How India Lost the Case on Tibet

India was confronted with the Tibet problem soon after gaining independence, still grappling with the aftermath of the country’s partition and war with Pakistan. The Chinese Communist Party did not take kindly to Jawaharlal Nehru championing freedom movements across Asia. Its party-controlled mouthpieces accused him of being a hireling of Anglo-American imperialism, leading the anti-communist movement in Asia, and claimed that the Indian ‘bourgeoisie’ harboured designs on Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan.

Nehru had appointed Kavalam Madhava Panikkar, an erudite minister who had served the princely states of Bikaner and Patiala, as the ambassador to China. Panikkar travelled first to Nanjing, the capital of the Nationalist government. When the Communist Party seized power, he advised Nehru to recognize their regime. Nehru did not need any prodding; his disappointing visit to the US in 1949, where he observed strong anti-communist sentiment and a willingness to back colonial and authoritarian countries in opposition to it, had made him eager for allies who shared his principles.

Panikkar, on the other hand, soon became infatuated with Mao’s party. The party’s hospitality towards him, coupled with its military claims, had left him enthralled, and he took it upon himself to promote the regime. He advised Nehru to visit China and bought into the peace and friendship proclamations with India, accepting its territorial claims unquestioningly, overlooking—even condoning—the brutalities of the government against its own people. He pleaded that the communists were ‘overwhelmed by the immensity of the problems facing them’ and displayed childlike excitement for the revolution: ‘The spirit here is something magnificent and it will be of the greatest benefit to us, if some of our younger men could come and see what is happening in China.’ The Communist Party could not have asked for a better ambassador.

All critical Chinese statements went unreported, and hints of hostility overlooked. Repeated references to Nehru as the running dog of imperialism were glossed over. Panikkar also chose not to question China’s claim to Tibet or its stated goal of exporting communism abroad, readily accepting its argument that such interference in the affairs of other countries was necessary to counter America. In June 1950, Panikkar informed Delhi of China’s eagerness to bring Taiwan and Tibet into its fold. An attack on Taiwan was imminent, but military action against Tibet would likely only occur if it did not respond to the offered autonomy. A month later, he said that the Chinese were keen on peaceful negotiations with Tibet and cautioned India against getting unsolicited advice.

[After Tibet’s request for India’s intervention] Panikkar met Zhou Enlai on 22 August, who told him about China’s sensitivity regarding Tibet, considering it an internal matter. It did not accept Tibet’s semi-autonomous status or any limitation of Chinese sovereignty over it. Despite this blunt, categorical message, Panikkar informed Nehru that he believed China would not attack Tibet ‘unless all efforts at peaceful negotiations have been exhausted’. China had ruled out talks in New Delhi and declared Tibetans a national minority. Its delegation would have to come to Beijing for talks. Panikkar himself was supportive of China’s policy on Tibet, likening it to India’s handling of Hyderabad, suggesting that China would use military force only if the Tibetans ‘prove themselves too OBDURATE’. [Emphasis in the original]

China welcomed India’s conciliatory policy on Tibet, especially its statement indicating it did not have ‘any political or territorial ambition in Tibet’. Then China enlarged the ambit of the peaceful impact of this policy: ‘Not only China [but] other countries neighbouring China and India, such as Pakistan, Nepal etc., may also live peacefully together.’

Delhi’s Dilemma

India found itself on the horns of a dilemma. If Tibet was a part of China, as acknowledging its suzerainty implied, then could the Chinese military entering Tibet be deemed an invasion? The Tibetans certainly didn’t see it that way, and there was sympathy for them in India. The invasion somewhat hardened the government’s stance, advising Tibet against sending its delegation to Beijing for talks. It even offered asylum to the Dalai Lama in India if he wished. But it refused to sponsor Tibet’s appeal to the United Nations, citing its recognition of China’s suzerainty over Tibet.

US Ambassador to India Loy W. Henderson approached Nehru soon after the Chinese invasion, asking if the US could help in any way. Nehru turned this down emphatically, stating that such help would be impractical and ‘would immediately provide the fullest justification to China for what she had done’. Henderson persisted, arguing that China might extend its reach to the Indo-Tibetan frontier. Nehru dismissed such concerns, highlighting ‘the hard and uninhabitable Table-land of Tibet’ on the other side.

For Nehru, Tibet was an irritant in his larger endeavour of bridging the Cold War divide by building relations with Communist China. When Tibet appealed to the United Nations, he wrote to India’s permanent representative in New York: ‘I have a strong feeling that the future of Asia is rather tied up with the relations between India and China. I see both the U.S.A. and the U.K. on the one hand and the U.S.S.R. on the other, for entirely different reasons, are not anxious that India and China should be friendly towards each other.’

India’s stand on Tibet’s status also became embroiled in a semantic debate over ‘suzerainty’ and ‘sovereignty’. In an aide mémoire telegraphed to Panikkar on 24 August 1950, India had defined Tibet’s status as ‘harmonious adjustment of legitimate Tibetan claims to autonomy within the framework of Chinese Sovereignty’. This was handed over to the Chinese government two days later and was cited by China in its response to India’s concern about the invasion. The use of the term ‘sovereignty’ was not a typographical error. Two months later, New Delhi once again told its embassy in Beijing that India supported Tibetan autonomy within the framework of Chinese ‘sovereignty’. Later, on 2 November, it used the term ‘suzerainty’ to describe the relationship.

Nehru dismissed the switch in terminology as ‘academical’, writing to Panikkar:

We have always laid stress on the autonomy of Tibet. Autonomy plus sovereignty leads to suzerainty. Words are NOT important [and summarised his Tibet-China policy as] Our present policy is primarily based on avoidance of world war; and secondly on maintenance of honourable and peaceful relations with China … If a peaceful settlement is arrived at there and Tibet’s autonomy recognised, this should meet Chinese demands and satisfy, more or less, both Tibet and India.

