DOOMED PRESIDENCY OF GERALD FORD – AMERICA’S UNFINISHED WAR
Doomed Presidency of Gerald Ford – America’s Unfinished War.
Nixon-Kissinger and Gerald Ford initiated era of Doomed US Presidency when they concluded War against Communism through negotiated Surrender. Unchecked Communist Expansionism in Southern Asia poses severe risks to vital US security interests in Asia-Pacific Region.
At a speech at Tulane University, President Gerald Ford says the Vietnam War is finished as far as America is concerned. “Today, Americans can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by re-fighting a war.” This was devastating news to the South Vietnamese, who were desperately pleading for U.S. support as the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon for the final assault on the capital city.
The North Vietnamese had launched a major offensive in March to capture the provincial capital of Ban Me Thuot (Darlac province) in the Central Highlands. The South Vietnamese defenders there fought very poorly and were quickly overwhelmed by the North Vietnamese attackers. Despite previous promises by both Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to provide support, the United States did nothing. In an attempt to reposition his forces for a better defense, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu ordered his forces in the Highlands to withdraw to more defensible positions to the south. What started out as a reasonably orderly withdrawal soon degenerated into a panic that spread throughout the South Vietnamese armed forces. The South Vietnamese abandoned Pleiku and Kontum in the Highlands with very little fighting and the North Vietnamese pressed the attack from the west and north. In quick succession, Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang in the north fell to the communist onslaught. The North Vietnamese continued to attack south along the coast, defeating the South Vietnamese forces at each encounter.
As the North Vietnamese forces closed on the approaches to Saigon, the politburo in Hanoi issued an order to Gen. Van Tien Dung to launch the “Ho Chi Minh Campaign,” the final assault on Saigon itself. Dung ordered his forces into position for the final battle.
The South Vietnamese 18th Division made a valiant final stand at Xuan Loc, 40 miles northeast of Saigon, in which the South Vietnamese soldiers destroyed three of Dung’s divisions. However, the South Vietnamese finally succumbed to the superior North Vietnamese numbers. With the fall of Xuan Loc on April 21 and Ford’s statement at Tulane, it was apparent that the North Vietnamese would be victorious. President Thieu resigned and transferred authority to Vice President Tran Van Huong before fleeing Saigon on April 25.
By April 27, the North Vietnamese had completely encircled Saigon and began to maneuver for their final assault. By the morning of April 30, it was all over. When the North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, the South Vietnamese surrendered and the Vietnam War was officially over.
DOOMED PRESIDENCY OF GERALD FORD – AMERICA’S UNFINISHED WAR. NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON DID NOT FINISH AMERICA’S WAR ON COMMUNIST EXPANSIONISM.
NO CHINA, NO RUSSIA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN 1913.
United States must define Foreign Policy before choosing allies. “AMERICA FIRST” Foreign Policy demands choosing “TIBET EQUILIBRIUM.”
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. QING CHINA EMPIRE CIRCA. 1820.
Both Russia and China are major military powers of world competing for Superpower status. To achieve ‘Balance of Power’ to restore ‘Power Equilibrium’, America must choose Tibet because of its strategic location.
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. BRITISH EMPIRE 1921.
Tibet is second largest nation of the region and Tibet’s Independence from military occupation is the only real solution to contain and engage military powers like Russia and China.
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. A SATELLITE’S EYE VIEW OF TIBETAN PLATEAU.
Major Retd Rudranarasimham, DOOM DOOMA DOOMSAYER
CHINA OR RUSSIA? U.S. MAY HAVE TO CHOOSE AN ALLY
NEWSWEEK
Newsweek Europe
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM.
This article originally appeared on The Conversation.
Forty-five years ago, last February, U.S. President Richard Nixon returned from a visit to China that shocked the world and unsettled leaders in Moscow, who were awaiting a visit from Nixon a few months later.
Soviet leaders wondered if they were finally witnessing the birth of a U.S.-China alliance that they had feared ever since the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance in the early 1960s.
As Washington and the media convulse over every new outrage emanating from Moscow, while President Trump repeatedly asks, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia?” U.S. policymakers are faced with the same choice between Russia and China, though this time the stakes might be even higher.
The history of persistent tensions between Russia and China suggests two choices: Accommodate and reconcile with Russia to balance against the greater power—China. Or, align with China to defend a rules-based international order from its most powerful antagonist—Russia.
It should be clear by now that we can no longer oppose Russia and China at the same time. Though that route might seem tempting and natural, given the historical aspirations of U.S. foreign policy to protect territorial sovereignty, promote human rights and provide a framework for free trade, we are no longer equal to the task.
At a minimum, that would require decisive U.S. action in Syria, firm military support for the government in Kiev, a drastic military buildup of NATO forces across Eastern Europe and a more confrontational posture in the South and East China seas. Doing that would further stretch a U.S. military that is already facing a personnel shortage. It would also represent a burden that the American people apparently no longer wish to carry.
Lost in the discussion of whether Trump’s “America First” bravado reflects militarism or isolationism are the ways in which our options have been shaped by the administration that preceded him.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, second from right, and China President Xi Jinping watch the Victory Day parade at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2015. Reuters
We have only begun to reckon with the foreign policy legacy of Barack Obama, but he has clearly done more to shape the current global predicament than Trump has. When the Russian, Iranian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Moscow in the final weeks of the Obama administration to solve the Syrian crisis by themselves without inviting the U.S., they were making a startling declaration: The nation that had once declared itself to be “indispensable” was now very clearly dispensable. It would have been unthinkable at any point since Pearl Harbor for American interests to be discounted so brazenly in solving the most pressing international crisis.
It is hard to separate the factors that brought us to this point. Is this simply an inevitable product of relative, or even absolute, American decline? Is it a product of a president who sought to “lead from behind” and whose fundamental foreign policy principle was that sins of commission are always worse than sins of omission? Or did Obama conclude he was dealing with a country, already exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that was no longer willing to shoulder the burden of defending the free world? Either way, Trump has inherited a country that is no longer willing and able to play the leadership role it once did in world affairs.
So where do we go from here? If we cannot oppose both Russia and China, then we need to compromise with at least one of them.
MAKE FRIENDS WITH RUSSIA?
Arguing for a Russian alignment is the notion that China already does more damage to American interests around the globe than Russia does. China damages U.S. economic interests through unfair trade practices, our standing in Asia by undermining our alliances, and our ability to promote democracy, particularly in Africa, by offering aid and investment without good governance conditions. As China grows more powerful and assertive, its efforts to drive the U.S. out of East Asia, coupled with increasing challenges to American interests around the globe, will amount to a full-spectrum challenge to the current U.S. position in the world.
In contrast, Russia’s challenges to American interests are relative pinpricks. Russia does not have the ability to turn either Eastern Europe or the Middle East into its own sphere of influence. It is even losing the competition for economic influence in Central Asia, its own post-Soviet backyard, to China.
