off Beijing by upgrading its ties with the Dalai Lama. And if China should choose to give support to anti-Indian insurgents in the north-east and the Naxalites, then India too can open a channel with the Munich-based World Uighur Congress or start giving stapled visas to travellers from Tibet and Xinjiang as China has done with Kashmir.
But both countries are rapidly rising powers and shouldn’t indulge in diplomatic sabre rattling. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is spot on when he says that there’s enough space in the world to accommodate both India and China. This understanding should be the template for Sino-Indian ties.
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ronnie
India a rising power??????????Naxalites,Adivasis,caste,J&K,Khalistan,language divide esp Tamil Nadu,religious divide,N.E.frontier,Red corridor,corruption,etc.Sounds promising to be a power itself.Self delusion under guidance of West of a rising power.It is good to divide and rule India internally and externally.
Eh Wot?
India’s ‘tat’ options don’t seem very equitable – the things China does things are substantive and threaten India’s security; India gets to /talk to the Dalai Lama/, and /stamp visas/ of Uighar Chinese; symbolic. Are there no more substantive responses India can make?
Christian
It always amuses me how Indian’s see India and how foreigners see it! Unlike China India has been unable to pull herself from the bootstraps and provide decent living, food and shelter to her citizens. Marketing alone cannot gloss over the poverty stricken population of India. Bollywood may be able to hide the Indian slums by filming in Kuala Lumpur but Bollywood cannot hide the dilapidated infrastructure of India cities. By all counts, India is a failed state.
One out of every three illiterate adults in the world is an Indian, according to UNESCO.
One out of very two hungry persons in the world is an Indian, according to World Food Program.
Almost one out of two Indians lives below the poverty line of $1.25 per day.
And yet, India spends $30 billion on defense, and just increased the defense budget by 32% this year. India is a sham democracy and a failed state!!!
BS Mishra
@Christian from your lingo it seems you haven’t seen a bible ever. Try reading it once, it will surely help you.
Don
Like any country India has its accomplishments and its failings. It is however a Democracy and has many freedoms. Unlike the nationalistic, oligarchic prison regime of China, where the other two comments obviously came from. When the Chinese abandon their occupation of Tibet, free the true Panchen Lama, and stop dominating Tibetan buddhism (including H.H. the Dalai Lama), maybe they can criticize others. Saying Tibet is China is like glueing a pearl to a piece of offal – the pearl is still a pearl, and offal is still offal.
Lol
@Christian
Actually, the “honor” of being a failed state goes to Pakistan (Source: Foreign Policy). Its amusing that both you and @ronnie have to go to every article about India and post irrelevant criticism every single time. Really guys, you need to remove that India chip from your shoulder.
Christian
Don, You must be a hindu fanatic cow worshiper intoxicated on cow urine willing to defend everything about India!!! India is a failed democracy and a bad poster child for democratic form of government. It’s pervasive hunger, poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, a huge and growing rich-poor gap, and a well-established system of caste-based Apartheid, and its terrible governance make its democracy a joke. And its history of widespread persecution of its minorities makes its secular label ludicrous.
Moi Nansari
Fake “Christian”@July 17, 2010 at 10:14 am says: ‘You must be a hindu fanatic cow worshiper intoxicated on cow urine willing to defend everything about India’
That’s a bigoted bile. Is that what your mother taught you?
Wait… isn’t that part of your ISI training propaganda? This is exactly the sort of bile your Pakistani textbooks teach young kids to turn them into lifelong Jihadists against Hindus, Jews, Christians, America and rest of the world. The creepy mind you have put on display right here clearly demonstrates why Pakistan has turned into the hellhole that it has.
Don
Christian, I am not the colorful metaphor you labeled me, although I have to admit I was amused by it. I am a U.S. Marine combat veteran (Vietnam) who has the aspiration to follow the Buddhist path in the Tibetan tradition. You may be familiar with the USMC, who defended democracy in Korea by kicking your behinds. We are defending freedom today from terrorists bent on establishing dictatorial regimes, something you Chinazis are quite familiar with.
India isn’t perfect, and neither is the U.S., but both of us are trying our best to establish a decent, free, and democratic nation. We are not nationalistic regimes trying to occupy the rest of thee world, and we are not murderers masquerading as decent people. You have no claim to dominate the globe.
Frank
Arms race is good. It provides jobs for China.
Singapore Can
Mr. Sharma no doubt represents the Indian viewpoint but he should also realize that this view is shared only by Indians. Does he really think that India is a rising power like China. China is seen in SG and in the US as a power that has already risen and continuing to rise. India is obviously only experiencing a nascent rise. I’m sure Sharma can realize that any tit-for-tat would damage India far more than China. China could easily shrug anything India does with the DL and Xinjiang? One can always dream and fantasize. India does not even border that province and has zero levers. On the other hand, China has a huge stake in the settlement of the Kashmir issue and will likely have some kind of supervisory role in any Indo-Pak negotiations to that end.
toy
at least in China we will always have running water, modern plumbing and toilet which you can sit on.
According to a July 2010 article of the times magazine(How India’s Success Is Killing Its Holy River),
6million people in New Delhi don’t have access to running water and sewage.
We have those before my parents were born, in Beijing. And that was the 50s.
So please, also I suggest all Indians should aim higher, why the constant fixation on China, when you can compete with the big dog i.e. the US(like we do)??
Damed even Indians’ ambition is inferior.
T Rama Bhat
Even if India does not tit-for-tat, China will be intent on damaging India. Otherwise , it will not not be able to completely dominate countries on it’s periphery. The problem ,here, is that India is not “tit-for-tat-ing” quickly and sufficiently enough. This has been noticed even when Vajpayee was the prime minister.
The moment China changed it’s stance on Kashmir by issuing stapled visas to J&K citizens of India, or when China stopped referring to POK as disputed area, or started calling the disputed territory of Gilgit-Baltistan as northern areas of Pakistan, India could have incrementally resiled from it’s earlier stand on Tibet, the Uighurs etc. China is pushing the envelope as far as it can in the hope that the Indian response will be tepid , if there is one at all.
By incrementally changing our stand we would be signalling to China where our tolerance threshold lies. If anybody is suggesting that China will immediately go to war on this change, they need to get their heads examined. After all their strategists will also realize that this is a countering move to their resiling from their previous stand on Kashmir. They respect strength when they see it.
Even tiny Vietnam plays the game better with China !!!!
Amartya
@christian…u said u wanna be a buddhist or something….learn the history of Gautam Buddha well…Buddha was a born Hindu…and the ninth avatar of Lord Vishnu….learn Buddhism the original way it emanated…not the way the Chinese interpret it….and by ur comments on cow urine etc….India is the last citadel of ancient Pagan earth based religions….if considering the cattle sacred bothers u…come on its really sick…its better than killing and eating the innocent creatures….the fact that u don’t understand the true sense of religion is very evident…the thing about persecution of minorities…its strange u pointed towards India..it would be really meaningless to waste time answering this stuff….and yes i’m ur Indian fanatic cow urine worshipper.. although we worship many other things too..the sun, the wind etc….its strange u got only this in mind…in fact I’m a greater follower of Buddha myself…try to learn tolerance first and if u were even 0.01% a buddhist u wouldn’t have said so
Amartya
@christian i messed up u with don
BS Mishra
@Amartya Buddha was born Hindu but was not avatar of Vishnu. He was agnostic. It was Brahmans (I am a Brahman too) who added him to list of avatars to check the falling influences of Hinduism as Buddhism spread.