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268 Controlling the Margins 269 Chapter 15 THE CHINA TIBET CONUNDRUM It seems almost incredible in hindsight that one geopolitical earthquake could be followed so closely by a second equally or perhaps even more profound Two years after Indian Partition in 1949 the Chinese communists under Mao Zedong ousted the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai shek after a long and bloody civil war and established the People s Republic of China Almost immediately Mao resurrected China s expansionist ambitions supporting the North Koreans against the south in the bloody war that would soon erupt and eyeing the vast expanse of Tibet to the west On October 25 1950 barely a year after the Communist victory the new China News Agency peremptorily announced The Chinese Army had been ordered to advance into Tibet to liberate the people of Tibet to complete the unification of China to prevent imperialism from invading an inch of the territory of the Fatherland and to safeguard The Simla Conference 1913 and build up the frontiers of the country Whose imperialism one might be tempted to ask But liberate Tibet the People s Liberation Army proceeded to do with ruthless efficiency first attacking the eastern Tibetan provinces of Kham and Amdo and reaching Lhasa in September 1951 To put a gloss on the proceedings the Chinese drafted a Seventeen Point Agreement handing themselves a carte blanche and bullied a five man Tibetan delegation which did not include the sixteen year old 14th Dalai Lama into signing it With the rest of the world on the sidelines trying to assimilate what was happening the Chinese annexation of this mainly pacifist and religious theocracy proceeded apace The Chinese have long argued that Tibet has historically always belonged to them but plenty of historians diplomats and friends of Tibet are more than willing to argue the opposite Alas none of them had the power to reverse the events triggered in 1950 What is certain is that the history of China and its relationship with the Tibetan people is centuries long highly convoluted and legally ambiguous at least in terms that make sense in modern times In short there is endless scope for debate Phrases and words such as patron and priest suzerainty In October 1913 the foreign secretary of British India Sir Henry McMahon convened a meeting at the hill station Simla to broker agreements on the borders separating China British India and a newly independent Tibet The Chinese delegation later declined to ratify the conference conclusions and Mao Zedong when he came to power declared the conference illegal Seated left to right Chinese delegate Wangchuk Tsering B D Bruce Ivan Chen Sir Henry McMahon Tibetan delegates Longchen Shatra Trimon and Tenpa Dhargay Standing centre Archibald Rose and Charles Bell Paul Fearn Alamy Stock Photo

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Controlling the Margins 272 and sovereignty tend to be bandied about as though they might by some miracle provide a flash of clarity But reasoned argument never stands a chance faced with the brute force of realpolitik Empire builders from the Romans to the British understood that just as China does today Ironically during the time of Tibet s early kings the tables were reversed Tibet was the empire builder Not yet Buddhist Tibetan warriors overran vast swathes of China including its ancient capital at Xi an most of today s Sinkiang and many areas of the Himalaya south of the main watershed Later as Buddhism was imported from India its widespread adoption compromised Tibet s fighting spirit and territories were progressively lost On the other hand Buddhism provided an exalted spiritual status that served them well when the Mongol hordes came visiting in the late 13th century The Mongols may have boasted military power but for their spiritual needs and especially for magical cures proffered by visiting religious figures nothing could beat a Tibetan lama Throughout the Yuan dynasty founded by Kublai Khan in 1271 the two parties enjoyed a snug duality The Mongols acted as patrons to Tibet in terms of wielding any necessary military protection while Tibetans provided the Mongols with much sought after religious instruction No territory of either party was apparently claimed by the other To neutralize the current Chinese claim that they have always controlled Tibet some of today s more wily commentators also like to point out that the Mongols were hardly Chinese they were Mongol When the Han Chinese re established dominance from the Mongols in 1368 creating the Ming dynasty the patron and priest scenario continued and although current interpretations of this relationship vary dramatically depending on their provenance both China and Tibet seem to have pursued fairly independent paths It was with the arrival in 1644 of the Manchus a Chinese tribe living in Manchuria and their displacement of the Han Chinese to establish the Qing dynasty that the Chinese Tibetan relationship becomes more contentious At first it was all politeness and respect The great 5th Dalai Lama who did so much to open Tibet to the outside world honoured an invitation from the Chinese Emperor travelling to Beijing in 1652 accompanied by 3 000 men Some commentators claim that the Emperor treated him as an equal while others typically Chinese commentators would say as a vassal Less debated is the outcome of a crisis developing some seventy years later when the Manchus marched on Tibet to suppress continuing