| Dalai Me Out |
30 June 2003
|
Sino-Indian Summit Kills Tibet
India and China were making nice last week, talking about trade and better relations between the world's two most populous countries. In one of those "blink and you miss it" statements, the government of India recognized as Chinese the former country of Tibet. Perhaps now the Dalai Lama will have to get a real job.
There was some wiggle room worked into the final communiqué between the parties. India agreed that the Tibetan Autonomous Region was Chinese, but whether the TAR is the exact same area as Tibet is not certain. However, the whistling in the dark from the Dalai Lama's people, the Tibetan government-in-exile, suggests that they have lost an ally in their efforts (the pathetic resistance they have put up, allegedly for spiritual reasons, cannot be called a struggle) at independence and self-determination.
Tashi Wangdi, representative of the Dalai Lama, was quoted by the Times of India as saying, "We always maintained that improvement of relations between India and China would be helpful for us in finding an amicable solution for Tibet." Much as good relations between Moscow and Berlin in 1939 benefited Poland.
The fact is that independent Tibet has been a fiction since 1962 at least, and that any hope of Tibet being a self-governing entity under the People's Republic is fading. What remains of the Tibetan culture will be ground down to nothing in the next three generations, and as unpopular as it is to say so, it is the fault of those who pretended to be the resistance.
As a spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama may be a wise and great man -- ignorance of the finer points of Buddhism prevent judgment. As a leader of a nation, however, he is less effective than the White Russians who sat in Paris and dreamed of restoring the Tsar in the 1920s. Passive resistance and all the rest does not work against a foe who is prepared to kill. The proof will come when Tibet is nothing more than a geographical expression -- some reading this will live to see it.