By P Kharel
Apparently to acquire maximum media mileage, especially in the ever supportive “international” news outlets, the 91st birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama created a dubious stir in the Kathmandu political circuit while the rest of the 30 million Nepalese looked askance at what the event was really worth about.
Security sources estimated the gathering to be of about 500. Actually, the number itself is not to be belittled; its meaning is in the symbolic attention paid and the publicity gained by the organisers for their intended cause. A sizeable section of the attendees constituted members of the Kathmandu-based foreign community, including the diplomatic corps.
A posse of seven former Nepalese ambassadors to China issued a joint statement raising concern over the birthday celebrations of the patron of Tibetan government-in-exile, formally named Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), operating from Dharmashala in India’s Himachal Pradesh, where the spiritual leader of Buddhist Yellow Hats has his regular residence. The Dharmashala is constructed on the land provided by the government of India and the funds offered by Western agencies, at the initiative of the United States’ government.
The idea of Dalai’s birthday event was to draw wide attention to what the Tibetan government-in-exile wanted. The Chinese did not bother to register a formal protest to the Balendra Shah government, as it would have been ridiculous not to allow a technically formal programme.
Some Nepalese news outlets quoted a number of anonymous former foreign secretaries who described the recent Tibetan exiles’ activity as a matter of consternation. Such opinions are worthless when the retired bureaucrats cannot even identity themselves.
REACTIONS: Former Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal, a communist leader, was unhappy over the Belendra Shah government allowing the programme being held. Former Maoist Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha echoed comrade Khanal’s tone and tenor.
What it all boils down to is that much ado about an incident of birthday celebration, even if with political motive, is being made out by some leftist factions and their ilk at a time when even the Chinese have stood silent, though glumly. Free Tibet supporters in many countries use the Dalai’s birthday as an occasion for a political stunt.
Communist China’s Tibet region directly concerns the United States-led West and, quietly, neighbouring India because of its obvious soft underbelly value. Tibetan air pilots receive CIA-supervised mountain flight training in the American state of Colorado, known for its Rocky Mountains and plans for rocking or toppling the regimes the US likes or hates.
DUBIOUS DEVELOPMENT: The late American syndicated columnist Jack Anderson had corroborated Beijing’s belief that Tibetan exiles continued receiving such trainings from the American intelligence agency keen on stirring rebellion in the vast and very sparsely populated Tibetan expanse that is officially accorded the status of an autonomous region.
That should not be surprising. By the beginning of the 1960s, the American intelligence agency CIA’s operatives were active in Nepal. In the guise of supplying aid materials to the northern districts, the CIA airdropped weapons and other equipment to Khampa rebels that marauded the region. It had constructed a helipad in Kathmandu for that purpose.
The issue threatened to rupture the kingdom’s ties with the gigantic, most-populous and communist neighbour up North. After King Mahendra ordered his security forces to step up vigilance against the armed Tibetan hit-and-run fighters on the Nepal-China border, CIA activities got reduced and far less visible.
With a population of less than 20 million over a territory of several times larger than Nepal’s, Tibet holds China’s nub of ballistic missiles programme, military and centres. Also known as the “Water Tower of Asia”, Tibet is the source of eight major river systems in South Asia, South-East Asia and East, Asia, catering to two billion people.
RISK-STREWN: It is foolhardy to think that China will ever concede to the US—or, for that matter, any other country—the Tibetan region. It bodes ill for others who side with the oldest existing and largest communist country’s political opponents, only to invite the inevitable hard-hitting consequences.
China letting off Tibet is not like Russia allowing the Baltic states of Estonia, Lativia and Lithuania to go independent after the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991. In fact, even the three states claim vulnerability and complain against Russia’s intentions. Yet, as combine, they do not offer a fraction of the immense strategic advantages Tibet gives China.
In October 2020, the White House for the first time received the CTA and described the visit as a “historic feat”. Beijing does not like foreign governments interacting with the CTA. Later, media reports disclosed that Dr Sangay, CTA’s Sikyong (president), had at least a dozen meetings with White House officials at various locations over a decade. Some of the meetings are likely to have been at the Pentagon. Sangay, who led CTA from 2011 to 2021, rejoiced the meetings as “yet another win for Tibetans”. His successor Penpa Tsering began his second term as the Sikyong in May this year.
CHINA CHIDES: CTA members are also known to hold regular talks with US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues. Communist China chided the capitalist world’s nation for such encounters with the exiles. Sometime ago, the Bllomberg news outlet quoted a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson: “The setting up of the so-called coordinator for Tibetan issues is entirely out of political manipulation to interfere in China’s internal affairs and destabilise Tibet. China firmly opposes that.”
In 1951, a week after the declaration of democracy having arrived in Nepal in February, King Tribhuvan addressed the security forces at Tudikhel saying, “Nepal desires to keep India and China at equidistance. India is as much a friend as China is.” That line was the result of Crown Prince Mahendra’s solemn suggestion to his father.
At Hyderabad House in New Delhi, where the Nepal royals were housed during their flight to the Indian capital. Crown Prince Mahendra had watched how newly independent India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his bureaucrats exerted heavy pressures on the king who had staked his throne to ignite a revolution for democracy in one of the oldest independent countries in the world.
The Balen team should spare a thought to China’s sensitivities, Western ploys and Nepal’s long-established policy via-a-vis its two neighbours to avoid inviting a prairie fire.
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