In my analysis, India-China Standoff across the Himalayan Frontier involves the territory of Tibet, an independent nation under military occupation. Any kind of dispute across the Himalayan Frontier involves Tibet as the Natural Force that created Tibet is still at work forcing the Indian Landmass to collide with the Asian Landmass. The reality of Tibet cannot be ignored as Mother Nature nurtures the Tibetan Identity.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada

Special Frontier Force-Establishment No.22-Vikas Regiment

India waving SFF and Tibet cards won’t scare China. Can’t pull levers you don’t have

Bending foreign policy to serve domestic politics is proving to be costly for India. Hyping the use of the Tibetan-majority SFF against China is one such example.

Shyam Saran, September 14, 2020.

The Tibet issue played a major role in precipitating the India-China war of 1962. There were localized skirmishes along the border, but these began to be seen in a more ominous light by China in the wake of the Tibetan revolt of 1959 followed by the exile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to India. The setting up of Indian posts and increased patrolling on our borders were seen as part of a sinister Indian design to subvert Chinese rule in Tibet. The status of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan issue have remained a shadow over India-China relations even though New Delhi has recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet and has under-played official relations with the Dalai Lama.

The Tibet government-in-exile is allowed to function at Dharamsala but is not recognized by the Indian government. For China, Tibet is a “core issue” just as Taiwan and Xinjiang are.

A changing relationship

During the tenure of the Narendra Modi government, there have been instances of open courtship of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Its ‘Prime Minister’ Lobsang Sangay was an invitee to the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Modi in 2014. The Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Pema Khandu, declared that his state had a border with Tibet and not with China, in 2017.

But after the Modi-Xi Jinping summit in Wuhan in April 2018, there appeared a rethink on the Tibet issue with the Ministry of External Affairs reissuing instructions to government functionaries to avoid public association with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan representatives of the government-in-exile. An international Buddhist conference, which the Dalai Lama had been encouraged to convene, was cancelled. The Tibetans were advised that the 60^th anniversary, in 2019, of the Dalai Lama’s entry into India, should be a low-key affair.

The second Modi-Xi summit in Mamallapuram in October 2019 reinforced this trend. The Modi government was signalling that it was prepared to put the Tibet issue in cold storage while advancing bilateral relations with China.

The wrong card

During the recent clashes between the Indian and Chinese armed forces on the border in eastern Ladakh, the Tibet issue has resurfaced and will add to mutual distrust and suspicion. A deliberately leaked report to the media revealed that the secretive Special Frontier Force (SFF), recruited mainly from the Tibetan community in India, was used in the operations in southern Pangong Tso. One of its soldiers, Tenzin Nyima, died in a mine blast and at his funeral, independent Tibet’s flags were displayed. BJP leader Ram Madhav attended the funeral and tweeted about it. He subsequently took it down, presumably at the behest of the Ministry of External Affairs.

Several commentators were quick to welcome the report on the SFF, no longer secret, as a reminder to China that India still held the “Tibet card” and would be ready to use it to bring it to heel. Like much of the bizarre fantasizing that seems to have taken hold in India, this, too, may only heighten mistrust and hostility in Beijing without inflicting any real pain. In any negotiations with an adversary, one should never provoke a confrontation over an issue where the other side has greater equity and stake than oneself. This is clearly the case here. It is also intriguing that this story was highlighted on the eve of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow. At the very least, it would have made his interaction more challenging.

The SFF has been in existence for several years. Its efficacy lies in its rigorous training, high morale and professionalism. It should not have become yet another pawn in a political game to convince public opinion that India has more levers of influence than it actually has. In doing so, the potential efficacy of the SFF has been undermined and Chinese suspicions over India’s intentions regarding Tibet would have been aroused to a new intensity.

A crisis of credibility

The tactical use of the Tibetan issue and of the Dalai Lama is both cynical and counter-productive. Ever since his arrival in India, he has enjoyed respect and reverence across the Indian political spectrum as a religious leader. We have consistently maintained the position that he is our welcome guest as a high religious personage and that we do not endorse political activities engaged in by him or the Tibetan community. This has helped manage Tibet as an issue in India-China relations, reducing its salience as an irritant. Unfortunately, this consistent and longstanding position has been severely compromised.

In any India-China border settlement, an understanding over Tibet will need to be arrived at. The best-case scenario for India would be a reconciliation between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese regime, and this seemed possible during the first few years of Xi Jinping’s rule. In our informal conversations with Chinese counterparts, we have conveyed that their assumption of the Tibetan issue being permanently resolved once the Dalai Lama was no longer in the scene was misplaced. In fact, we pointed out, the situation may become even more fraught once the restraining hand of the Dalai Lama was no longer available. The Tibetan community in India, particularly the youth, could become more radicalized.

In Tibet, reconciliation between its people and the Chinese state would be more likely with the blessings of the Dalai Lama rather than in his absence. Both countries, we conveyed, need to have an early and quiet dialogue on this issue and not allow it to become a festering problem for the future. There was receptivity on the Chinese side to these views. However, this waving of the Tibet card, which serves only to irritate and annoy, puts paid to any such engagement on a sensitive issue, with serious implications for the future. It undermines the immense goodwill and gratitude that New Delhi has all along enjoyed with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community in India and abroad. The community is disturbed by the manner in which the Indian government plays hot and cold towards it and has become anxious about its future.

