Portrait of India by Ved Mehta

Author:Ved Mehta [Mehta, Ved]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Tibet

Tibet, which is a four-hundred-and-seventy-thousand-square-mile plateau at an altitude varying from twelve thousand to twenty-four thousand feet—one of the highest elevations in the world—lies between the Himalayan and Kunlun ranges, and is bounded by the People’s Republic of China on the north and east and by NEFA, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, and Ladakh on the south and west. Unlike the other Himalayan states, which only live in fear of the Chinese, Tibet has been fully incorporated into China. In 1950 and 1951, after a series of clashes between Chinese troops and the inhabitants of the eastern marches of Tibet, the Chinese imposed on the Tibetans a treaty known as the Seventeen-Point Agreement. Its key provisions stipulated that the Tibetans should ‘unite and drive out imperialist aggressive forces from Tibet,’ that they should ‘return to the big family of the motherland—the People’s Republic of China,’ and that their government should ‘actively assist the People’s Liberation Army to enter Tibet and consolidate the national defense.’ Tibet had been loosely, nominally under the dominion of China from the fourteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth; there had been instances of Tibet’s rulers’ doing homage to the emperors of China, and Chinese ambans, or representatives, had resided in Lhasa off and on. Except for this connection with China, and some contact with Mongolia and India, Tibet had always been all but cut off from the rest of the world. In 1904, however, the British, taking advantage of the weakness of both Tibet and China, penetrated all the way to Lhasa. In time, they established amicable relations with Tibet, posting a few garrisons and establishing a few trading centers, a few rest houses, and token postal, telegraph, and telephone facilities—all without reference to China. One aim of the Seventeen-Point Agreement was to restore Sino-Tibetan relations to what the Chinese believed they had been before the British penetration. In 1954, India relinquished her right, inherited from the British, to maintain the garrisons and facilities in Tibet in the Agreement for Trade and Cultural Intercourse, which gave the Chinese what amounted to carte blanche in Tibet. In 1959, soon after the Dalai Lama fled to India, the Chinese reorganized the local government in Tibet, publicized denunciations of the Dalai Lama by his ecclesiastical deputy the Panchen Lama, and put an end to whatever autonomy Tibet had enjoyed.

Altogether, about eighty thousand refugees have followed the Dalai Lama out of Tibet; though the Chinese have attempted to seal the borders, refugees continue to slip out. Their experiences dramatize the consequences of what is generally regarded as Chinese enslavement. Though numerous volunteer organizations in Europe and North America have been mobilized to help these refugees, though the Indian government has been generous in its aid to them, though the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile has supervised the work of rehabilitation, and though everyone concerned has given some thought to settling them in conditions approximating those of Tibet, transplantation has left them devastated. Having lived at high altitudes, in small settlements with sufficient

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