Putin might not be an evil dictator bent on doing as much damage to the West as possible, but rather a spurned pragmatist with a realistic view of Russia’s position in the world who had initially hoped to cooperate with Western leaders, but has been embittered by poor treatment by them. Putin’s Russia, therefore, would represent not a mortal threat to the international world order, but rather a missed opportunity, one that can still perhaps be salvaged.
OR CHOOSE CHINA INSTEAD?
Alternatively, we could align with China against Russia.
This approach makes sense if you believe Putin began as a pragmatist, but that was only a temporary tack, given his KGB background and nationalist authoritarian inclinations. But now that he has seen how weak his opponents are and how much havoc he can wreak, he has set his sights higher. Fifteen years ago he might not have imagined he could break NATO or the EU, but now that seems within reach, and nothing will deter him from this chance to realize the fondest dreams of his Soviet predecessors. What could we possibly offer him to match such dreams? He would revel in the chaos that would follow.
Chaos, however, is precisely the opposite of what the leaders in Beijing desire. China’s resurgence is built on a world of peace and trade, a world ultimately sustained by American military strength. For China to seek to challenge such an order, it would have to imagine that it could not only fill the role the U.S. currently fills, but manage the transition in such a way as to avoid a chaotic interlude. Chinese leaders are far too clear-headed for such a gambit, and in any case they see no need to rush such a transition before conditions for it have matured.
President Xi Jinping is anyway preoccupied with ensuring the indefinite continuation of Communist Party rule. What could jeopardize that more than a world in chaos and economic disaster?
IS THE CHOICE EVEN OURS?
With Russia against China? With China against Russia?
There is no question such a choice is unpalatable. Not only would either alternative involve morally difficult concessions, but having to make the choice at all implies that the United States is no longer capable of defending the world order it has long sponsored. This is a difficult reality to accept.
And broaching the possibility of such a choice leads to more difficult questions.
Could Russia even be persuaded to align with the U.S. against China or China against Russia? What would we have to offer either side? What would this mean for our allies, especially in Europe and East Asia? The latter question might not be as insoluble as it may seem, because our allies have long since begun anticipating just such a scenario. But if we are no longer able and willing to perform the role we once did, we need to reckon with the consequences.
Jeremy Friedman is Assistant Professor, Business, Government, and the International Economy, Harvard Business School.
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. RUSSIAN EMPIRE 1914. NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. THE CHINESE EMPIRE 1910. NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA. DOOMED GUN OF DOOM DOOMA SYMBOLIZES DOOMED US – CHINA POLICY.
United States fought War in Vietnam to engage and contain the spread of Communist influence in Southern Asia. Due to Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason, this War has never finished. This War is about restoring Balance of Power in Southern Asia. The Power Equilibrium shifted dangerously in favor of Communists when Red China invaded and occupied Tibet, South Asia’s second largest nation. In terms of size, and geographical location, Tibet is of high priority as compared to defending territorial rights of nations like Japan, Philippines, or Vietnam. Red China cannot claim sovereignty over Tibet and her illegal military occupation cannot wipe out the long history of Tibet’s independence. Eviction of Tibet’s illegal military occupier represents Unfinished War in Southern Asia and it cannot be avoided.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA.
I will ask my readers to tell the US Congress and The White House to reverse the course of Nixon-Kissinger Doomed China Policy.
Our war with China another Vietnam War in the making
THE SOUTH CHINA SEA GAMBIT
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA.
In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a Russian naval ship arrives in port in Zhanjiang in Southern China’s Guangdong Province, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. The Chinese and Russian navies launched eight days of war games.
By BRUCE FEIN – – FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2017
A disastrous, purposeless war with China to defend the global credibility of the United States is imminent. Only vocal citizen opposition to the war communicated to the Congress and the White House can prevent our self-ruination. It happened in 2013 to prevent President Obama from another trillion-dollar fool’s errand against Syria. The system still works, if citizens will use it.
Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson testified on Jan. 11, 2017, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States would deny China access to islands in the South China Sea over which China claims sovereignty. (The artificial islands are thousands of miles from the continental United States and irrelevant to invincible self-defense). Mr. Tillerson declared that China’s building and militarization of the islands was “akin to Russia’s taking Crimea” from Ukraine.
He bugled: “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.” (How do you think the United States would respond if China denied us access to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base?)
The White House reiterated on Jan. 24, 2017, that the United States would prevent China from accessing the South China Sea islands China claims, and hinted at an American blockade. A blockade would mean war, according to a nationalist Chinese newspaper. (A blockade assumes a state of war.) Australia, a longstanding United States ally in the Asia Pacific region, balked at participation.
The White House – Tillerson bellicosity aligns with everything the United States has done since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 announced a “pivot” to Asia to encircle China. We have sought to deny China a regional sphere of influence that we have exerted for almost two centuries beginning with the Monroe Doctrine. We have established a Marine training base in Darwin, Australia. We are building a THADD missile defense system in South Korea. We have negotiated the use of five military training bases in the Philippines. We have supported Vietnam in its South China Sea maritime dispute with China. We have sent aircraft carriers there. We have declared an obligation to defend Japan’s claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands disputed by China.
The United States has accused China of currency manipulation and threatened to impose prohibitive tariffs on Chinese imports.
These unfriendly acts are the very definition of encirclement.
Chinese resentment against the west and the United States has been building for centuries. The First Opium War (1839-42), fought by Britain, was precipitated by China’s refusal to legalize opium. It ended with the Treaty of Nanking, which indemnified merchants for confiscated opium, granted the British extraterritoriality, opened five treaty ports, and ceded Hong Kong.
The Second Opium War (1856-60) was fought by the British to compel China to open up its ports and interior to Western trade. Other Western powers piggybacked on Chinese concessions to Britain through most-favored-nation clauses in a series of “unequal treaties.”
The 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War concluded in the Treaty of Shimonoseki by which China was obliged to recognize the independence of Korea; to cede Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaodong (south Manchurian) Peninsula to Japan ; to pay an indemnity of 200,000,000 taels to Japan; and to open the ports of Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou to Japanese trade.
These Western and Japanese humiliations sparked the 1900 Boxer Rebellion to expel western spheres of influence. An international force featuring British, Russian, American, Japanese, French and German troops relieved Peking (Beijing) after fighting their way through much of northern China. The victors agreed that China would not be partitioned further. In September 1901, the Peking (Beijing) Protocol was signed. Foreign nations received extremely favorable commercial treaties, foreign troops were permanently stationed in Peking (Beijing), and China was forced to pay $333 million dollars as penalty for its rebellion.
The United States intervened in the Chinese Civil War (1946-49) in favor of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek against Mao Zedong. After Chiang was driven off the mainland to Taiwan in 1949, the United States launched covert actions against the People’s Republic of China seeking the overthrow of Mao.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s adventurism during the Korean War provoked China to intervene with more than 1 million troops.
