Perspectivas / Perspectives

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.

The journalist, Ken Yang, from The Epoch Times Taiwan, said that the CCP has been persecuting Falun Gong practitioners for 21 years and that the CCP has committed the crime of forced organ harvesting. He asked, “would the Department of State step in and take specific actions to stop the forced organ harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party?” [ Read more ] 

A Ray of Hope

by Teresa You

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.

My mother, a hospital worker, had just been looking for a spiritual practice, a way to live around her many illnesses. My father, a professor and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member, followed suit after he saw my mother’s improvement in health.

When I was younger, my mom would tell me stories about how people would commit suicide during the Cultural Revolution because they were so humiliated. And before that, how the landlords had all of their money taken away, simply because everyone had to be “the same.”

My parents used to tell me these stories about other people, but when the Falun Gong persecution began, it finally happened to them too—even though my dad was a Party member who taught communism, socialism, and Marxism in school.