interference by Mongols from the north in not just the Tibetans affairs but by contagion also their own By 1728 the Tibetans had accepted and were even welcoming these Manchu forces as a permanent deterrent against the Mongols as well as the presence of two Manchu Residents called Ambans who commanded the Manchu troops The Manchus further strengthened their hold on Tibet when they proved instrumental in repelling two invasions of Tibet by Nepal in 1788 and 1791 They would be on hand again in 1841 to squash Zorawar Singh s attempted invasion from Ladakh Throughout this period until the mid 19th century the Manchus remained a force to be reckoned with and the Tibetans indeed lapsed into a relationship with their Chinese overlords that can only be described as subservient However there were no treaties as such no agreed terms to place the relationship on a legal footing The Manchus did not even refer to Tibet as a province which was the case for Chinese Turkestan and Taiwan Moreover the patron and priest connection endured The Chinese as well as the Tibetans revered the Dalai Lama as a living deity However as the Opium Wars and Taiping rebellion sapped Chinese energy and resources their hold on the more remote corners of their Empire began to weaken In Tibet the resulting political vacuum simply fanned the suspicions of those two main players in the Great Game Britain and Russia each suspecting the other of subverting Lhasa to its own ends The British in particular were running out of patience Attempts by the British to engage diplomatically with Tibet or develop trade with the country met with systematic rejection Tibet remained resolutely closed and only through subterfuge could Montgomerie s pundits continue to enter and explore the forbidden kingdom Westerners were totally banned and any Tibetans found providing them assistance were harshly punished or put to death And all the time it seemed Russia was on the point of grabbing this last great prize of Central Asia It was time to act and two men with like views on the matter would not hesitate Lord Curzon Viceroy of India since 1899 was always pushing the Great Game agenda albeit to the alarm of his masters in London and his man Colonel Francis Edward Younghusband one of the most seasoned of players in the Game was more than ready to force open Tibet as soon as Curzon gave him the green light And force it would take In 1903 London gave muted approval for a small expedition charged with opening trade and clearing up a minor border problem Younghusband wrote immediately to his father 52 This is a really magnificent business that I have dropped in for What has brought matters to a head is that the Russians have concluded or tried to conclude a Secret Treaty with Tibet though their Ambassador in London has sworn to Ld Lansdowne British Foreign Secretary that such a thing is the very last thing in the world that his Govt wd dream of doing However from India Peking Paris St Petersburg identical reports arrive so evidently an attempt at least has been made by the Russians to get hold of Tibet and so I am being sent to forestall them and to put our relations with Tibet on such a footing that we will be able to prevent any other power gaining a predominant influence there Younghusband set off with over 3 000 soldiers and an even larger accompanying retinue Strung out along the Chumbi valley a key trade route between India and Tibet the expedition languished as Younghusband waited in vain for Tibetan representatives to materialize for a parley Eventually in the absence of any engagement by the Tibetans he was ordered to proceed to Lhasa Soon the expedition was threatened by hordes of poorly armed Tibetans The ensuing engagements were a bloodbath shocking even Younghusband The expedition nevertheless pushed forward reaching Lhasa on August 3 1904 Younghusband imposed a treaty on whatever remained of the Tibetan government the 13th Dalai Lama had fled north by this time including trade agreements between the two countries and a clause forbidding Lhasa to offer concessions to any foreign power but the British Younghusband and his expedition then retreated Of the feared Russian influence in the Tibetan capital there was no sign Curzon later pushed for Tibet to be recognized as 273 an independent country but the British Government instead supported the notion that China historically exercised some degree of suzerainty over Tibet or at least over Amdo and Kham the eastern parts of Tibet immediately bordering China Perhaps this encouraged the dying Manchu empire to indulge in one last Tibetan fling In 1910 no doubt provoked by the British incursion the Manchus summoned up the energy to impose themselves one last time on a land they had long considered their own This time the Dalai Lama fled south to Sikkim enjoying the hospitality of Charles Bell the British Resident there we met Bell earlier in A Different Type of Reality A mere one year later however it was all over The Manchus were ousted by the revolutionary movement of Sun Yat sen and for the next three decades as China endured years of revolution civil war and oppression by the Japanese Tibet would at long last be left to its own devices In 1913 Tibet declared itself an independent state In the words of Hugh Richardson the last British Officer in Lhasa and passionate advocate of Tibetan independence There was not a trace of Chinese authority in Tibet after 1912 That same year the British continued to try and impose its authority on the region by summoning