Depend upon it. What will provoke war against China will be a professed need to defend our credibility everywhere on the planet. It will be said that if we do not fight China over the South and East China Sea islands as we have threatened, Russia will be emboldened to attack the Baltic States or Eastern Europe, Iran will be emboldened to attack Israel and destabilize its Sunni rivals, and North Korea will be emboldened to attack South Korea and Japan.
The Han Chinese is a proud people, and China is a proud nation. China invented gunpowder and paper. It gave the world Confucius and Sun Tzu. It possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons. After suffering humiliation and subjugation by Western imperial powers for centuries, China will fight the United States for its own sphere of influence in the South China and East China Seas.
China will never bow to the double standards of the United States. We have intervened in Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile and Grenada to maintain our sphere of influence in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Our schoolmarm-like rebuke of China over its assertion of regional hegemony takes audacity to a new level.
The Han Chinese is every bit or more nationalist than were the Vietnamese who bested the United States in the Vietnam War. The morale of United States troops in Vietnam suffered terribly because the war was about an abstraction — global American credibility — not about defending the United States from aggression.
The same will be true in our war with China, and the morale of our troops will suffer accordingly. We will be defeated for the same reasons we were defeated in the Vietnam War.
This looming calamity can be forestalled if American citizens immediately flood the White House and Congress with phone calls and emails voicing vehement opposing war with China absent actual unprovoked Chinese aggression against the United States or a Chinese declaration of war. That would represent the high water mark of self-government celebrated in the Declaration of Independence.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – THE CIA’S CANCELLED WAR
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – THE CIA’S CANCELLED WAR.
‘TIBET: THE CIA’S CANCELLED WAR’ fails to describe Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason during 1971-72 when Americans were fighting a bloody War in Vietnam against Communists supported by the Soviet Union and Red China. As I was part of this CIA Mission in Tibet, I knew that Tibet and India were willing to help the US by fighting against Communists inside Tibet rather than directly engaging Communists in Vietnam. Tibet and India want to choose their Battlefield in full support of the US Policy to engage and contain the spread of Communism. The Central Intelligence Agency or CIA has no vested powers to wage or fight wars. “The Cancelled War” is simply an act of Treason. The 37th President of the United States chose to provide support and comfort to the Enemy during War waged on behalf of the United States.
In 1971-72, CIA Mission in Tibet never ended. The Mission continued without direct participation of American nationals. I can appreciate CIA’s unwillingness to divulge the truth about its Mission which is always sanctioned by the executive powers vested in the US President. In my analysis, this War will be fought to restore Balance of Power in Southern Asia.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – CIA’S CANCELLED WAR
Lhamo Tsering Collection
Resistance fighters on the Tibetan border during the early years of the CIA’s Tibet program
For much of the past century, US relations with Tibet have been characterized by kowtowing to the Chinese and hollow good wishes for the Dalai Lama. As early as 1908, William Rockhill, a US diplomat, advised the Thirteenth Dalai Lama that “close and friendly relations with China are absolutely necessary, for Tibet is and must remain a portion of the Ta Ts’ing [Manchu] Empire for its own good.” Not much has changed with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama one hundred years later. After a meeting in 2011 with President Obama in the White House Map Room—the Oval Office being too official—the Dalai Lama has ushered out the back door, past the garbage cans. All this, of course, is intended to avoid condemnation from Beijing, which regards even the mildest criticism of its Tibet policy as “interference.”
However, there was one dramatic departure from the minimalist approach. For nearly two decades after the 1950 Chinese takeover of Tibet, the CIA ran a covert operation designed to train Tibetan insurgents and gather intelligence about the Chinese, as part of its efforts to contain the spread of communism around the world. Though little known today, the program produced at least one spectacular intelligence coup and provided a source of support for the Dalai Lama. On the eve of Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 meeting with Mao, the program was abruptly canceled, thus returning the US to its traditional arms-length policy toward Tibet. But this did not end the long legacy of mistrust that continues to color Chinese-American relations. Not only was the Chinese government aware of the CIA program; in 1992, it published a white paper on the subject. The paper included information drawn from reliable Western sources about the agency’s activities, but laid the primary blame for the insurgency on the “Dalai Lama clique,” a phrase Beijing still uses today.
The insurgency began after the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet following its defeat of the Nationalists, and after Beijing forced the Dalai Lama’s government to recognize Chinese administration over the region. In 1955, a group of local Tibetan leaders secretly plotted an armed uprising, and rebellion broke out a year later, with the rebels besieging local government institutions and killing hundreds of government staff as well as Han Chinese people. In May 1957, a rebel organization and a rebel fighting force were founded and began killing communist officials, disrupting communication lines, and attacking institutions and Chinese army troops stationed in the region.
By that point, the rebellion had gained American backing. In the early 1950s, the CIA began to explore ways to aid the Tibetans as part of its growing campaign to contain Communist China. By the second half of the decade, “Project Circus” had been formally launched, Tibetan resistance fighters were being flown abroad for training, and weapons and ammunition were being airdropped at strategic locations inside Tibet. In 1959, the agency opened a secret facility to train Tibetan recruits at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, partly because the location, more than 10,000 feet above sea level, might approximate the terrain of the Himalayas. According to one account, some 170 “Kamba guerrillas” passed through the Colorado program.
While the CIA effort never produced a mass uprising against the Chinese occupiers, it did provide one of the greatest intelligence successes of the Cold War, in the form of a vast trove of Chinese army documents captured by Tibetan fighters and turned over to the CIA in 1961. These revealed the loss of morale among Chinese soldiers, who had learned of the vast famine that was wracking China during The Great Leap Forward. Over the next decade, however, there was growing disagreement in Washington over the CIA’s activities in Tibet, and in 1971, as Henry Kissinger prepared for Nixon’s meeting with Mao, the program was wound down.
“Although Tibet may not have been on the table in the Beijing talks, the era of official US support for the Tibetan cause was over,” recalled John Kenneth Knaus, a forty-year CIA veteran, in his 1999 book Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival. “There was no role for Tibet in Kissinger’s new equation.” By 1975, President Gerald Ford could say to a skeptical Deng Xiaoping, China’s future leader, “Let me assure you, Mr. Vice-Premier, that we oppose and do not support any [United States] governmental action as far as Tibet is concerned.”
Many friends of Tibet and admirers of the Dalai Lama, who has always advocated nonviolence, believe he knew nothing about the CIA program. But Gyalo Thondup, one of the Dalai Lama’s brothers, was closely involved in the operations, and Knaus, who took part in the operation, writes that “Gyalo Thondup kept his brother the Dalai Lama informed of the general terms of the CIA support.” According to Knaus, starting in the late 1950s, the Agency paid the Dalai Lama $15,000 a month. Those payments came to an end in 1974.
