India: 'A Great Disservice'

Wed Apr 2 14:48:27 UTC 2008

'A Great Disservice'
To compare China's behaviour towards Tibet with Indian treatment of
Jammu & Kashmir or Nagaland, as Praksah Karat did, is to belittle
Indian democracy and insult the country.

Jaideep Mazumdar

 Be warned! Supporting the Tibetan cause or commiserating with the
Dalai Lama and his followers would only encourage secessionism in
various corners of India, primarily in Kashmir and parts of the
Northeast. This, in effect, is what a poker-faced Prakash Karat said
on the sidelines of the 19th Congress of the CPI(M) at Coimbatore.
Indians who support the Tibetans, Karat argued, ought to be prepared
to concede separatist demands within the country. His exact words:
"Those in India who want to join this chorus for an independent Tibet
will be doing a great disservice to our own country. Are we going to
support a free Nagaland? Or a free Jammu and Kashmir? Or those other
secessionist demands?"

Karat is, without doubt, a learned, well-read and intelligent man.
He's expected to speak and argue logically on the basis of hard facts.
But this is precisely what he didn't do while speaking to reporters on
Monday: by trying to draw parallels between the Tibetan struggle and
the insurgency or even terrorism in Kashmir and parts of the
Northeast, the CPI(M) general secretary deliberately obfuscated facts
and advanced a totally flawed and warped argument.

And the facts are these: the Dalai Lama (symbol of the Tibetan
struggle) has long ago given up the demand for a free and independent
Tibet and has repeatedly acknowledged that Tibet is an integral part
of China. All that Tenzing Gyatso wants for his people is greater
autonomy that'll include freedom to practice their religion and
preserve their culture, language etc. This is as far removed from
secessionism (or 'splittism', as Beijing terms it) as the CPI(M) is
from the BJP.

To equate the demands for religious and cultural freedom by the
Tibetans with those of secession (from India) by Kashmiri separatists
or North East rebels amounts to twisting facts and spreading lies and
would eminently qualify for being labeled as a profoundly unpatriotic
act.

There can, indeed, be no parallels between the situation in Tibet and
that in J&K or the Northeast. India has never 'colonised' Kashmir or
the North East by pushing in millions of Hindi-speaking 'mainlanders'
into these regions as the Chinese have done by swamping the ethnic
Tibetans with Han Chinese since the early 1960s. India has never
pushed for a one-language policy in Kashmir or the Northeast; China's
promotion of Mandarin as the only language to be taught in schools has
led to most Tibetans not knowing or learning their mother tongue.

People of Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram or, for that matter, any
state in the country, happily learn, speak and sing in their own
languages and dialects and India promotes and celebrates it and
actively encourages development of all languages. India has never
curbed religious freedoms in any state, including Kashmir. China
wanted to obliterate Buddhism and when it failed to do so, imposed its
own brand of the religion on Tibetans and foisted its lackeys as
religious leaders.

The Governor of Tibet may be a Tibetan, but the head of the Communist
Party of China in Tibet is a Han Chinese, who outranks the Governor
and wields real power. India has never denied basic human and
Constitutional rights to its minorities as a matter of state policy
like China does. To compare, thus, Tibet with Kashmir or Nagaland is
to belittle Indian democracy and insult the country.

Yes, many mistakes and excesses have been committed by successive
government at New Delhi, and security forces, in Kashmir and the
Northeast; a series of blunders ranging from the arrogant dismissal of
the democratically elected governments, to random killings and rapes
by security forces and the step-motherly treatment and dismissive
attitude towards the Northeast have only served to alienate large
sections of the people of these regions.

But, by no stretch of imagination, can the situation obtaining in
Kashmir and the North east be compared to that in Tibet. The most
important reason being that India is a democracy and China is not.
People of Kashmir and the Northeast, or any disturbed region in the
country for that matter, exercise their inalienable right to vote. And
elections in India, despite many shortcomings, are free and fair and
can never be compared to the sham that passes for polls in China.

There is no way Karat is unaware of these vital distinctions. But that
he chose to gloss over them speaks volumes for his choice of loyalty
to ideology over his motherland. Karat and other Communists may well
argue that communism advocates a 'stateless' world where political
boundaries get erased to coalesce nations into one great socialist
order. But do China's communists also subscribe to the same view and
utopia? Isn't their country more important to them than their
ideology? Hadn't it been so, why would China's ruling communists be so
relentless in pursuing a policy of containment of India? Why do
China's communists then lay claim to lakhs of square kilometres of
Indian territory? The point is that Karat and his fellow communist
travelers in India are doing their country a great disservice by
defending and promoting China's cause.

China's harsh treatment of Tibet--the vilification of the Dalai Lama,
the denial of religious, cultural and other democratic rights to the
ethnic Tibetans, the deliberate demographic engineering that involved
settling millions of Han Chinese in Tibet, repression and oppression
of the Tibetans, and denying them avenues of social and economic
development--is what led to the simmering anger that burst forth a
couple of weeks ago in various parts of Tibet.

In stark contrast, Kashmiris and Nagas (the two minority communities
Karat named) are prospering not only in their respective states, but
in other parts of India where they've settled down. Rather, it can be
argued that China played a major role in fanning unrest in the
Northeast and Kashmir. Thuingaleng Muivah was hosted by Zhou En-Lai
and the NSCN (I-M) was provided military, material, logistic and all
sorts of support by the People's Republic of China; other insurgent
groups in the region like Manipur's PLA and Mizoram's MNF also
received similar support from Beijing. China actively encouraged
Pakistan to sponsor militancy in Kashmir valley and even bankrolled
Islamabad's 'bleed-India-from-a-thousand-cuts' policy.

Now, arguing (as Karat and his ilk do) that India also provides
shelter and support to the Dalai Lama is puerile and obnoxious; the
Dalai Lama is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (can Muivah or
Geelani be contenders?) and is one of the strongest advocates of
non-violence in this world. The Dalai Lama is a noble soul and
acknowledged as such by all free people of this world. Branding him a
militant (as China does and Karat faithfully repeats) is to insult the
intelligence of every human in this world.

The Dalai Lama has repeatedly urged his people to abjure violence and
has expressed distress at the bloodshed in his homeland. He has always
acted as sobering influence on many of his young followers whenever
they displayed any inclination to take to the path of violence. Such a
towering personality cannot be compared to Muivah or a Kashmiri
separatist. Karat ought to have had the decency to acknowledge this
instead of abjectly surrendering his intelligence and senses to his
ideological masters in Beijing.

P.S.Karat, when asked about Indian ambassador to Beijing, Nirupama
Rao, being woken up and summoned to the Chinese foreign ministry at 2
am (to receive a protest note on Tibetans sneaking into the Chinese
mission in New Delhi, and also, reportedly, over the vice president
Hamid Ansari's later cancelled meeting with the Dalai Lama), said with
a crooked smile that he was "not well-versed in diplomatic practices".
Had our envoy in Washington been subjected to similar outrageous and
humiliating treatment, would Karat's response have been the same? And
it's not only Karat--all our politicians, by failing to condemn this
unacceptable act of the Chinese in the strongest language, have also
done India a great disservice. This single episode has projected India
as a pusillanimous state lacking in self-respect that can be insulted
and pushed around at will.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080401&fname=jaideep&sid=1

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************