Why we need to make way for a bold, new India

A Courageous Man

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India is today at a crossroad. There are clearly two paths: one of cautiousness, one of boldness.

Historically, Indian diplomacy has played a balancing act between boldness and cautiousness; often tilting towards the latter. It was good news when External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar stated a few days ago: “If India has to grow, it has to shed its traditional caution, be more confident and articulate its interests.”
It is indeed the need of the hour. The former diplomat, now minister added: “Either you’re in the game or you’re not in the game. The era of great caution and greater dependence on multilateralism is behind us. We need to take risks. Without taking risks, you can’t get ahead. Those are the choices we have to make.”

The first signs

Let us hope that the Modi government will implement the brave words of the minister and take steps in the right decision, especially at a time the situation is far from improving in Ladakh.
Flashback to October/November 1950: Tibet was unashamedly invaded by Communist China. A debate started in India about the importance of Tibet for India’s security and the necessity for Delhi to support the Dalai Lama’s independent nation (for centuries, a peaceful buffer between India and China).
Sardar Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister wrote his now-famous letter (drafted by a diplomat, Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai) to the Prime Minister; it was not answered and soon after Patel died. India had lost a golden opportunity to protect its frontiers.
At that time, a bright young Chinese-speaking IFS officer, Sumul Sinha, posted as Consulate General of India in Lhasa, tried to explain Tibet’s strategic value to his bosses in the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth (Nehru was the Foreign Minister); but Sinha was admonished for not grasping India’s policy of peaceful co-existence.

Ignored warnings
In an internal cable, Nehru wrote to Sinha: “For this reason [world peace], we avoid as far as possible strong language and condemnation of nations …it only increases international tension.”
And then the crux of the Prime Minister’s new credo: “Emergence of strong centralised Government of China, with a revolutionary urge, has been the most significant fact of the present generation. This affects India and the future of Asia depends upon the relationship of India with China.”
The cable continues to eulogise China’s revolution: “This may be a factor for stability and peace of the world or danger to us and to world peace. For this reason, we tried to cultivate friendly relations with China and we believe that this became a stabilising factor.”
During the following years, Sinha would be blasted repeatedly for warning Nehru of the true intentions of Communist China; sadly, he was ignored.
On February 22, 2018, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale requested PK Sinha, the Cabinet Secretary, to issue a “classified circular advisory advising all Ministries/Departments of Government of India as well as State Governments not to accept any invitation or to participate in the proposed commemorative events [of the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India].”
The directive banned the participation of government servants in the Tibet events, “accordingly, you are requested to ensure appropriate action in the matter,” Sinha was told.
Retrospectively, did this help India …or China? It only emboldened China a great deal.
In September 1965, when the ‘Question of Tibet’ came up at the UN General Assembly in New York, Rafiq Zakaria, the Indian Permanent Representative gave a forceful speech during the debate for voting a resolution condemning China. The speech was to the point defending India’s interests as well as supporting Tibet.
Zakaria first mentioned the situation in Tibet between 1959 and 1965 asserting: “Ever since Tibet came under the stranglehold of China, the Tibetans have been subjected to increasing ruthlessness. In the name of introducing 'democratic reforms’ and fighting a ‘counter-revolution’, the Chinese have indulged in the worst kind genocide and the suppression of a minority race.”
The diplomat said China tried: “to destroy the national, ethnical, racial and religious group of Tibetans by killing members of the group. Although the relationship between Tibet and India is centuries old and has flourished all through the ages, we have always taken care not to make that relationship a political problem. Our hearts go out to them in their plight and in terrible suppression that they are suffering at the hands of the Government of the People's Republic of China.”

A question of choice
India is today at a crossroad, there are clearly two paths, one of cautiousness, one of boldness; the first approach (without speaking of over-cautiousness) has led the nation nowhere; in the present planetary conditions, it is far better for India to be frank, honest and daring, while at the same time remaining truthful to India’s eternal values. And for this India need not be aligned with anyone in particular.
The world will be one day be grateful to India if the politicians are able to do that.

Tashkent: who benefited the 'crime'?

A meeting between Lal Bahadur Shastri and the Dalai Lama

In a recent interview to a news channel, Anil Shastri, Congress leader and son of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, stated that his father's death did not look natural.
He affirmed: “When my father's body came to the Delhi airport, the Palam airport as it was called then, and when it was taken out of the aircraft, that came as a shock because his body had turned blue. His face had turned blue and there were white spots on the temple."
He further added: "The moment my mother saw the body, she straightaway came to the conclusion that it was not a natural death …My mother told the family that it was a foul play.”
Anil Shastri asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declassify documents related to Lal Bahadur Shastri's in Tashkent.
Anil Shastri explained that he finds ‘unbelievable’ that the Prime Minister's room, in the capital of then Soviet Uzbekistan had "no call bell, no telephone, no caretaker in his room and no first aid. He had to walk up to the door himself. …His death was badly handled by the Indian government. …Post-mortem could have been done in Tashkent if there was a request from the Indian government or a request from the Indian doctors."
Interestingly, Anil Shastri asserted: "some close associates feel that suspicion revolves around an Indian hand or a foreign power."
I am not Inspecteur Jacques Clouzeau, but simply looking at the 'foreign powers' which benefited the ‘crime’ (or simply Shastri's death), one of them is clearly China.
Let me explain why.
After the 1962 war, Jawaharlal Nehru was physically and psychologically a broken man; he had realized that he had been taken for a ride by Mao - the strategist Chairman of the People’s Republic of China and Zhou, his Machiavellian Premier.
He soon had a stroke and passed away in May 1964.
The Government of India’s policy towards China (and Tibet) immediately changed after Lal Bahadur Shastri became the new Prime Minister.
Shastri decided to take a tougher stand on Tibet and his government voted in favour of the Resolution for Self-determination of Tibet in the UN in 1965.
The Indian Representative to the UN (Rafiq Zakaria) declared:

The naked truth - which all of us must face - is that the Chinese Government is determined to obliterate the Tibetan people, but surely no people can remain for long suppressed. I have faith in the world community. I believe it will be able to help restore the Tibetans all the freedom which we have enshrined, with such dedication, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is for these reasons that we support, fully and wholeheartedly, the cause of the people of Tibet. Our hearts go out to them in their miserable plight and the terrible suppression that they are suffering at the hands of the Government of the People's Republic of China. My delegation will, therefore, vote in favour of the draft resolution.

China was obviously not amused.
But there is more.
One day in September 1965, Tsipon Shakabpa, the then the Tibetan Representative in Delhi came down to South India to meet the Dalai Lama (during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, the Dalai Lama had been sent by the Government of India to South India ‘to avoid the shelling’, told us one day the Tibetan Leader).
Shakabpa was very excited; he had just had a meeting with Prime Minister Shastri who told him that India had decided to recognize the Tibetan Government-in-exile after his return from Tashkent.
Unfortunately for the Tibetans (and for India too), Shastri never returned from Tashkent.
Indira Gandhi, who was subsequently elected Prime Minister, continued her father's Tibet policy.
If Shastri had come back from Tashkent, many things would have been a different (for the Tibetans at least).
There is no doubt that China greatly benefited from Shastri’s untimely death…

I wish the Government of India would also declassify the minutes of the meeting between Lal Bahadur Shastri and Shakabpa.