In 1999, I asked the Dalai Lama if the CIA operation had been harmful to Tibet. “Yes, that is true,” he replied. The intervention was harmful, he suggested because it was primarily aimed at serving American interests rather than helping the Tibetans in any lasting way. “Once the American policy toward China changed, they stopped their help,” he told me. “Otherwise our struggle could have gone on. Many Tibetans had great expectations of CIA [air] drops, but then the Chinese army came and destroyed them. The Americans had a different agenda from the Tibetans.”
This was exactly right, and the different goals of the Agency and the Tibetans are explored fully by the Tibetan-speaking anthropologist Carole McGranahan in her Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (2010). Although sometimes clouded by anthropological jargon, her account fascinatingly explores how differently from their American counterparts the Tibetan veterans remember the CIA operation. A striking example is the matter of the Chinese army documents, whose capture in a Tibetan ambush of a high-ranking Chinese officer is depicted in grisly detail in a huge painting in the CIA’s museum in Washington. In addition to revealing low Chinese morale, the documents disclosed the extent of Chinese violence in Tibet. “This information was the only documentary proof the Tibetan government [in exile] had of the Chinese atrocities and was therefore invaluable,” McGranahan notes. Yet the documents and their capture rarely came up during her long interview sessions with the veterans. “Why is it that this achievement, so valued by the US and Tibetan governments, is not remotely as memorable for [the] soldiers?”
One reason is that the Tibetan fighters were told nothing about the value of the documents, which they couldn’t read. One veteran explains to her:
Our soldiers attacked Chinese trucks and seized some documents of the Chinese government. After that, the Americans increased our pay scale. Nobody knew what the contents of those documents were. At that time, questions weren’t asked. If you asked many questions, then others would be suspicious of you.
The leader of the ambush tells her that “as a reward, the CIA gave me an Omega chronograph,” but he, too, had little knowledge of the documents’ importance. As McGranahan shows in extensive detail, the veterans were preoccupied above all by their devotion to the Dalai Lama, whom they wanted to resume his position as supreme leader of an independent Tibet.
After the CIA mission was ended, Tibet became increasingly marginal to Washington’s China policy, as Knaus has now made clear in a second book, Beyond Shangri-la: America and Tibet’s Move into the Twenty-First Century. The reality is that American presidents now face a world power in Beijing. In language that sums up the cats-cradle of American justifications for ignoring Tibet, ex-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Marshall Green recalls to Knaus, “there was nothing we could do to help the Tibetans except by improving our relations with the Chinese Communists so that we might be in a position to exert pressure on them to moderate their policies towards the Tibetans.” Green “admitted that this was ‘perhaps a rationalization.'”
President Obama will soon meet the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. His advisers will have reminded him of the encounter between his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin on June 27, 1998. In that meeting, Clinton assured Jiang that, “I agree that Tibet is a part of China, an autonomous region of China. And I can understand why the acknowledgment of that would be a precondition of dialog with the Dalai Lama.” Banking on his well-known charm, Mr. Clinton added, “I have spent time with the Dalai Lama. I believe him to be an honest man, and I believe if he had a conversation with President Jiang, they would like each other very much.” Jiang, it is reported, threw back his head and laughed. Clinton’s suggestion was omitted from the official Chinese transcript.
TIBET NOT PART OF CHINA – ARUNACHAL PRADESH CHIEF MINISTER
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu reveals the truth about Tibet’s military occupation. Red China’s military occupation of Tibet cannot wipe out reality of Tibetan nation.
INDIA SHARES BOUNDARY WITH TIBET, NOT WITH CHINA: ARUNACHAL PRADESH CHIEF MINISTER
TIBET NOT PART OF CHINA – INDIA SHARES NO BORDER WITH RED CHINA.
ARUNACHAL PRADESH Chief Minister Pema Khandu today said China has no business telling India what to do regarding the Dalai Lama’s movement in the country.
“China has no business telling us what to do and what not to do (regarding the Dalai Lama’s movement). It is not our next-door neighbor. India shares boundary with Tibet, not with China,” he told reporters here.
“In reality, the McMahon Line demarcated the boundary between India and Tibet,” he said.
Khandu, who accompanied the Dalai Lama during an eight-hour-long drive from Guwahati to Bomdila yesterday, said it was a brave decision on the part of the Tibetan spiritual leader to undertake the arduous trip.
“He wanted to reach Tawang anyhow and the weather could not deter him. Let us hope that his followers here get satisfaction from his discourses,” he said.
The Nobel laureate, he said, was the country’s most respected guest since 1959 and Arunachal Pradesh deserves his visit more than any other place.
This is the Dalai Lama’s sixth visit to Arunachal Pradesh as a state guest since 1983 and he has been to Tawang every time except in December 1996.
His last visit in 2009 was planned exactly 50 years after he had crossed through Arunachal Pradesh, then North East Frontier Agency, after escaping from Lhasa.
TIBET NOT PART OF CHINA – INDIA SHARES NO BORDER WITH CHINA.
CHINA MINUS TIBET EQUALS TO POWER EQUILIBRIUM. PRESIDENT TRUMP WITH CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING.
To deal with problems of Red China’s Economic, Political, Military, Maritime, and Nuclear Expansionism, I have to address the problem of Red China’s Territorial Expansionism. Red China gained 965, 000 square miles of Tibetan Territory through military occupation. In terms of size, Tibet is the second largest nation in Southern Asia, almost as large as Republic of India( over 1, 269, 221 square miles).
Evicting Tibet’s military occupier is the first step that will restore Balance of Power in Asia and I name this process as ‘TIBET EQUILIBRIUM’ for Tibetan Territory is the Key for Political, Economic, Military Imbalance that is undermining International Relations.
CHINA MINUS TIBET EQUALS POWER EQUILIBRIUM. PRESIDENT TRUMP WITH CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING.CHINA MINUS TIBET EQUALS TO POWER EQUILIBRIUM. PRESIDENT TRUMP MEETS CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING.
BY ISHAAN THAROOR
China Minus Tibet Equals to Power Equilibrium.
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday for an unorthodox meeting at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The presidents and their wives are scheduled to spend about 24 hours together, including a Thursday night dinner and a working lunch the following day. The first meaningful discussions between arguably the two most powerful people on the planet are, of course, hugely significant. Trump spent a large chunk of his election campaign attacking China’s supposedly unfair trade and fiscal practices, which he promised would be challenged by a more protectionist and nationalist Trump presidency. Xi, meanwhile, is meeting the erratic U.S. president at a time when his own political future at home is not as secure as some might think.
China Minus Tibet Equals to Power Equilibrium.
