New Delhi, November 9
Amid strains in Sino-Indian ties over the Dalai Lama’s ongoing visit to Arunachal Pradesh, New Delhi has denied the charge that the Tibetan spiritual leader’s tour of the north-eastern state was under its pressure.

“The Dalai Lama is free to travel anywhere in India…I have not heard the suggestion comes from us as we do not deal with the spiritual travels of spiritual leaders. He has to visit his flock as he sees fit,” Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor told the India Economic Summit today. His statement was in line with what was conveyed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao last month on the fringes of the ASEAN Summit in Thailand.

Tharoor said he was sure that the initiative to visit to the state would have come from the Dalai Lama himself. The Indian minister was apparently commenting on a report in Global Times, a leading Chinese daily, which was circulated by the Chinese official media also, that came down heavily on India for the Dalai Lama’s visit.

The Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal at this critical moment was “probably because of pressure from India”, Hu Shisheng, a researcher of Southern Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said. “By doing so, he (Dalai Lama) can please the country that has hosted him for years,” he added in the news report, alluding to the fact that the Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India for decades now.

Hu apprehended that the appearance and activities of the Dalai Lama in Arunachal might foment anti-China sentiment among people living in the region. “When the conflict gets sharper and sharper, the Chinese Government will have to face it and solve it in a way India has designed.”

The newspaper quoted another scholar, who was not identified, as saying that India might have “forgotten the lesson of 1962 when its repeated provocation resulted in military clashes. India is on this wrong track again”.

Meanwhile, People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, has hit out at the Dalai Lama for talking about the situation in Tibet. “The 14th Dalai Lama used to say that there exists constant threat and long-lasting fear in Tibet when asked by press a few days ago. This nonsense only reveals the hollowness and self-deceiving gimmick deep inside the Lama’s heart. As an economically thriving Tibet had drawn increasing attention from the world, the Dalai Lama could only see his hidden scheme to disrupt China’s unity gradually falling apart,” the daily said.

Claiming that great changes had taken place in Tibet during the last 50 years, it said the people there were now enjoying rising amenities. The Dalai Lama, however, hated to see a unified and harmonious Tibet, it alleged.