a tripartite conference between Tibet China now a Republic and Britain at their summer capital in Simla The conference was chaired by Sir Henry McMahon foreign secretary of the British Raj The main objective was nothing less than defining once and for all the boundaries and legal relationship between Tibet and China Precision on such matters while second nature to the British must have been a novelty for the other two parties A secondary objective particularly for the British was agreeing on a boundary between Tibet and British India For the Tibet China questions it was proposed to split Tibet into two parts Inner Tibet comprising much of the eastern provinces of Tibet Kham and Amdo and Outer Tibet comprising the country s western and central provinces Inner Tibet would fall 52 Letter from Francis Younghusband to his father May 21 1903

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Controlling the Margins 274 under the sovereignty of China while Outer Tibet would remain autonomous under nominal Chinese suzerainty a term that could be variously interpreted The question of the border between Tibet and British India was discussed privately between McMahon and the Tibetans and only revealed to the Chinese later as just another red line drawn on the map they were using to discuss the China Tibet boundaries Whether they were taken in by this subterfuge is not clear but when the Republican Chinese later refused to ratify the agreement it was because they objected to the proposed boundary between Inner and Outer Tibet The TibetIndian boundary matter was not mentioned MAO S INTENTIONS AND NEHRU S DILEMMA In 1949 after the communist victory in China Mao lost no time in repudiating the Simla Agreement branding it the subversive act of a colonial power An added annoyance was the right it gave the successors to the British Raj Nehru s young government to maintain garrisons inside Tibet and a representative in Lhasa Hugh Richardson continued in that role on behalf of the Indian Government until 1950 But Tibet beckoned for reasons other than just kicking out a few Indian stragglers It promised to harbour a proliferation of natural resources a promise that today is being fully realized We now know that Tibet contains 40 of China s minerals including coal silver gold iron lithium and cobalt One of the world s largest uranium deposits lies in Tibet Given its physical situation on the roof of Asia Tibet hosts the source of ten major rivers of which the Brahmaputra called Tsangpo in Tibet Ganges Indus Yellow River Yangtze Irrawaddy and Mekong are the better known With the invasion of Tibet Mao had nevertheless created an unprecedented realignment between Asia s two major nations India and China having been separated for millennia by the buffer state of Tibet now faced each other across no less than 2 100 miles of frontier For the Chinese gaining Tibet by force and probably for good was tempered by the fear of India s cultural affinity with Tibet That connection had been made as long ago as 792 when Trisong Detsen initiated the great debate between Chinese and Indian Buddhist teachings and opted for India China may have strong armed Tibet over the centuries but the religious link with India remained deep Mao knew that if his occupation of Tibet encountered serious and escalating opposition it could not be ruled out that India might one day ride to Tibet s rescue For that reason he exhorted his occupying force to temper their reforming enthusiasm and allow the Tibetans to proceed with their life as before at least for the time being What Mao could not have predicted was the mindset of Nehru now leader of the world s second most populous nation after China itself Nehru had fought hard to throw the British out of India and had emerged from the fight not only as the first Prime Minister of India but also as self appointed cheerleader for any developing country freeing itself from a colonial past From this perspective Nehru regarded Mao as a soul mate Thus when Mao ordered the subjugation of Tibet apart from the predictable outcry in India in circles of government and the press Nehru s response was muted In his view it was more important for the new world order to stick together than create a fuss out of a small disturbance in a land locked theocracy living as in feudal times In October 1950 India declined to sponsor a Tibetan appeal to the United Nations and when El Salvador at the prompting of the Pope did sponsor such an appeal India was party to squashing it It should be added that having washed their hands of the subcontinent the British also failed to come to Tibet s assistance Nehru s desire for China s friendship reached an apogee on April 29 1954 when he and Mao signed an agreement known as Panchsheel Five Principles stipulating the following bilateral conditions Mutual respect for each other s territorial integrity and sovereignty Mutual non aggression Mutual non interference in each other s internal affairs Equality and cooperation for mutual benefit Peaceful co existence With Nehru received on the red carpet in Beijing for the signing it couldn t get much cosier At home Indian crowds chanted Hindi Chinee bhai bhai Indians and Chinese are brothers Nehru and Mao 1954 Jawaharlal Nehru visited Mao Zedong in Beijing in October 1954 shortly after both parties signed the Panchsheel agreement which bound both countries to friendship mutual respect and non interference Nehru was keen to align with his neighbour and turned a blind eye to China s liberation of Tibet that had begun three years earlier Government of India 275