Trump has already signaled this may be a tough encounter. But, as my colleague Simon Denyer wrote last week, it’s quite likely Xi has come bearing gifts — “a package of pledges designed to give the U.S. president some ‘tweetable’ promises to present as victories.” Whether this translates into long-term wins for either leader is less clear. Either way, here are the main storylines to watch: The question of trade “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country,” declared Trump on the campaign trail last year. He was talking about the United States’ considerable trade deficit with China and Beijing’s history of currency manipulation. Part of Trump’s pledge to revive blue-collar American jobs explicitly involved punishing China on the world stage. This was a major departure from previous U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democratic, which embraced the dogma of open markets and sought to make China a reliable partner within — not an opponent to — an American-led international order. Earlier this year, as the world readied for Trump’s inauguration, Xi cast himself as a custodian of that order, defending globalization, open borders and free trade — all things Trump campaigned against — at the World Economic Forum. Xi’s rhetoric received mixed reviews, but it underscored the strange new paradigm shaping global relations. Ahead of Xi’s visit this week, China’s state media attempted to make the case for normal bilateral ties. “U.S. job losses are not China’s fault,” read a Xinhua commentary on Wednesday. The next day, another piece argued that China’s trade surplus “does not necessarily mean China benefits while the United States loses.” Xinhua went on: “About 40 percent of the trade surplus is actually generated by U.S. companies in China.” Ironically, as economic experts note, Trump’s protectionist agenda is more in line with China’s own practices, including its boosting of mammoth Chinese state-run companies. “Mr. Trump seems to want to move the U.S. toward China’s approach, rather than move China toward the U.S. approach of open trade and globalization,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade at Cornell University, to my colleague Ana Swanson. “He seems to want the U.S. to be more like China than China to be more like the U.S. And I’m not sure that’s the best path for the U.S. to go down.”
A magazine featuring President Trump on display with Chinese military magazines at a newsstand in Beijing on April 4. (Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press) The question of security There will be a Kim Jong Un-shaped elephant in the room in Mar-a-Lago. Amid a flurry of North Korean missile tests, the Trump administration is keen on getting China — Pyongyang’s only real friend — to bring the pariah state to heel. Trump and other senior administration officials have signaled their impatience with North Korea and threatened unilateral action in the past week. “The clock is very, very quickly running out,” a senior White House official told reporters. “All options are on the table for us.” This may all be bluster intended to pressure Beijing, which has cast itself as the honest broker between the North Koreans and the United States — much to American chagrin. Washington’s longstanding frustration with what it perceives as China’s unwillingness (or inability) to rein in North Korea will also run up against other geopolitical disagreements, including differences over China’s expansionist role in the South China Sea and the status of Taiwan. On all these fronts, it’s likely the Xi-Trump meeting will yield polite sound bites — and few real changes to the tense status quo. The question of strategy In the short term, Trump may emerge from Mar-a-Lago having burnished his credentials as a budding statesman — a pleasant photo-op here, a nice headline there. Xi, who will return home as the Communist Party is preparing for a cabinet reshuffle, has to walk a difficult line and “lose face” in the eyes of the global media and the Chinese public. But in the long term, Western observers see an alarming drift in the course of U.S.-China relations.
China Minus Tibet Equals to Power Equilibrium.
“The problem lies in Mr. Trump’s transactional view of the world. He prefers deals to something as necessarily ill-defined as global leadership,” wrote Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens. “Hence the decision to repudiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would have checked Beijing’s advancing economic influence in the western Pacific and handed Washington important strategic leverage.” “As recently as four years ago, Xi and other Chinese leaders fretted, publicly and explicitly, that their people were being seduced by the moral glamour of American democracy — by the open hearted confidence of the ‘shining city on a hill’ and by the ability of a nation founded on slavery to elect its first African-American President,” wrote the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos. “Xi worried that the American example of competence, generosity, and contempt for authoritarianism would, someday, drive his own people to challenge the rule of the Communist Party. Xi has less reason to worry about that today.”
UNITED STATES – CHINA RELATIONS DEMAND TIBET EQUILIBRIUM
US – CHINA RELATIONS DEMAND TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. PRESIDENT TRUMP MUST ACCEPT THE ROLE OF BALANCER.
In 1971, United States during Doomed Presidency of Nixon-Kissinger initiated a Policy that disregards the Doctrine of Balance of Power which formulates a system of international relations in which nations shift alliances to maintain an Equilibrium of Power and prevent dominance by any single state. For Balance of Power is the goal of Foreign Policy, nation can enter alliances to maintain stable power relations. Balance of Power describes the posture and policy of a nation or group of nations protecting itself against another nation or group of nations by matching its power against the power of the other side. States can pursue a policy of Balance of Power in two ways; 1. By increasing their own power, as when engaging in an armaments race or in the competitive acquisition of territory; or, 2. By adding to their power that of other states, as when embarking upon a policy of alliances. The role of “BALANCER” or “Holder of the Balance” is guided by one and only one consideration – the maintenance of “BALANCE” itself.
US – CHINA RELATIONS DEMAND TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. CHINA’S MILITARY BUDGET IS EXPANDING TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE OF US – CHINA TRADE DEFICIT.
In my analysis, with emergence of Red China as a major economic and military power of the world, Balance of Power is by necessary has become the focus of United States foreign relations. The geographical location and size of Tibet’s territory give it a predominant role in formulating US relations with all other nations of that region in Asia. For example, the size of China’s immediate neighbors is as follows:
1.Tibet – 965,000 square miles
2. Japan – 142, 811 square miles
3. North Korea – 46, 540 square miles
4. South Korea – 38, 321 square miles
5. Philippines – 115, 830 square miles
6. Taiwan – 13, 885 square miles
7. Malaysia – 128, 430 square miles
8. Indonesia – 741, 096 square miles
9. Brunei – 2, 228 square miles
United States has no choice other than that of upholding the principle of Balance of Power to defend vital, national security interests. US must perform the role of “BALANCER” or Holder of the Balance by restoring Tibet Equilibrium. Tibetan territory cannot remain under Red China’s military occupation.
TIBET SUPPORTERS CONVERGE ON CAPITOL HILL TO LOBBY CONGRESS
March 31, 2017 7:22 PM
VOA News
FILE – The U.S. Capitol building is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 28, 2014.
More than 130 people from 23 states converged on Capitol Hill to lobby for Tibet the week before Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida on April 6.
Although the leaders’ meeting is expected to focus on trade and the need for China to do more to rein in the nuclear and missile programs of its neighbor and ally North Korea, Tibet remains a contentious issue between the two nations.
“Congress has shown a strong interest in Tibet since the 1980s, passing dozens of laws and resolutions related to Tibet, speaking out about conditions in Tibet, and welcoming visits by the Dalai Lama,” according to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service. “Such actions have long been a source of friction in the U.S.-China relationship. China charges that they amount to support for challenges to Chinese rule in Tibet.”
US – CHINA RELATIONS DEMAND TIBET EQUILIBRIUM.
FILE – Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, March 19, 2017.
Bhuchung Tsering of the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, which organized Tibet Lobby Day, said, “Looking at the meeting of President Xi of China and President Trump, we want to send a message to President Trump, through Congress and to Trump directly, that there is traditional bipartisan support for dialog with China on Tibet,” he said, adding “Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson says he is committed to promoting dialogue on Tibet and receiving the Dalai Lama.”
