Nehru was a blundering and impractical politician. He complicated not only Tibet and India’s North East, but also Jammu & Kashmir state. [The latter was left to the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, to act decisively and display courage and competence. He tackled its on-going separatist and terrorist “culture” and ended its “special status” by abrogating the temporary Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, and brought it in line with the other Indian states.] Nehru, in his idealistic fervor and utopian dreams, had not acted like a patriot or a statesman and had surrendered much to China and also to the separatist Kashmiri Muslims. In his era, the favorite political slogan was “Hindi–Chini bhai bhai” (“Indians and Chinese are brothers”). It proved to be one-sided and disastrous to India with a big betrayal by China.
Left to Nehru, he would have messed up the relations between just-free India and the 500 odd princely states the British left in 1947 as “independent kingdoms.” It was due to the wisdom and diplomacy of then-Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, who integrated the states with the Indian Union.
India had excellent relations with Tibet for centuries, and there were deep religious, educational, cultural, and trade ties between them. Actually, two of India’s most sacred and ancient places of pilgrimage— Kailash and Man Sarovar —are in Tibet and are still visited by Indians, though in a very restricted number because of the Chinese policies.
There have long been Indian scholars visiting Tibet, conducting research, studying there, and also bringing valuable material for Indians to study. This kind of relation was much less with Tibet and China—a distant land.
When the British left in 1947, India had “inherited” the British influence in Tibet, but soon Nehru gave it up.
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When I was nine, my parents were arrested before my own eyes from our home in Beijing. They weren’t criminals: just Falun Gong practitioners.
La reforma aprobada en 2018 dio mayor sustento a los derechos fundamentales en la Constitución cubana; un tenue rayo de esperanza para la población. Pero, en la práctica, los cubanos siguen sometidos a fuertes limitaciones. Sobre todo la libertad de expresión y la libertad de asamblea se limitan considerablemente. De hecho, el Gobierno las impide activamente. El lento progreso digital en Cuba y la crisis causada por el coronavirus generan aun más restricciones para los cubanos.
Washington DC, Aug.28.