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Controlling the Margins 276 A year later Nehru reinforced the relationship at a landmark conference in Bandung Indonesia where heads of state or the nearest equivalent of twenty nine newly independent countries from Asia and Africa put their firm stamp on the end of colonialism heralding a Non Aligned group of nations that positioned themselves outside the orbit of the two main Cold War antagonists Nehru used the occasion to introduce his new friend from China foreign minister Chou En lai to his friends in this new and exciting world But while toasts were offered around the Bandung banqueting tables the Chinese occupation of Tibet was hitting snags with fierce resistance erupting in the eastern province of Kham The Khampas are Tibetans perhaps in the old mould more independent minded than their cousins in the west With their own personal arms albeit of antique variety they were more than willing to fight The first signs of open rebellion occurred in the spring of 1956 as a result of punitive taxation and arbitrary punishments from the invading Peoples Liberation Army not to mention interference with the Khampas religious life But it was the destruction by aerial bombing of the 500 year old monastery at Litang in central Kham that finally triggered a more organized insurrection In December a wealthy trader from Litang called Gompo Tashi Andrugtsang Gompo for short started pulling together local resistance movements to form a unified front Through trade he was well travelled in and outside of Tibet and moreover well connected in the Dalai Lama s government which was still just functioning under the watchful eye of the Chinese But most important Gompo was becoming the point man inside Tibet for clandestine assistance from the US Central Intelligence Agency CIA 277 Celebrating the Tibetan New Year in Beijing 1956 An initial strategy of the Chinese liberation of Tibet was to preserve superficially the country s cultural traditions while forcing Tibet s religious leaders to follow Chinese diktats Here the Chinese leaders are entertaining and educating the two most prominent Tibetan lamas Left to right Chou En lai Chinese Premier 10th Panchen Lama Mao Zedong 14th Dalai Lama Liu Shaoqi Vice Chairman of the Communist Party of China World History Archive TopFoto

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Controlling the Margins 278 The CIA involvement had been cleverly engineered by Gyalo Thondup the Dalai Lama s elder brother Gyalo born in 1928 was educated in China just prior to the Communist victory and became a prot g of Chiang Kai shek Encouraged by the Chinese leader to continue his studies in the United States Gyalo imbibed enough western ideas to visualize a Tibetan society dramatically reformed of its feudal past The lives of ordinary Tibetans he could imagine would no longer be ruthlessly subordinated to the rich and all powerful monasteries Wealth would be shared more equally and punitive debts annulled Gyalo returned to Lhasa in 1952 with a sense of mission The Dalai Lama approved his brother s reforms and the Chinese also gave their guarded approval But Gyalo encountered violent opposition from traditional Tibetan society Moreover for the first time he witnessed the brutality of the Chinese occupation Before the year was out he slipped out of Tibet into India and set himself the task of building foreign support for an independent Tibet His first act was to send a lengthy telegram to Chiang Kai shek now in Taiwan and Dean Acheson Secretary of State under President Eisenhower describing the situation in Lhasa and proposing to mobilize a secret organization to aid the Tibetan resistance Given Nehru s desire to maintain good relations with China Gyalo s presence in India was mildly irksome but Gyalo soon learned to operate with discretion and was eventually befriended by none less than B N Mullik director of the Indian Central Intelligence Bureau Gyalo was allowed to engage politically with the wider world but he had to keep Mullik fully informed Meanwhile Washington in full blown Cold War mode was monitoring events in Tibet closely By 1956 with reports of Gompo s resistance pouring out of Tibet the CIA decided to engage At a meeting with Gyalo that summer at the US consulate in Calcutta the decision was taken to train a pilot group of six Khampa fighters in radio communications and guerrilla warfare and parachute them back into Tibet to provide more accurate reports on the state of the insurgency The first team was dropped in early 1958 to mixed success but that didn t deter the CIA their spigot was now opening wide During the next three years unmarked planes taking off from Thailand dropped over 250 000 kilograms of arms ammunition medical supplies radios and other miscellaneous gear to Gompo s men A disused and isolated camp in the wilds of Colorado called Camp Hale was commandeered to train a growing army of Tibetan recruits Only two levels in the US military hierarchy separated the operational commander from CIA Director Allen Dulles himself The United States simply could not do enough In Tibet Gompo s commanders were now causing serious damage to Chinese forces but the price paid was a dangerous escalation of tension between the Dalai Lama and the occupying power In March 1959 the Dalai Lama completed his religious studies was successfully examined on every arcane dimension of the Tibetan Buddhist canon and proceeded in