Tibet Lobby Day was held simultaneously in Washington, Brussels and Canberra, Australia, March 27-29.
“U.S. policy has not changed,” Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the State Department’s East Asia and Pacific Bureau, said Friday, adding that the U.S. recognizes the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and Tibetan autonomous prefectures to be a part of the People’s Republic of China.
“We remain deeply concerned about human rights abuses and restrictions, including those imposed on religious freedom, in the TAR and elsewhere in China,” she said. “We remain committed to supporting meaningful autonomy for Tibetans and the preservation of their unique religious, cultural and linguistic traditions.
“The United States encourages the People’s Republic of China to engage with the Dalai Lama and his representative without preconditions.”
Ngawang Norbu of Boston, Massachusetts, was one of the Tibetan-Americans and Tibet supporters who spoke with more than 250 members of Congress and their staffs during Tibet Lobby Day.
US – China Relations Demand Tibet Equilibrium. Tibet Lobby Day in Washington, March 2017.
Ngawang Norbu, a Tibetan-American and Tibet supporter shown in this photo taken from video, attended Tibet Lobby Day on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 2017.
The activists asked them to continue funding Tibet programs and to promote efforts to gain access to Tibetan areas for U.S. officials, citizens and journalists. They also want the Trump administration to implement the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 (TPA), which has the stated purpose of supporting “the aspirations of the Tibetan people to safeguard their distinct identity.”
“The important thing today is that there’s a new administration in America and, along with that, the exile Tibetan administration in India has declared 2017 to be a year of action for Tibet, and so that’s why I’m here,” Norbu told VOA on Wednesday. “It’s our responsibility and obligation to lobby for Tibet, and whether our requests are responded to or not is, of course, up to the leadership here, but in our mind we think our objectives and efforts will bear fruit.”
Bhuchung expects to see the reintroduction of the proposed Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act by Representative Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts; Representative Randy Hultgren, a Republican from Illinois; Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican; and Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat.
US – China Relations Demand Tibet Equilibrium.Tibet Lobby Day in Washington, March 2017.
Marah Litchford of North Carolina, shown in this photo taken from video, participated in Tibet Lobby Day in Washington, March 2017.
North Carolinian Marah Litchford, who has expressed concern about religious freedom in Tibet, participated in the Washington movement. “They listen,” she said. “You just have to talk loudly.”
Nike Ching and Steven Herman contributed to this report, which originated with reporting by Dondhon Namling of the VOA Tibetan service.
HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA LIVES IN EXILE TO DEFEND FREEDOM IN TIBET
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Supreme Ruler of Tibet lives in exile to defend Freedom in Tibet. Potala Palace in Lhasa is witness to the long history of Tibetan Independence.
Since March 1959, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Supreme Ruler of Tibet is living in exile not to defend his own life but to defend Freedom in Occupied Tibet. After 58 years of life in exile, Tibetans hope to restore Freedom, Peace, Justice in Tibet. Tibet’s military occupation since 1950 cannot obliterate the reality of long history of Tibetan Independence.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama Arrives Safely in Tenzingang, Bomdila
April 4, 2017
By Staff Writer
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Supreme Ruler of Tibet lives in exile to defend Freedom in Tibet. He is on a visit to Tibetan Monasteries in Arunachal Pradesh, India.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama arrives in Tenzingang Tibetan settlement in Bomdila, Arunachal Pradesh, 4 April 2017. Photo/Yasmina K.
Bomdila: The most revered spiritual leader of Tibet, His Holiness the Dalai Lama arrived safely in Tenzingang Tibetan settlement, Bomdila, Arunachal Pradesh today on 4 April 2017.
His Holiness was received by Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Pema Khandu, MLA, Japu Deru and Phurpa Tsering, West Kameng District Commissioner Dr Sonal Swaroop and former minister and National Convener of Core group for Tibetan cause-India, Mr. R K Khrimey and other important dignitaries.
Members of Tibetan community in Bomdila gave a rousing welcome to His Holiness as he arrived in his motorcade this afternoon.
Tomorrow, His Holiness will give a teaching and confer a White Tara Long Life Empowerment (drolkar tsewang) in the morning at the Buddha Park, Teaching in Bomdila, Arunachal Pradesh.
On 6 April, His Holiness will give teachings in Dirang, Arunachal Pradesh. His Holiness will give teachings on Geshe Langri Thangpa’s Eight Verses of Training the Mind & Guru Yoga and confer the Avalokiteshvara Permission in the morning at Thupsung Dhargyeling Monastery.
From 8 – 10 April, His Holiness will confer teachings in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh.
On April 8 & 9 mornings, His Holiness will give teachings on Kamalashila’s The Middling States of Meditation & Gyalsey Thokme Sangpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva at Yiga Choezin.
On April 10 morning, His Holiness will confer the Rigzin Dongdup Initiation at Yiga Choezin.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Supreme Ruler of Tibet lives in exile to defend Freedom in Tibet. He is on a visit to Tibetan Monasteries in Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Local Tibetans in Bomdila organize a traditional welcome for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 4 April 2017.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Supreme Ruler of Tibet lives in exile to defend Freedom in Tibet. He is on a visit to Tibetan Monasteries in Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Tibetans and ardent followers welcoming His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Tenzingang, Bomdila. Photo/Soulful tours
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Supreme Ruler of Tibet. Tibet’s military occupation cannot obliterate Tibet’s long history of Independence.
DOOMED US – CHINA FOREIGN POLICY POSES THREAT TO REPUBLIC OF INDIA
Republic of India since its birth got ensnared by Doomed US Foreign Policy. United States and UK support Pakistan to undermine India’s position and to balance the power and influence of Soviet Union/Russia. This poisonous policy has driven India to seek cooperation of Soviet Union/Russia as India is left with no alternative to neutralize Pakistan’s enhanced military power.
To add insult to India’s injury, US cultivated relationship with Communist China using Pakistan. Dr. Henry Kissinger launched that illicit relationship during 1971 flying to Peking from Pakistan. China took full advantage of Pakistan’s relationship and is able to fully manipulate Pakistan outplaying the US influence. On Kashmir front, as of today, India is facing threat posed by three enemies; 1. US, 2. China, and 3. Pakistan.
My concern is not about UN Support for China’s Project. The real danger comes from Doomed US Foreign Policy.
A UN Security Council resolution has for the first time incorporated China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a multi-billion inter-continental connectivity mission that has a flagship project passing through Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).
The resolution, which extends an ongoing UN assistance mission to Afghanistan, says international efforts should be strengthened to implement the BRI, President Xi Jinping’s legacy project about which he first spoke in 2013.