The bending of foreign policy issues to serve domestic political ends is proving to be costly for India. The most valuable asset a country and its political leadership possess is credibility with both friends and adversaries alike. When image-making gets unlatched from reality, credibility is the first casualty. And India indeed faces a crisis of credibility.

The author is a former Foreign Secretary, and a Senior Fellow at CPR.  

AP Explains: What’s driving India-China military standoff

By AIJAZ HUSSAIN, Associated Press  

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Tensions along the disputed India-China border seem to be getting worse, three months after their deadliest confrontation in decades.

The Asian giants accused each other this week of sending soldiers into the other’s territory and fired warning shots fired for the first time in 45 years, raising the specter of full-scale military conflict.

Their foreign ministers are expected to discuss the simmering dispute in Moscow on Thursday on the sidelines of a regional security and economic meeting.

The high-altitude standoff along the eastern section of what’s known as the Line of Actual Control — a loose demarcation — risks dramatically altering the already fraught relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

The face-off began in early May with a fierce brawl before exploding into hand-to-hand combat with clubs, stones and fists on June 15 that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. China is believed to have taken casualties, but has given no numbers.

DECADES OF MISTRUST

India and China inherited their territorial disputes from the period of British colonial rule.

Three years after India’s independence in 1947 and a year after the communists came to power in China, the new government in Beijing began strongly asserting its claims and repudiating earlier treaties it says were signed under duress, but which India says are fixed.

Beijing’s approach has strengthened under Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades who has sworn not to surrender even an inch of territory.

In the 1950s, China started building a strategic road on the uninhabited Aksai Chin Plateau to connect its restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. India objected and claimed Aksai Chin as part of Ladakh, itself belonging to the former principality of Kashmir now divided between India and Pakistan.

Relations were further strained after India allowed Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to establish a self-declared government-in-exile in the northern Indian town of Dharmsala after he fled his homeland in 1959 during an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

The differences led to a bitter month-long war in 1962. Firefights broke out again in 1967 and 1975, leading to more deaths on both sides. They’ve since adopted protocols, including an agreement not to use firearms, but those protocols have fractured in this year’s clashes.

China, in the meantime, began cementing its relations with India’s arch-rival Pakistan and backing it on the issue of Kashmir.

THE LINE OF ACTUAL CONTROL

The fiercely contested LAC separates Chinese and Indian held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety. It is broken in parts where the Himalayan nations of Nepal and Bhutan border China.

According to India, the de facto border is 3,488 kilometres (2,167-mile) long, although China promotes a considerably shorter figure. As its name suggests, it divides the areas of physical control rather than territorial claims.

In all, China claims some 90,000 square kilometres (35,000 square miles) of territory in India’s northeast, including Arunachal Pradesh with its mainly Buddhist population.

India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometres (15,000 square miles) of its territory in the Aksai Chin Plateau, which India considers part of Ladakh, where the current face-off is happening.

Despite more than three dozen rounds of talks over the years, and multiple meetings between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, they are nowhere near settling their dispute.

ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC RIVALRY

Since the 1962 war, both economies have grown substantially, but China has far outpaced India while enjoying a large trade surplus with its neighbor.

The growing economic rivalry has added to territorial and geostrategic differences. India has tried to capitalize on China’s rising labor costs, and deteriorating ties with the United States and Europe, to become a new base for foreign manufacturers.

India grew concerned after China recently built a road through Pakistani-controlled Kashmir as part of Xi’s signature foreign policy push, the multi billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, which India has vehemently opposed.

Meanwhile, India’s growing strategic alliance with the U.S. has ruffled feathers in Beijing, which sees the relationship as a counterweight against China’s rise. Indian fears of Chinese territorial expansion are bolstered by the growing presence of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean and Beijing’s efforts to strengthen ties with not only Pakistan but also Sri Lanka and Nepal.

India is jockeying for strategic parity with China, massively ramping up its military infrastructure along the LAC. China for its part has been building roads and defensive positions in the disputed Doklam region and in recent weeks has conducted high-altitude parachute drops and stationed strategic bombers in Tibet.

Adding to the tension, India unilaterally declared Ladakh a federal territory and separated it from disputed Kashmir in August 2019, ending its semi-autonomous status.

Shortly after, lawmakers in India’s ruling party began advocating taking control of some China-run areas, alarming Beijing.

FEARS OF WIDER CONFLICT

Border tensions have persisted despite talks at military, diplomatic and political levels. With strong nationalists leading both countries, the border has taken on a prominence not seen in years.

Having emerged relatively unscathed from the COVID-19 pandemic, China is also perceived regionally as ramping up military ambitions against its neighbors, particularly through the use of “salami slicing” tactics to incrementally gain territory.

While Chinese soldiers remain in what India says is its territory in Ladakh, India occupied at least one unmanned mountain top last week, leading Beijing to furiously demand that New Delhi vacate the area.

Experts warn that if military hostilities are not stopped, war could be next.

“If diplomacy fails, guns talk. That is the natural culmination of what we have been witnessing during last four months,” said Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, who was head of the Indian military’s Northern Command from 2014 to 2016. “Things are fast escalating out of control unless there is a breakthrough in talks.”

Wang Lian of Peking University’s international relations department considers the possibility of a wider conflict less likely, despite preparations being made on both sides.

“China has shown restraint in bilateral relations with India, and India may restrain itself from overdoing it in the future,” Wang said.