The Dalai Lama teaches the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism in Tawang on Monday. (Reuters)

Tawang, Nov. 9: He was then too young to know what the Great Game was all about. But in 1947, the present Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa wrote to the government of newly independent India, formally claiming Tawang and areas around it as part of Tibet.

When he said here yesterday that all of Arunachal Pradesh, including Tawang, was an integral part of India, the Dalai Lama reinforced India’s position on the issue and rejected China’s but also gave a new twist to old Tibet’s claim on this little monastery town in the high Himalayas.

Would he claim back Tawang for Tibet if his struggle against its Chinese occupation were to succeed some day? The question may seem rhetorical today, but a future twist in the Himalayan power game might make it relevant some day.

Of course, it isn’t the first time that the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile has changed its position on Tawang. But it is only quite recently that Dharamsala, the seat of his government, has abandoned its claim on Tawang. It has been reported that even a few weeks before his current visit here, the kasag (cabinet) of his government had made a statement to the same effect.

But the Dalai Lama’s statement here has revived memories of the twists and turns in Tawang’s history in the aftermath of the Great Game.

An elderly monk at the Tawang monastery, where he made the statement, recalled that until 1951, the head lama of the monastery had been appointed by the Tibetan theocracy based in Lhasa and the Indian government had only a token presence here.

It was the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s march into Tibet in 1950 that changed the course of history both for Tibet and for Tawang. New Delhi woke up to the strategic importance of this desolate, cold Himalayan village of that time and the possible Chinese threat in the region.

On February 9, 1951, Major Ralengnao “Bob” Khating of the Indian Frontier Administration Service, an eclectic service comprising military officers, administrators and functional specialists, hoisted the Tricolour for the first time in Tawang. Khating moved quickly to establish Indian control, replacing that of the Lhasa-appointed head lama.

Of course, the area fell within the border of British India after it was redrawn by Henry McMahon at the Simla Convention of 1914. It is known that the Tibetan representatives signed the agreement at Simla, while Beijing’s nominee refused to do so. But it is not so well known that the Dalai Lama’s government objected to Tawang falling under independent India even in 1947.

It is unlikely that the Dalai Lama’s reinforcement of the Indian position on Tawang or the whole of Arunachal Pradesh would make any difference to the Chinese claim. But then, the Chinese too kept their objection low-key all these years and raised the pitch only a few years ago. That China was not serious at one stage about its claim on Arunachal Pradesh was proved by its unilateral withdrawal from the area after it had overrun it in the short war of 1962.

Few here believe that China would try to take Tawang or the rest of Arunachal by waging a war again. It is all about Beijing’s unease with the Dalai Lama’s activities and its own record in Tibet.

The anti-China violence that erupted in Lhasa on the eve of the Beijing Olympics last year and the execution last month of the first two of the Tibetans convicted in the trials have also added to the rising temperature over the Tibetan question.

In 1988-89 too, Lhasa exploded into anti-Chinese violence in the wake of executions of some Tibetan protesters, which forced Hu Jintao, China’s President who was then the chief administrator in Lhasa, to impose martial law in Tibet.