Beijing claims it has rounded up at least 100 countries in BRI’s support, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
India is yet to sign up for the initiative. Foreign secretary S Jaishankar spelt it out to the Chinese government in February that India has a “sovereignty” issue with the BRI because its flagship project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), passes through PoK. According to diplomats, India endorsing the BRI would mean giving up its claims on PoK.
The UN endorsing the BRI could complicate the situation as far as India’s claims are concerned.
The resolution in question renewed the mandate of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan for one year. In it, the 15-nation UN body urged to promote security and stability in Afghanistan and the region “to create a community of shared future for mankind”.
“Also included in the newly adopted council resolution was China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes,” official news agency Xinhua reported.
The resolution “welcomes and urges further efforts to strengthen the process of regional economic cooperation, including measures to facilitate regional connectivity, trade and transit, including through regional development initiatives such as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (the Belt and Road) Initiative”.
The council resolution urged “further international efforts to strengthen regional cooperation and implement the Belt and Road Initiative”.
Besides the BRI, the resolution also mentions other projects like “regional development projects, such as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, the Central Asia South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project, the Chabahar port project agreed between Afghanistan, India and the Islamic Republic of lran”.
China has taken the inclusion of BRI in a UN resolution as a diplomatic victory of sorts.
Liu Jieyi, the Chinese permanent representative to the UN, told reporters here that the “Chinese concept was put into a Security Council resolution for the first time on Friday, thus showing the consensus of the international community on embracing the concept, and manifesting huge Chinese contributions to the global governance”.
“The Chinese envoy said that latest council move is conducive to creating a favourable atmosphere for China to host a Belt and Road forum for international cooperation in Beijing this May in order to brainstorm on interconnected development,” Xinhua reported.
Liu also said he hoped that all “UN member states will take an active part in the joint efforts to carry out the Chinese initiative and the Chinese concept by implementing the new council resolution. Resolutions adopted by the Security Council are legally binding”.
PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN – THE LEGACY OF RANI PADMINI OF CHITTORGARH
Rani Padmini – Her Essence and Her Existence. She defends her Essence by destroying her physical existence. Rani Padmini’s Essence lives in the heart of Indians giving them Sense of Pride. I am Proud to be Indian for Rani Padmini’s Victory over Death.
Rani Padmini of Chittorgarh is Living Symbol of Indian National Character that makes me Proud to be an Indian. This Cultural Icon of India cannot be tarnished by fiction writers who have no concern for Historical Facts.
RANI PADMINI AND ALAUDDIN KHILJI: SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION
SWARAJYA
RAM OHRI – Jan 28, 2017, 6:35 pm
PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN – THE LEGACY OF RANI PADMINI OF CHITTORGARH
If reports are to be believed, filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s next, Padmavati, is based on Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s poem Padmavat.
Jayasi’s poem about Padmini and Khilji, however, does not have a historical basis.
Historians have some understanding of what may have happened in that fateful chapter of the lives of Rani Padmini and Alauddin Khilji.
After Bajirao Mastani, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is making another period drama film, Padmavati, this time about Rani Padmini, the queen of Chittorgarh, and Alauddin Khilji, the ruler of Delhi. According to media reports, the film will feature a love story between Padmini and Khilji.
The popular story says that when Khilji attacked Chittor, he fell for Padmini on seeing her reflection in the mirror. This story was woven by a well-known Indian poet, Malik Muhammad Jayasi, in 1540 AD, and finds echo in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India as well.
Jayasi’s poem about Padmini and Khilji, however, is not accurate. Historians have, in fact, come up with possible scenarios for what could have actually happened.
According to Jayasi’s poem Padmavat, Rani Padmavati of Chittor was the wife of Raja Ratansen (a name invented by Jayasi with no reference in Mewar history) of Chittor during the reign of Alauddin Khilji. The correct name of Chittor’s then ruler was Rawal Ratan Singh, the thirty-fourth descendant of Bappa Rawal.
What Jayasi’s poem says
There were many talented artists in the court of Ratansen, one of whom was a musician named Raghava Chetan. He was a sorcerer who used his magical powers to target rivals. Once, he was caught red-handed while trying to invoke evil spirits, after which Ratansen banished Raghava from the kingdom after blackening his face. Raghava ran away to Delhi and decided to take revenge by provoking Khilji to attack Chittor.
Raghava knew of a forest near Delhi where Khilji went hunting. One day, he played his flute while Khilji was out hunting. The alluring notes emanating from his flute attracted the attention of Khilji, who then asked his soldiers to fetch the flute player. Thus, Raghava was taken to Khilji’s court.
After reaching Delhi, Raghava told Khilji about the unparalleled beauty of Rani Padmini. That prompted Khilji to attack Chittor, but he found the fort to be heavily defended. So, he laid siege to the fort and forced Ratansen to negotiate with him.
Desperate to capture the beautiful Padmini, Khilji sent a word to Ratansen about him wanting to meet her. The Raja asked Padmini, who flatly refused. However, on being persuaded by her beleaguered husband, Rani Padmini agreed to let Khilji see her in the mirror.
The palace on the right is where Padmini is supposed to have stood. (Sanjeev Nayyar)
Next, Khilji entered the fort with a group of select warriors who had observed the fort’s defenses on their way to the palace. On seeing Padmini in the mirror, Khilji decided that she must be his.
PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN – THE LEGACY OF RANI PADMINI OF CHITTORGARH. THE MIRROR.
The mirror in Chittor in which Khilji is said to have seen Padmini’s reflection (Sanjeev Nayyar)
While returning to his camp, Khilji deceitfully kidnapped Ratansen and took him as prisoner. Thereafter, he informed the Rajput Sardars that Padmini should be handed over to him if they wanted to see their king alive.
The Rajput generals, led by two gutsy warriors, Gora and Badal, who were related to Padmini, decided to beat Khilji at his game. They sent out a word that Padmini would be handed over the next morning.
At the crack of dawn, 150 palanquins (in which royal ladies were carried in medieval times) left the fort and made their way to Khilji’s camp. The palanquins stopped before a tent where King Ratansen was held prisoner. To his surprise, armed Rajputs jumped out from the palanquins, freed Ratansen and galloped away to Chittor, riding the horses grabbed from Khilji’s stable.
Khilji was furious. He ordered the army to storm Chittorgarh. However, the army could not break into the fort. Due to a prolonged siege, food supplies for the troops were running out. So Ratansen opened the fort gates, and Rajputs rode out to fight. They were overpowered, and achieved martyrdom. Rani Padmini and wives of thousands of warriors preferred jauhar (fire is lit, and women jump into the flames) over losing their honor to Khilji’s army.
PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN – THE LEGACY OF RANI PADMINI OF CHITTORGARH. THE PLACE OF JAUHAR.
Place in Chittor where jauhar was committed (Sanjeev Nayyar)
When Khilji entered the fort, all that he found were ashes of these brave women. Their sacrifice has been kept alive by Bards in their songs, where they praise women who preferred supreme sacrifice to dishonor.