With the Indian ambassador in Beijing painting a rosy picture of the communist government, it fell to the Indian officials in Lhasa and Gangtok to alert New Delhi to the lurking dangers. India’s political officer in Sikkim, Harishwar Dayal, and the trade agent in charge of the Indian mission in Lhasa, Hugh Richardson, advised New Delhi to assist the frail Tibetan government in its negotiations with Beijing to safeguard its autonomy and India’s treaty rights in Tibet. Dayal cautioned against giving unconditional recognition to the Communist Party regime. He pointed out that in January 1950, New Delhi had pledged diplomatic help to Tibet when China would raise the Tibetan question. Dayal recommended persuading China to conduct talks with Tibet in New Delhi, since a Tibetan delegation would ‘virtually be prisoners in Beijing’.

Dayal challenged China’s contention that its invasion of Tibet was aimed at eliminating the ‘Kuomintang reactionary clique’, reminding that the KMT had never controlled Tibetan affairs and that its Lhasa mission had been expelled the previous year. He warned, prophetically, that after annexing Tibet, China might raise its old claims to ‘Ladakh, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bhutan and tribal tracts of Assam as well as their own claim to suzerainty over Nepal’.

Richardson also expressed Tibet’s anguish:

Tibetans justifiably feel disconcerted every time Government of India refer to Chinese SUZERAINTY over Tibet and accept it as GOSPEL truth, even when there have NOT been any traces of that SUZERAINTY in Tibet for 30 years. Does SUZERAINTY never die, and if it does how long does it take? [Emphasis in the original]

Dayal and Richardson were not the only officials raising concerns with New Delhi. Even within the government, questions were being asked. Secretary-General [Girija Shankar] Bajpai in the external affairs ministry wrote to Nehru in October, as soon as news of China’s invasion of Tibet became public. He stated that China’s action sharply contradicted India’s efforts to establish friendly relations with it:

At the risk of misunderstanding, unpopularity and odium, we have been pressing China’s legitimate claims as regards entry into the United Nations, Formosa and a voice in the Korean settlement. We have had little appreciation of this … If China’s response to our endeavour for friendship with her is to [take] unilateral action against our neighbours, then, I submit, China’s friendship can be of little value to us.

Both Bajpai and Foreign Secretary Menon were unhappy with Panikkar’s unwillingness to convey India’s concerns to China. Bajpai lambasted Panikkar for having been ‘lamentably weak’ and persisting in his erroneous acceptance of Chinese claims and maps, questioning Panikkar’s excuses for China’s invasion. Neither the US nor Britain had access to Tibet and China’s fear of an invasion through the country could only be due to its distrust of India. He recommended sending a stern message to China. Bajpai even compared Panikkar to Britain’s ambassador to Germany under Hitler, Neville Henderson: ‘It gives me no pleasure to write in this manner about the head of an important mission, but there is no gainsaying the fact that, in this matter of Tibet, we have been served badly. I only hope that our protest will not be delayed or orally “watered down”.

Nehru showed an intemperate outburst against Dayal and Richardson for outspokenness in a note to the secretary-general and foreign secretary. He wrote that he was ‘a little tired’ of their despatches ‘full of advice to us as to what we should do and criticism of us for we may have done’. To him, their messages indicated ‘a lack of confidence in the Government of India and an apprehension that we might do the wrong thing unless they stop us from doing it… They live in remote parts, cut off from the rest of the world, and judge all world events from their own immediate environments. They appear to have hardly any conception of broad policies in terms of what is happening in the world.’

On Nehru’s instruction, Foreign Secretary Menon sent a telegram to the Indian mission in Lhasa and the political officer in Sikkim, telling them that certain communications from them were ‘dogmatic, disputatious and admonitory’ and advising them to accept government decisions gracefully and follow them faithfully.

China’s Claim

The claim of China over Tibet warrants an analysis. When did Tibet become a part of China, according to the latter? What is the basis of its claim? Chinese historians have divergent views on both questions, ranging from religious bonds to imperial conquest, with the dates of annexation varying from antiquity to the eighteenth century.

Elliot Sperling, in The Tibet-China Conflict, recently observed that China has been rewriting its version of its historical relations with Tibet:

The idea that Tibet became a part of China in the thirteenth century is a very recent construction. In the early part of the twentieth century, Chinese writers generally dated the annexation of Tibet to the eighteenth century. They described Tibet’s status under the Qing with a term that designates a ‘feudal dependency’, not an integral part of a country.

The Manchu administration, which ended in the early twentieth century, did not include Tibet among the eighteen provinces of China.

Chinese historian Huang Fensheng, in 1953, wrote that Tibet became part of China at the end of the eighteenth century:

In the 57th year of the Qianlong period (1792), following the despatch of troops to put down the Gurkha incursion into Tibet and the subsequent military victory, the socalled ‘Regulations for Resolving Tibetan (Matters)’ were promulgated. They established the equal rank of the amban with the Dalai and Panchen, and his direct authority to control political, military, religious, financial, communications, and transportation matters. Tibet at that point became wholly a part of China’s territory.

In a Communist Party-endorsed history of China, Bai Shouyi declares Tibet to have been a part of China since ancient times, citing Tibet’s desire for good relations and exchange of gifts as proof of its acceptance of China’s sovereignty.

(This is an edited excerpt from Imperial Games in Tibet: The Struggle for Statehood and Sovereignty by Dilip Sinha)

About The Author

Dilip Sinha

Dilip Sinha is a former diplomat who has served as India’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva