Originally published in Tribe, November '09
China and India – they have their differences. Not least concerning where one country ends and the other begins. While the Western media lavishes print and airtime on Indo-Pak spats over Kashmir, India and China continue to engage in abortive diplomacy over their shared borders.
A large chunk of eastern Jammu and Kashmir State, Aksai Chin, is still occupied by China and stated as part of Xinjiang Province – although this barren mountainous tract is considered too useless for India to take serious action. The more contentious area is found in India’s North-east – the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China fleetingly occupied in the 1962 Sino-Indian war. This border conflict was short but gruelling; much of the combat took place well above 4,000 metres. A ceasefire on 20 November, called exactly one month after the first Chinese offensive, restored the border to the McMahon Line, leaving Arunachal within India. Yet China still claims it as ‘South Tibet’; Arunachal is altogether unfinished business.
While the protracted negotiations and political stalemate render the whole thing thoroughly dull and un-newsworthy, occasional incidents highlight the intensity still felt on both sides. The latest is the Dalai Lama’s visit to the ethnic-Tibetan town of Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh – just a yak’s spit from the Tibetan border, and one of the towns captured by the Chinese in 1962. On 8 November, His Holiness descended from the clouds (by helicopter) and was met by Arunachal Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu, flanked by over 800 monks. Over his four-day stay in the 300-year-old Tawang monastery, the ‘living god’ staged religious discourses and performed multiple pujas. The visit marked 50 years of his arrival in Tawang, fleeing to India after a failed uprising in Tibet, and the pretty mountain town was replete with colourful posters of his grinning face and a rash of Tibetan flags.
Prior to the visit, Chinese officials lobbed a volley of aggressive statements at India, condemning it as a deliberately provocative act. China furthermore used the incident to restate its claim on large parts of Arunachal Pradesh, and called for new talks over the existing border. Ma Zhaoxu, a foreign ministry spokesman, declared that "China's stance on the eastern section of the China-India border is consistent, and we firmly oppose the Dalai Lama's visit to the region. This further exposes the Dalai clique's anti-China and separatist nature." A visit in October by the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, to campaign in the state elections, attracted similar charges of ‘disturbance’.
Despite the insistence of the Dalai Lama’s spokesman that his visit was a purely ‘spiritual’ obligation, he has in the past made overt political statements regarding this sensitive area. On 4 June 2008 he publicly affirmed Tawang as a part of India and reiterated the validity of the McMahon Line established by British and Tibetan representatives in the 1914 Simla Agreement. It must also be remembered that Tibet, prior to the 1950 Chinese invasion, was a theocracy – now such a dirty word – and the Dalai Lama remains both the political and religious head of the Tibetan state in exile.
The visit, of course, inflames that other great spanner in Sino-Indian relations: India’s longstanding accommodation of the Tibetan government in exile in the quiet, scenic hill station of McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh – not to mention the 120,000 Tibetan refugees now living in India. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is repeatedly labelled by China a ‘dangerous anti-Chinese separatist’ – never mind that he now pursues the Middle Way Approach, dropping demands for outright independence in favour of greater internal autonomy: the Chinese government would retain control of diplomacy and defence, but allow Tibet to be governed by an elected body. Yet Indian support remains the lifeblood of the Tibetan movement; and this, coupled with belligerence over borderlines, means Sino-Indian relations will remain frosty for the foreseeable future – much to the cost of both nations.
Amartya Sen, the welfare economist and all-round sage, has been at pains to highlight the centuries of cultural exchange that once existed between India and China. He paints an enlightened age, roughly from the first to the eleventh century, where Chinese monks and scholars (much the same thing) regularly visited India to soak up such radical innovations as Buddhism and Ayurvedic medicine – and the courtesy was, of course, amply returned.
But that all seems like a long time ago. Nowadays, such is the suspicion – if not outright contempt – felt by Indians towards the Chinese that those from North-eastern states like Manipur and Nagaland, known for their mongoloid features, are regularly subjected to racist abuse on visiting the Aryan-dominated ‘mainland’ of India. And such is the alienation felt within Manipur towards the mainland that Korean films, television soap operas and pop music vastly outsell conventional Bollywood product.
India’s North-east is a secret kept from much of the world. It is by far the most ethnically and culturally diverse corner of India; tribal identities reach an intensity worthy of sub-Saharan Africa. Separatist movements are endemic – for instance, the burgeoning insurgency in Nagaland, which seeks an independent homeland for the indigenous Naga tribe. Arunachal Pradesh, with its overtly Tibetan people and culture, finds itself similarly lost. Its links to mainstream India, geographical and cultural, are remote; but absorption into Tibet will bring the heavy hand of the Chinese state, which will only show contempt for their cultural institutions. Better the devil you know, it would seem.
