India's China conflict and a JP angle in championing the 'Free Tibet' cause

In 'Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy', Sulmaan Wasif Khan writes about China's occupation of Tibet in 1950 and its attempts at assimilating an unfamiliar territory peopled by a strange mix of ethnicities

Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy: China's Cold War and the People of the Tibetan Borderlands

Author: Sulmaan Wasif Khan

Publisher: Manohar

Pages: 216

Price: Rs 1,350

Sulmaan Wasif Khan’s slim volume of 177 pages is part of the ongoing New Cold War project of the Wilson Centre, drawing upon the wealth of archival material that became available, though briefly, in Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the end of the Cold War. Dr Khan draws skilfully from this rich documentary resource. In four chapters and a Prologue and Epilogue, the book focuses on China’s occupation of Tibet in 1950 and its subsequent attempts at assimilating a vast and unfamiliar territory, peopled by a strange and alien mix of ethnicities. Through this narrative, it is also a history of Sino-Indian relations during a period when each was grappling with the challenges of national consolidation and territorial definition. The author argues that the PRC initially tried to consolidate its rule over Tibet through “empire-lite “policies, allowing a high degree of autonomy and minimal interference in the day-to-day lives of the Tibetan people. This included the tolerance of cross-border movement of people — the Muslims, traders, nomads and spies of the book’s title — in the Himalayan borderlands of Tibet for trade, pilgrimage, grazing of animal herds and for connecting with families and communities that spread across this entire mountainous zone, including in India, Nepal, the then still independent Sikkim and Bhutan. These were people with multiple identities for whom national frontiers and notions of citizenship were alien. As highlighted by the author, this was “not the isolated mountain fastness of popular imagination; it was cosmopolitan, bustling, thriving borderland.”

The India-China Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between Tibet Region and India, concluded in 1954 was, in some measure, a recognition of these ground realities. However, the Tibet revolt of 1959 put paid to this approach. National consolidation could not tolerate permeable borders and shifting identities of people inhabiting the borderlands. Empire-lite soon became transformed into a “hardened imperial structure “with fixed territorial boundaries, verifiable identities and a cessation of border crossings. This, in brief, is the author’s takeaway from his research but is debatable.

For the People’s Republic, the “empire-lite” policies were only expedient and temporary. The fate of Tibet was always to become like any other province of China and subject to the same transformation as being driven ruthlessly in other parts of China. The 1959 revolt in Tibet only hastened the time-frame within which Tibet’s assimilation would take place. By the same token, traditional border crossings spawned ambiguities with which a nation-state could never be comfortable, neither China nor even India. But as a Leninist state, China would insist on much greater and swifter state control.

The book argues that the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence included in the preamble of the 1954 India-China Agreement, were a genuine effort to forge a broad-based constituency of developing countries emerging from colonial rule and form a united front against imperialism. Sino-Indian partnership would provide its under-pinning. This was demonstrated at the Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung in 1955 where Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai both played leading roles. The author argues that the 1959 revolt in Tibet not only spelt the end of Sino-Indian partnership but also the reversion of Chinese foreign policy into a more familiar balance of power approach. This ignores the fact that the same Chinese archives reflect the Chinese disdain for Nehru at Bandung and open hostility to the latter’s assumption of a leadership role. The Five Principles were always rhetoric and remain so.

There are some interesting historical details that emerge from the book.  One had not known of the prominent role played by Jayaprakash Narayan in championing the cause of independent Tibet. As chair of the Afro-Asian Convention on Tibet in New Delhi in 1960 he had been vociferous in supporting Tibetan independence and for taking the issue to the UN. This caused considerable anxiety in China and was seen as a devious Indian ploy to put China under international pressure. China was fearful all along of possible action on Tibet by the UN where it was not represented and depended on the Soviet Union to provide it with a political shield.

The same Convention saw an implicit convergence between Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan and People’s Republic of China on the status of Tibet. The delegation from Taiwan successfully prevented any formulation suggesting Tibet was an independent country. Chiang saw China’s difficulties in Tibet as an opportunity to overthrow the Communist government and return to power over the country, including over Tibet.

India’s neighbours lose no opportunity to play China against its looming presence. This comes out starkly clear in an exchange in 1960 between Nepali Prime Minister B P Koirala and Zhou Enlai drawn from the archives. Demanding aid from China, Koirala bluntly asks Zhou, “Why not exceed India?” Zhou properly replies, “You understand, we’re not competing with them” Koirala persists: “It should be the same as the Indian amount.”

This is a useful book providing a valuable background to the role of Tibet in the India-China conflict. What were occasional skirmishes along the disputed border took on the character of an existential threat to Chinese control over a restive region particularly after the 1959 revolt and the Dalai Lama being given shelter in India. Any settlement of the India-China border issue will necessarily entail an understanding over Tibet.

The reviewer is a former foreign secretary