Tibet won’t ease Modi’s China challenge

IN March 2018, the Narendra Modi government, then in its first term, shocked the Tibetan community in India with an unusual directive to senior political and official functionaries across all ministries: stay away from events organised by the Tibetan leadership in India to mark 60 years of the Dalai Lama’s exile. Reason: The note, from the then Cabinet Secretary, said it was a “sensitive time” for India-China relations. Two months later, Modi would travel to Wuhan in China for an “informal dialogue” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, thus turning the page on the Doklam crisis.

Though Tibet is an issue in India-China relations, Beijing has grudgingly accepted this arrangement.

Six years on, the signalling from Delhi to Beijing on the Tibet issue last week shows how Prime Minister Modi, now in his third term but politically weaker, might be preparing to approach ties with Beijing, in tatters since the Chinese ingress into eastern Ladakh in 2020.

The June 19 meeting at Dharamsala between the Dalai Lama and a bipartisan Congressional delegation from the US was not the first time a high-level US team visited the Tibetan leader at his Himachal abode. The Special Coordinator for Tibetan Affairs in nearly every US administration since 2000 has made the trip, with Delhi facilitating the visit each time.

But while the earlier visits were low-key and barely noticed, the composition of the latest all-political delegation, including former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and the chairman of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs, Michael McCaul, ensured a high-decibel event.

The timing, within days of PM Modi being sworn in, could not have been a coincidence. In the US, barely a week earlier, on June 12, a bipartisan legislation which aims “to promote a resolution of the China-Tibet conflict” was passed by the House of Representatives, completing its journey through Congress. Ever since the Resolve Tibet Act was introduced in 2022, China has come down heavily on it as a threat to its sovereignty. The legislation, now awaiting presidential assent, was the centrepiece of the delegation’s meeting with the Dalai Lama.

China’s predictable criticism of the US team’s visit carefully avoided any mention of Delhi. Still, Prime Minister Modi’s interaction with them after their return from Dharamsala is being seen as both defiance of and a message to Beijing. From official statements and reports, both sides discussed India-US relations, and if there was any discussion on China, it was not publicly stated. Group photos of the event showed Modi flanked by Pelosi and, from Delhi’s point of view for its relations with the US, the far more powerful and consequential McCaul.

The Ministry of External Affairs’ statement on this event of India’s “clear and consistent” policy that the Dalai Lama is a “revered religious leader” who is “accorded due courtesies and freedom to conduct his religious and spiritual activities” was a reiteration of a long-held policy.

Delhi does not describe the Dalai Lama as a political leader of the Tibetan people, always referring to him as His Holiness, nor the Tibetan political set-up as a ‘government-in-exile’, preferring instead the appellation Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), with which it liaises for coordinating routine matters relating to the Tibetan community in India. Though Tibet is an issue in India-China relations, Beijing has grudgingly accepted this arrangement, particularly after India’s 2003 reaffirmation that the Tibet Autonomous Region is a part of China during then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s China visit.

So, nothing has actually changed. Yet something has, and experts will say therein lies the difference between policy and messaging, the latter providing opportunities for flexibility. From 2003, when the Vajpayee visit joint statement declared that India “does not allow Tibetans to engage in anti-China political activities” on its soil, to facilitating a high-profile US delegation’s visit to Dharamsala that poked Beijing in the eye, Delhi has altered the message this way and that.

From 2009, India stopped reiterating the One China policy in official statements, dropping a reference to Tibet in this context in a joint statement during then Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit in 2010. Delhi’s point then was that Chinese presence and activity in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, stapled visas to Kashmiris and its posturing on Arunachal Pradesh were of equal concern to India. This was also conveyed by Sushma Swaraj in 2014, days after she took charge as the newly elected Modi government’s External Affairs Minister. The Taiwan representative in Delhi and the CTA president were both present at Modi’s first swearing-in.

Within a year, and through the Doklam crisis, Modi 1.0’s focus on improving relations with China would see it disengage from the Dalai Lama. One year into the LAC crisis, Modi changed tack again. In his first public acknowledgement of the Tibetan leader since 2015, he called the Dalai Lama to wish him on his birthday in 2021, also tweeting about it for good measure. Since then, the two leaders have exchanged birthday greetings every year.

What is different in 2024 is Modi’s new political reality, which is not just an NDA-dependent BJP, but also an Opposition out in strength in Parliament. Over the past four years, the government had brushed aside Congress demands for a white paper and a discussion on the situation at the LAC in eastern Ladakh. Ducking out is not an option anymore. Whether or not India was strong-armed into the US Congressional visit, it gave Modi an early opportunity to be seen sending a signal to China, days after Beijing rapped him on the knuckles with a reminder about One China after he accepted the Taiwan President’s felicitations. Beijing took its time sending its message of congratulations, and that too not from President Xi, but from Premier Li Qiang, a grade below. But is there a plan beyond the signalling?

China specialist Jabin Thomas Jacob, who teaches at Shiv Nadar University, is of the view that as India has borne far too long the cost from China of hosting the Dalai Lama without seeing benefits, the time has come for the government to ask what its policy on Tibet is exactly, including its position on the Dalai Lama’s succession. This is particularly because the continuing tensions on the LAC and the unresolved boundary dispute have everything to do with Tibet.

So far, Modi has found it difficult to even meet the Dalai Lama. The last time they met publicly was before he became PM. The government kept a 2015 meeting between the two leaders under wraps, refusing to acknowledge it publicly. It left the Tibetan leadership angry and bitter. China is Modi 3.0’s biggest foreign policy challenge. The Tibet card will not make it easier.