China and India – they have their differences. Not least concerning where one country ends and the other begins. While the Western media lavishes print and airtime on Indo-Pak spats over Kashmir, India and China continue to engage in abortive diplomacy over their shared borders.
A large chunk of eastern Jammu and Kashmir State, Aksai Chin, is still occupied by China and stated as part of Xinjiang Province – although this barren mountainous tract is considered too useless for India to take serious action. The more contentious area is found in India’s North-east – the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China fleetingly occupied in the 1962 Sino-Indian war. This border conflict was short but gruelling; much of the combat took place well above 4,000 metres. A ceasefire on 20 November, called exactly one month after the first Chinese offensive, restored the border to the McMahon Line, leaving Arunachal within India. Yet China still claims it as ‘South Tibet’; Arunachal is altogether unfinished business.
While the protracted negotiations and political stalemate render the whole thing thoroughly dull and un-newsworthy, occasional incidents highlight the intensity still felt on both sides. The latest is the Dalai Lama’s visit to the ethnic-Tibetan town of Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh – just a yak’s spit from the Tibetan border, and one of the towns captured by the Chinese in 1962. On 8 November, His Holiness descended from the clouds (by helicopter) and was met by Arunachal Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu, flanked by over 800 monks. Over his four-day stay in the 300-year-old Tawang monastery, the ‘living god’ staged religious discourses and performed multiple pujas. The visit marked 50 years of his arrival in Tawang, fleeing to India after a failed uprising in Tibet, and the pretty mountain town was replete with colourful posters of his grinning face and a rash of Tibetan flags.
Prior to the visit, Chinese officials lobbed a volley of aggressive statements at India, condemning it as a deliberately provocative act. China furthermore used the incident to restate its claim on large parts of Arunachal Pradesh, and called for new talks over the existing border. Ma Zhaoxu, a foreign ministry spokesman, declared that "China's stance on the eastern section of the China-India border is consistent, and we firmly oppose the Dalai Lama's visit to the region. This further exposes the Dalai clique's anti-China and separatist nature." A visit in October by the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, to campaign in the state elections, attracted similar charges of ‘disturbance’.
Despite the insistence of the Dalai Lama’s spokesman that his visit was a purely ‘spiritual’ obligation, he has in the past made overt political statements regarding this sensitive area. On 4 June 2008 he publicly affirmed Tawang as a part of India and reiterated the validity of the McMahon Line established by British and Tibetan representatives in the 1914 Simla Agreement. It must also be remembered that Tibet, prior to the 1950 Chinese invasion, was a theocracy – now such a dirty word – and the Dalai Lama remains both the political and religious head of the Tibetan state in exile.
The visit, of course, inflames that other great spanner in Sino-Indian relations: India’s longstanding accommodation of the Tibetan government in exile in the quiet, scenic hill station of McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh – not to mention the 120,000 Tibetan refugees now living in India. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is repeatedly labelled by China a ‘dangerous anti-Chinese separatist’ – never mind that he now pursues the Middle Way Approach, dropping demands for outright independence in favour of greater internal autonomy: the Chinese government would retain control of diplomacy and defence, but allow Tibet to be governed by an elected body. Yet Indian support remains the lifeblood of the Tibetan movement; and this, coupled with belligerence over borderlines, means Sino-Indian relations will remain frosty for the foreseeable future – much to the cost of both nations.
Amartya Sen, the welfare economist and all-round sage, has been at pains to highlight the centuries of cultural exchange that once existed between India and China. He paints an enlightened age, roughly from the first to the eleventh century, where Chinese monks and scholars (much the same thing) regularly visited India to soak up such radical innovations as Buddhism and Ayurvedic medicine – and the courtesy was, of course, amply returned.
But that all seems like a long time ago. Nowadays, such is the suspicion – if not outright contempt – felt by Indians towards the Chinese that those from North-eastern states like Manipur and Nagaland, known for their mongoloid features, are regularly subjected to racist abuse on visiting the Aryan-dominated ‘mainland’ of India. And such is the alienation felt within Manipur towards the mainland that Korean films, television soap operas and pop music vastly outsell conventional Bollywood product.
India’s North-east is a secret kept from much of the world. It is by far the most ethnically and culturally diverse corner of India; tribal identities reach an intensity worthy of sub-Saharan Africa. Separatist movements are endemic – for instance, the burgeoning insurgency in Nagaland, which seeks an independent homeland for the indigenous Naga tribe. Arunachal Pradesh, with its overtly Tibetan people and culture, finds itself similarly lost. Its links to mainstream India, geographical and cultural, are remote; but absorption into Tibet will bring the heavy hand of the Chinese state, which will only show contempt for their cultural institutions. Better the devil you know, it would seem.
No comments:
Post a Comment