Freedom or else

I wonder what role the “reformed noblemen” of Lhasa have in the present uprising there. Three years ago, I met one of them at his home in Barkhor Street in the tourist hub of the old city. He belonged to the old Tibetan aristocracy, but subsequently “reformed” himself in order to become a member of the Chinese communist party. The party and the government prefer to call such people “reformed noblemen” and hold them up as examples. Life under the communists, he told me, was infinitely better than in the ancien régime. The Dalai Lama represented the feudal system that treated the common people as little better than “serfs”. Worse, all his activities were aimed at “splitting the motherland”.

Arranging a meeting with a reformed nobleman is one of the two things the Chinese officials would like to do for a foreign journalist visiting Lhasa. The idea obviously is to try and persuade you that, despite the anti-China propaganda over Tibet, the Tibetans themselves are happy with the Chinese rule. The other thing that the officials are anxious to project is the “religious freedom” that the Tibetans enjoy.

Any interaction with government officials produces two sets of statistics — one relating to the economic development of the Tibet Autonomous Region and the other highlighting the government’s efforts and expenses for the restoration and preservation of the Buddhist monasteries.

Even the most diehard of critics of China’s policy in Tibet cannot deny the truth about development. Half a century of Chinese rule has dramatically transformed the economy of what had remained an impoverished land for many centuries before it. The signs of the new-found progress are there not just in Lhasa. It is a different issue, though, if this economic boom has benefited the Chinese settlers in Tibet more than the Tibetans themselves, or whether this is driven more by political and security considerations than by a genuine concern for the lives of Tibetans.

Much the same argument holds for the state of the monasteries. The government’s current patronage of the monasteries is a total reversal of the policy during the Cultural Revolution when the Red Guards vandalized the shrines and killed or terrorized the monks. Sceptics smell a rat here too. They say that China’s claim of granting Tibetans their religious freedom is a sham. The State’s patronage of the monasteries, they argue, is intended to do two things — create the myth about religious freedom and earn lots of money from the foreign tourists who flock to Tibet to visit them.

Standing away from the crowd of tourists at Kyamra Chenmo, the courtyard in front of the Jokhang, Lhasa’s holiest shrine, I asked my “reformed nobleman” if Tibetans have finally come to accept Chinese rule, warts and all. He looked around, laughed and said, almost in a whisper, “Well, there are tensions. Even the Chinese have their doubts.” Hours later, on my way to Xigaze, Tibet’s second largest city and home to the Panchen Lama, I asked a Chinese official the same question. He nearly lost his diplomatic cool: “Asking a Tibetan this question is like asking a Kashmiri if he accepts the Indian rule in Kashmir. The Tibetans have always accepted it because Tibet has always been part of China.”

But China knows it is not so sure that the question is so easily settled. You see the first signs of this Chinese uneasiness as you fly into the Lhasa airport. You see something that you don’t see in any other airport in the world. The board at the terminal building tells you that you are at the “Lhasa airport of China”.

That precisely is the crux of the current problem about Tibet. Almost all governments in the world, including those of India and the United States of America, accept that Tibet is part of China. The current relationship between New Delhi and Beijing is guided by the agreement that the two countries signed during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China in June, 2003. In the “Declaration on Principles for Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China”, issued at the end of Vajpayee’s visit, India reiterated its one-China policy and recognized that “the Tibet Autonomous Region is part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China”.

Even the Dalai Lama has long dropped his earlier demand for Tibet’s independence. In recent years, talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama’s representatives have centred on the latter’s demand of “full autonomy” for Tibet. It is another matter that Tibetan activists, both at Dharamsala and elsewhere in the world, have periodically shown their impatience with the Dalai Lama’s “middle way” and demanded that Tibet be “freed”.

It is obvious that the current unrest in Tibet will not prompt India, the US, or any other country to change its one-China policy. As the first responses have confirmed, no government is likely to ask China to “free” Tibet or lend official support to any movement for Tibet’s independence. The US position was reiterated by its secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who wanted both sides in the conflict to show “restraint”. Even the Dalai Lama’s first response, despite his fears of a “cultural genocide” in Tibet, was in line with his support for a “peaceful, non-violent” solution.

Though restrained, the Dalai Lama has once again showed Tibet for what it is — a political problem — and lent his voice to the demand for its solution. And that is also at the heart of the present uprising. The protesters in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet may have aimed at just this. They wanted to tell the world that, despite the governments’ positions on the territorial question, the political problem is far from solved. They have succeeded in persuading the world that it cannot be indifferent to Tibet’s political problem.

That message from Lhasa cannot but have its impact in New Delhi. And that is not just because India is home to the largest number of Tibetans outside Tibet or because it is the seat of the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile. The point is not that India will change its position on Tibet. It obviously will not. But the events in Lhasa can only gladden the hearts of South Block’s mandarins.

For all the recent gestures of cooperation — the opening of the trade route across Nathu-la, the joint military exercise, et al — there are fresh areas of tension between New Delhi and Beijing. India is unsure what role China will play in promoting — or spoiling — India’s attempts to get a seat in the UN security council and whether Beijing will ultimately help India’s case on the Indo-US nuclear deal in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The Tibetan situation can come in handy for the hawks in New Delhi who have been rattled by China’s sudden volte-face on Arunachal Pradesh. It will be unrealistic to think that the previous Chinese ambassador in New Delhi, Sun Yuxi, raised questions about the territorial status of Arunachal Pradesh without some kind of approval from Beijing. Sun’s rhetoric was a gross violation of the agreement between the two countries signed during Vajpayee’s trip to Beijing. For the South Block hawks, the response to the events in China could reflect a desire for a sweet revenge over Sun’s Arunachal bluff.

Even if the Indian government responds rather cautiously to the Tibetan upheaval, signals will go out from the way it handles the protests by Tibetans in India. It is fine and proper to say India will not allow any Tibetan group to march into Tibet. That was the position New Delhi had taken to foil several plans by Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal to march into Bhutan. But there are any number of other means by which New Delhi can send out signals on Tibet.

The events in Lhasa may unfold further over the next few weeks. The fact that such riots broke out there at this time proves two things. For all of China’s caution and preparedness to prevent such an outbreak of violence in Tibet on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, the events have shown that the political problem there is too real and pressing to be pushed under the carpet. Second, they hold the mirror to the chinks in the armour of the Chinese party and government.

The supreme irony of the Tibet uprising is this. It lifts the curtain on the Beijing Olympics, which were to be, from China’s point of view, the ultimate confirmation that the world has forgotten the last uprising in Lhasa in 1989 and more important, in Tiananmen Square the same year. Instead of burying those moments of China’s infamy in Olympic glitter, Tibet has once again forced China to face and grapple with them.

Another irony is also impossible to miss. The violence in Lhasa broke out only a day after China’s national people’s congress re-elected Hu Jintao for his second five-year term as president. The uprising in Tibet may be seen as a revenge against the man who, as the then martial law administrator of TAR, crushed the revolt in Lhasa nearly two decades ago.