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TO watch the unfolding of a tragedy in more or less real time is a deeply disconcerting experience. One might have imagined that the recurrent coverage of street protests in Kashmir or the live telecast of the 2002 carnage in Gujarat would have inured us to the horrors of state repression. Nevertheless, the brutal crackdown on pro-autonomy/freedom protesters in Tibet by the Chinese forces has disturbed significant sections of our populace, forcing all of us to question our received wisdom about how we should respond to such situations.

Notwithstanding the high regard for the Dalai Lama, and the deep-seated unease with, if not a distrust of, the government of the People’s Republic of China (a legacy of the 1962 war), Tibet has never featured high in our political subconscious. Over the six decades since the Chinese first moved in and secured Tibet, both the state and mainstream political opinion in India have come to accept that Tibet is an inalienable part of China.

Yet, whatever the scholarly debate on the character of the erstwhile Dalai regime, few buy into the official Chinese position that the PRC had ‘liberated’ the region from its religio-feudal servitude and helped ordinary Tibetans join the modern world. Far many more believe that Tibet was/is a unique region whose special characteristics need to be preserved, in part from the threat of Chinese interventionism. Possibly this is why, for the first time, the Indian Parliament actually discussed the recent developments in Tibet despite our normally over-cautious response to the ‘internal’ affairs of another country.

Expectedly, the official Indian response has been couched in generalese – regret at the bloodshed, the need for dialogue and the use of peaceful means to resolve outstanding issues, and so on. Given both the unresolved border demarcation with China, as also the need for evolving a more constructive relationship with PRC, it is difficult to see how any Indian government would act otherwise. In any case, the Indian state enjoys little leverage with China. And what was true in 1959, when the Dalai Lama was forced to flee Tibet, is even more true now.

It is nevertheless unclear why Tibetan refugees in India, many of whom were born in this country, are still denied elementary political rights. Why, for instance, should the peaceful ‘long march’ of the Tibetan refugees to the Indo-China border be dispersed with unacceptable force and activists jailed, and this well before they were anywhere near the border. Do they not have the right to peacefully protest what they perceive as an erosion of autonomy and violation of cultural and political rights in their ‘homeland’? Has the Indian state in agreeing to Chinese demands diminished the moral space in politics, both national and global?

Or is it, as many have alleged, that engaging in any action embarrassing to China might open up India to similar interventionism. After all, the Indian record in many regions that we regard as an inalienable part of our territory is open to serious criticism. And it is after decades of mistrust that relations between the two neighbours are finally approaching normalcy. To risk that for an abstract moral principle may be too high a price. In a worsening scenario China could conceivably step up its assistance to our neighbours, further fanning incipient anti-Indian sentiment.

Condemning China for its undoubted brutality in Tibet or keeping silent and acquiescing to its actions is, however, too simplistic a view. It needs to be realized that 2008 is not 1989 when the Chinese were able to get away with the Tiananmen massacre. Not only is the PRC far more globally integrated economically, dependant on international goodwill for its continued growth, it is today constrained to be far more sensitive to global concerns on human rights.

Moreover, greater interpersonal connectivity and the presence of media make it far more difficult to control news, more so in an Olympic year. Rather than treat the Dalai Lama as a ‘splittist’, and worse, a pawn on behalf of western powers keen to humiliate China, would it not be a demonstration of Chinese self-confidence and generosity to use his good offices to help restore normalcy? Eroding his moral authority can only push the Tibetan resistance leadership into more recalcitrant hands.

Tibet poses a challenge not only to China but us, both as a state and a people. What has kept us together, a bewildering mosaic of peoples and cultures, is a political style that recognizes and respects diversity. How we respond to the Tibetan question and people is equally a signal to our many small and voiceless minorities that they too matter, that they will not be sacrificed at the altar of realpolitik. Surely that is a principle worth fighting for.

Harsh Sethi