Tibet: When the Gods spoke, India Tibet Relations 1947-1962, by Claude Arpi

Claude Arpi’s third volume on relations between India and Tibet covers the deepening Chinese penetration of the plateau and Beijing’s administrative and military consolidation there. The free hand given to China in its consolidation in Tibet was made possible when the two Asian giants signed the Panchsheel Agreement on Tibet in 1954. This was the document with which India withdrew its effective presence in Tibet in the form of two trade agencies and military escorts, though India’s mission in Lhasa operated as before. The agreement’s guiding principle of non-interference in and respect for each other’s territorial integrity left China to do in Tibet whatever it willed. Beijing imposed land ‘reforms’ and a new leadership and administrative structure that led to the 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

Digging deep into India’s national archival treasure trove, Claude Arpi has pulled out a real gem. This gem is the assessment of the various Indian officers, and of the character and motives of those figures, both political and spiritual, within the Tibetan leadership structure. The comments by India’s Tibet hands include the urgent need for Tibet to reform its social structure, making it fair and just for all Tibetans. This Indian examination of the strength and weakness of the Tibetan leadership came for closer scrutiny when the Dalai and Panchen Lamas visited India in 1956 for the Buddha Jayanti commemorations.

These lengthy and fascinating reports were submitted to New Delhi by Apa Pant, the political officer based in Gangtok, who dealt with affairs of Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim, PN Menon, the former Indian consul general in Lhasa, and PN Luthra, special officer of border areas in the Ministry of External Affairs.

Apa Pant was convinced that “Old Tibet cannot fight new dynamic China.” He suggested that “In Tibet, unless the high monks, thinkers and saints start seriously the re-organizing of the whole social and economic structure which is today based on privileges and is corrupt, there is no point in calling Tibet a Buddhist land…”

Apa Pant also suggested that “The Chinese have also a doctrine of social revolution and change which they are certain will help the common man. The Tibetans shall have to have an equally powerful dynamic policy of social change.”

Apa Pant made this fearful prediction. With China creating the conditions for the settlement of Tibet by Chinese migrants, “Tibet as we know it today will be annihilated, the process for its complete absorption into China (has) started.”

Colonel PN Luthra was assigned to the Panchen Lama’s party in its travels throughout India. About China’s designs on Tibet, the astute colonel has this to say. China, he wrote, “was eating Tibet like an artichoke, leaf by leaf.”