When this author visited Chittorgarh Fort in 2008 and asked the guide about the veracity of the mirror story, he said locals did not believe in it.
Having learnt what Jayasi’s poem says, let us now read what the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s book on Indian History says.
In January 1303, Khilji set out on his memorable campaign for the conquest of Chittor. He received strong resistance from the Rajputs under Rana Ratan Singh. The Rajputs offered heroic resistance for about seven months and then, after the women had perished in the flames of jauhar, the fort surrendered on August 26, 1303.
Whilst later writers like Abu-l Fazl, Haji-ud-Dabir (note these two authors use Padmini not as a name, but as a woman possessing special attributes) have accepted the story that the sole reason for invasion of Chittor was Khilji’s desire to get possession of Padmini, many modern writers are inclined to reject it altogether. They point out that the episode of Padmini was first mentioned by Malik Jayasi in 1540 A.D. in his poem Padmavat, which is a romantic tale rather than historical work. Further, the later day writers who reproduced the story with varying details, flourished long after the event, but their versions differed from one another on essential points.
Yarn 2 by Jayasi
In Padmavat, Jayasi wrote that Padmini was the daughter of Raja Gandharva Sen of Sri Lanka. The Lanka story has many contradictions.
1) The name Raja Gandharva Sen is nowhere found in Sinhalese history. The then Buddhist rulers of Lanka had contacts mainly with the Pandya kings of Tamil Nadu and none with Rajputana. The names of Lanka rulers at the time were Vijayabahu III (1220-24), Bhuvanaikabahu I (1281-83), Interregnum (1283-1302) and Vijayabahu V (1325-26 to 1344-45).
Instead, there is a strong possibility that Padmini was a princess of Jaisalmer or of Sinhala, a village near Sojat in Pali district of Rajasthan. In the history of Rajasthan, there are many references which indicate that Rani Padmini was the eleventh wife of Rawal Ratan Singh among his fifteen wives, as polygamy was prevalent among Rajput rulers then. There is, however, no confirmation of her father being Rana Salsi Tanwar as written in the book The Kingdom of Mewar by Irmgard Meininger, a German author.
2) In Padmavat, there is a reference to a parrot who flew all the way from Sri Lanka to Chittor as a messenger to inform Raja Ratansen, or Rawal Ratan Singh, about the beauty of Padmini, daughter of the Sinhala ruler Gandharvasen, making Ratansen travel all the way to the Sinhala kingdom to win the hand of Padmini. This narrative lacks credibility since Lanka never had a king by that name.
3) Jayasi wrote this poem almost 237 years after Khilji’s attack on Chittor. The literature of that era is full of highly imaginative narratives, and poets were known to gleefully use metaphors, alliterations and imaginary personifications. There is also a reference in Padmavat to a sorcerer called Raghav Chetan, who is believed to have been personified as a parrot.
Contradictions in Jayasi’s poem
Amir Khusro, the court poet of Khilji, who accompanied him during the Chittor attack, did not write about Padmini, nor did he allude any episode to her in his book Twarikh-e-Allai. To be fair, it is possible that Khusro might not have wanted to further spoil the image of Khilji. So, he ignored the reference to Padmini. “According to Prof Habib, there is a covert allusion to Padmini episode by Khusro in his Khazain-ul-Fatuh, where he mentions the Queen of Sheba.”
Equally important is the fact that Col James Tod did not refer to Khilji’s desire to capture the beautiful Padmini in his book The Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan.
There are many instances in history when court poets and writers have followed the instructions of the ruling kings, and wrote histories accordingly. For instance, the book Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazal, where he was instructed not to write about Mehrunissa’s — later known as Nur Jahan, wife of Mughal King Jahangir — first marriage with an Afghan Pathan. However, there is a mention of her in Tuzuk-e-Jahangari as his beloved, and how his father had cheated on him.
It would not be wrong to say that Jayasi’s poem Padmavat is a figment of his poetic imagination. “It has also been argued that the invasion of Chittor was the natural expansionist policy of Khilji and no Padmini was need for his casus belli“.
The story of Khilji watching Padmini’s reflection in a mirror, or in a well, as stated in Discovery of India by Pandit Nehru, could have been based on a latter-day interpolation by some local poets. It could also be a phony myth popularized by some imaginative storytellers.
Having questioned the motive for Khilji’s invasion of Chittor, “it should be remembered that Khilji’s lust for a Hindu queen is proved by the known instances of Queen Kamala Devi of Gujarat and the daughter of King Ramachandra of Devagiri. The story of Padmini should not be totally rejected as a myth. But it is impossible, at the present state of knowledge, to regard it definitely as a historical fact”.
In Bajirao Mastani, Bhansali told audiences what a brave general Bajirao Peshwa was. It prompted Col (retired) Anil Athale to write ‘Why Bajirao is India’s greatest cavalry general‘. Having assuaged Maratha pride, Bhansali got away with some historical distortions.
In Padmavati, Bhansali is trying to do a balancing act and be secular. Thus, he might tell audiences how romantic the Sultan of Delhi was, that his love for Padmini was as pure as the holy water of Zamzama, and the sexual conquest of beautiful Hindu queens was the last thing on his mind.
According to a report in the Indian Express, it is alleged by Rajput protesters that Bhansali has deliberately added a dream sequence in his movie which shows Khilji embracing and kissing Padmini, which is an affront to the honor and name of Rani Padmini. It is also a slur on the valor of thousands of Hindu Veeranganas who preferred to die by fire rather than submit to the lust of barbaric invaders.
Bhansali might take refuge under the excuse that the film is based on the poem Padmavat, whose historical significance is unconfirmed. But in the poem, there is no mention of the so-called dream sequence. Ultimately, Bhansali might change the name of the movie, like he did with Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram-Leela. Will it satisfy the nationalists?
Either way, the movie will attract protest like we saw in Jaipur recently. A few things for sure — it will get free publicity, be discussed on prime-time television and become the next battleground between the nationalists and votaries of selective freedom of speech.
References
1. Volume 6 of the History and Culture and Indian People, published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, p 23
Ram Ohri is a former IPS officer and writes regularly on security issues, demographics, and occasionally, on policy.
PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN – THE LEGACY OF RANI PADMINI OF CHITTORGARH. RANA RATAN SINGH PALACE.PROUD TO BE INDIAN – THE LEGACY OF RANI PADMINI OF CHITTORGARH. PADMINI MAHAL.PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN – THE LEGACY OF RANI PADMINI OF CHITTORGARH. VIEW OF CORRIDOR AT PADMINI PALACE.Essence and Existence- Indians express their Essence in the manner they Exist. Rani Padmini of Chittorgarh expresses her Essence of Moral, and Spiritual Being by ending her physical existence. Sanskrit is the Cultural tool that Indians use to define their Essence. Rani Padmini is Living Symbol of Indian National Character.
Whole Dude - Whole Concept 