'A Great Disservice'

Be warned! Supporting the Tibetan cause orcommiserating with the Dalai Lama and his followers would only encouragesecessionism in various corners of India, primarily in Kashmir and parts of theNortheast. This, in effect, is what a poker-faced Prakash Karat said on thesidelines of the 19th Congress of the CPI(M) at Coimbatore. Indians who supportthe Tibetans, Karat argued, ought to be prepared to concede separatist demandswithin the country. 

His exact words: "Those in India who want to join this chorus for anindependent Tibet will be doing a great disservice to our own country. Are wegoing to support a free Nagaland? Or a free Jammu and Kashmir? Or those othersecessionist demands?"

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

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

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

There can, indeed, be no parallels between the situationin 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 withHan Chinese since the early 1960s. India has never pushed for a one-languagepolicy in Kashmir or the Northeast; China's promotion of Mandarin as the onlylanguage to be taught in schools has led to most Tibetans not knowing orlearning their mother tongue. 

People of Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram or, for that matter, any state inthe country, happily learn, speak and sing in their own languages and dialectsand India promotes and celebrates it and actively encourages development of alllanguages. India has never curbed religious freedoms in any state, includingKashmir. 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 asreligious leaders. 

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

Yes, many mistakes and excesses have been committed by successive governmentat New Delhi, and security forces, in Kashmir and the Northeast; a series ofblunders ranging from the arrogant dismissal of the democratically electedgovernments, to random killings and rapes by security forces and thestep-motherly treatment and dismissive attitude towards the Northeast have onlyserved to alienate large sections of the people of these regions. But, by nostretch of imagination, can the situation obtaining in Kashmir and the Northeast be compared to that in Tibet. The most important reason being that India isa democracy and China is not. People of Kashmir and the Northeast, or anydisturbed region in the country for that matter, exercise their inalienableright to vote. And elections in India, despite many shortcomings, are free andfair and can never be compared to the sham that passes for polls in China. 

There is no way Karat is unaware of these vitaldistinctions. But that he chose to gloss over them speaks volumes for his choiceof loyalty to ideology over his motherland. Karat and other Communists may wellargue that communism advocates a 'stateless' world where political boundariesget erased to coalesce nations into one great socialist order. But do China'scommunists also subscribe to the same view and utopia? Isn't their country moreimportant to them than their ideology? Hadn't it been so, why would China'sruling 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 Indianterritory? The point is that Karat and his fellow communist travelers in Indiaare doing their country a great disservice by defending and promoting China'scause. 

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

In stark contrast, Kashmiris and Nagas (the two minority communities Karatnamed) are prospering not only in their respective states, but in other parts ofIndia where they've settled down. Rather, it can be argued that China played amajor role in fanning unrest in the Northeast and Kashmir. Thuingaleng Muivahwas 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; otherinsurgent groups in the region like Manipur's PLA and Mizoram's MNF alsoreceived similar support from Beijing. China actively encouraged Pakistan tosponsor 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 andsupport to the Dalai Lama is puerile and obnoxious; the Dalai Lama is arecipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (can Muivah or Geelani be contenders?) and isone of the strongest advocates of non-violence in this world. The Dalai Lama isa noble soul and acknowledged as such by all free people of this world. Brandinghim a militant (as China does and Karat faithfully repeats) is to insult theintelligence of every human in this world. 

The Dalai Lama has repeatedly urged his people to abjure violence and hasexpressed distress at the bloodshed in his homeland. He has always acted assobering influence on many of his young followers whenever they displayed anyinclination to take to the path of violence. Such a towering personality cannotbe compared to Muivah or a Kashmiri separatist. Karat ought to have had thedecency to acknowledge this instead of abjectly surrendering his intelligenceand 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 2am (to receive a protest note on Tibetans sneaking into the Chinese mission inNew Delhi, and also, reportedly, over the vice president Hamid Ansari's latercancelled meeting with the Dalai Lama), said with a crooked smile that he was"not well-versed in diplomatic practices". Had our envoy in Washingtonbeen subjected to similar outrageous and humiliating treatment, would Karat'sresponse have been the same? And it's not only Karat--all our politicians, byfailing to condemn this unacceptable act of the Chinese in the strongestlanguage, have also done India a great disservice. This single episode hasprojected India as a pusillanimous state lacking in self-respect that can beinsulted and pushed around at will.