glorious procession from the Jokhang monastery to his summer palace in Norbulingka west of Lhasa city Until this moment he remained committed to working with the Chinese according to the Seventeen Point Agreement and in line with thousands of years of Buddhist teaching refused to countenance violence as a means to resolve any conflict Through secret channels of communication his brother Gyalo briefed his brother on his outside political activity but scrupulously avoided any mention of the armed insurrection or US involvement Days after entering Norbulingka the Dalai Lama agreed to attend a theatrical performance at the Chinese Army camp but unusually was instructed to come without his customary bodyguard Word of this strange request began to circulate and he awoke the next morning to find his summer palace surrounded by an estimated 30 000 Lhasa citizens determined to prevent him falling into what most supposed was a plot by the Chinese to kidnap their living deity A stand off lasting one week ensued until the Dalai Lama his family and officials saw no option but to stage an escape Wearing a soldier s uniform and carrying a rifle he slipped out of the summer palace with a small retinue crossed the Lhasa River and was taken in hand by a contingent of Khampa soldiers Meanwhile Gyalo was making preparations for the Dalai Lama s arrival Approaching Nehru to request asylum for his brother Nehru simply told him Of course Mr Thondup Two weeks later the Dalai Review of a Tibetan guard of honour in Lhasa 1956 Chinese Vice Premier Chen Yi the 14th Dalai Lama and the 10th Panchen Lama review a Tibetan guard of honour now deployed wearing Chinese army uniforms in May 1956 By now the uneasy truce between the Chinese and Tibetan governments was breaking down AFP Getty Images 279

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Controlling the Margins 282 Lama s party reached Indian soil via Tawang monastery just east of Bhutan chased all the way to the border by the Chinese as he himself later described 53 Just beyond the top of the pass we heard a sound which was unexpected incongruous and alarming in such a remote and barren place an aircraft Suddenly the plane appeared twin engined flying along our route We were very conspicuous hundreds of men and horses on the gleaming snow Everyone dismounted and scattered Most of the people crouched behind boulders the Khampa soldiers unslung their rifles and were ready to fire if anything happened I stood on a dark patch where the snow had blown away The plane came straight over us but did not alter its course and it disappeared so quickly that we never saw the markings on it We went on with a rather uneasy feeling that the Chinese knew exactly where we were and which way we were going But all we could do was divide into smaller parties in case more aircraft were sent perhaps to attack us It was confirmation that I must go into exile and that any place where I stopped in Tibet would likely be bombed or besieged With the Dalai Lama safe on Indian soil Nehru would be haunted by the conflict between his vision of China and India marching as one versus the treachery of the Chinese not keeping their promises in Tibet He would vainly repeat over and over the assurances given him by his friend Chou En lai that Tibet would remain autonomous In fact the Chinese made short shrift of the only agreement going the Seventeen Point Agreement that had been signed under duress by the Tibetan delegation nine years before It was annulled For his part Mao was enraged by Nehru s perfidy in welcoming the Dalai Lama To him this simply confirmed that deep down the Indians would always ride to Tibet s defence And as if to reinforce his suspicions came news of the next escalation in the CIA s campaign Now they were using the Mustang kingdom in north west Nepal to train and provide a base for the Khampa guerrillas The Nepalese Government had decided to turn a conveniently blind eye Worse was to come in 1962 when the Indian spy chief B N Mullik gained approval to develop another batch of Khampa guerrillas choosing a spot just north of Dehra Dun in the Indian foothills as his base Popularly known as Establishment 22 Mullik s private army trained and deployed over 12 000 Tibetans By this time Kennedy was President of the US and the CIA s objectives were beginning to shift Although the ostensible objective on the ground remained the training and arming of Khampa insurgents the goal of achieving independence for Tibet was becoming subservient to a wider US Cold War strategy of hassling communist regimes wherever and whenever it made sense In this regard Tibet was good sport And for Mullik training Tibetans in the art of high altitude warfare might be good for deployment inside Tibet but it also came in useful for simply defending India s borders Inevitably Tibet became marginalized as the big boys rolled up their sleeves for some real power play The 14th Dalai Lama fleeing to India 1959 53 His Holiness The Dalai Lama My Land and My People 1962 By March 1959 tension in Lhasa between the Chinese and Tibetan authorities had reached breaking point Suspecting the Chinese of orchestrating his abduction the Dalai Lama decided to flee Disguised a soldier he escaped with an entourage of Khampa fighters and reached the Indian frontier on March 30 1959 He was reluctantly but kindly received by Nehru Protected by his escort the Dalai Lama is riding a white pony third from the right Popperfoto Getty Images 283

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