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Business News/ Opinion / Views/  Opinion | India can amplify the Dalai Lama’s message
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Opinion | India can amplify the Dalai Lama’s message

Few have resisted the Chinese imperium on principle like the Tibetan spiritual leader. His birthday on Monday was an occasion for New Delhi to reconsider its stance on ‘One China’

Photo: ReutersPremium
Photo: Reuters

The 85th birth anniversary on 6 July of the 14th Dalai Lama assumed special significance in India. The spiritual leader of Tibetans has been in exile in the country since 1959, along with thousands of followers, but India’s Himalayan standoff with China has reminded Indians of the need to rally all forces of freedom against Beijing’s expansionist designs, and the principled opposition that he had led against these deserve amplification. His global fame can be attributed largely to his commitment to peace, compassion and humanism, though it is his political cause that should concern the free world. In the temporal sphere, he led until 2011 the Central Tibetan Administration, a government-in-exile with headquarters in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, which has held on to its dream of a Tibet free of Chinese rule even as New Delhi’s support for it has visibly wavered down the decades. Now, as our ties with Beijing fray, we need no longer tiptoe around its sensitivities. This would be a good time to shed our diffidence. We should openly reconsider our official stance on “one China" and signal a reversal of our 2003 acceptance of the territory as an integral part of the People’s Republic.

Beijing has always taken a jaundiced view of the refuge India granted the Dalai Lama and his followers after their failed uprising of the late 1950s against Chinese occupation. The indignities that Tibetans have had to suffer back in their homeland are well known. China, though, seemed to assume that its rise as an economic power would silence critics of its imperialist turn in the plateau. For a couple of decades, it even appeared to have bet correctly. Some 17 years ago, New Delhi acceded to its wishes on the status of Tibet. Now, however, that looks like an error. In what may be a sign of a possible re-adoption of the Tibetan cause, Union sports minister Kiren Rijiju greeted the Dalai Lama on Twitter for his birthday. While a tweet from Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself would have been a bolder statement, Beijing would certainly have noticed one by a member of his cabinet.

What the Chinese leadership ought to notice, too, is the revulsion its bully tactics and repressive ways evoke around the world. We need global solidarity not just for the Tibetan cause, but also to keep in check Beijing’s repression of Uighurs and other minorities. Drawing attention to the plight of victims may not be enough. By its past record, China seems unlikely to simply be shamed into better behaviour. Its jackboot methods in Hong Kong reveal how brazenly it ignores global opinion. Still, the heavy tools it employs—“re-education" camps, for instance, that are more like prisons—need to be exposed for the brute authoritarianism they represent. Beijing’s cultural agenda denies millions of people their natural diversity and seeks to homogenize the country in the image of its dominant group. Few have a more intimate experience of this than Tibetans, who have found their culture trampled upon. Countries that consider themselves free and democratic must come together to challenge Chinese hegemony. As the Dalai Lama’s host, India could deploy its diplomatic resources to carry his voice far and wide. China’s wanton acts of aggression could still be foiled by a determined pushback. As the world’s largest democracy, one shaped by Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of non-violence, India would have to play a major role in that exercise. For the sake of the future, this is a responsibility we must not abdicate.

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Published: 06 Jul 2020, 08:48 PM IST
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