Skip to main content

Modi may "barter away" Tibetan cause in exchange of China giving up some of its territorial claims: Report

 
Is Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking to "barter" the Tibetan cause in exchange of China giving up some of its territorial claims? It would seem so, if a top report published in one of Japan's most powerful media outfits, Nikkei, is any indication.
In a sensational report, Nekkei quotes Indian government sources to say that Modi used rumours of terminal cancer, from which the Dalai Lama is said to be suffering, "to build a more conciliatory relationship with China."
According to this report, in April, during an informal summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, China, Modi tried to portray the India-China relationship as "improved." During the meeting, "Modi apprised President Xi of the Dalai Lama's health and the Indian position on Tibet after his death."
"This information from Modi took Xi by surprise, and the two discussed the issue for a long time at the Wuhan summit", the report adds.
Based on anonymous government sources. the report says, the Dalai Lama's prostate cancer "has spread to his lymph nodes" and that "his life would not be so long", adding, in the past two years, the Dalai Lama has received treatment at a hospital in the US.
Meawhile, people close to the Dalai Lama worry that word of this was leaked by US authorities. Now the Dalai Lama "will be going to Switzerland for radiotherapy in the month of August," Nikkei reports.
The report suggests that this is not for the first time when the two leaders discussed Tibet. "When the leaders met in 2015 and 2016, they informally discussed a proposal for India to stop accepting new Tibetan exiles after the death of the Dalai Lama in return for China withdrawing its territorial claim on some parts of northern India", it says.

Source: Nikkei
India is known to be accepting Tibetans for humanitarian and strategic reasons for the last six decades, as it has believed that Tibet is something of a buffer zone between the world's two most populous countries since shortly after India's independence in 1947.
But, lately, says the report, impression has gained ground among Indian policy makers that China has strengthened its grip on the Tibet Autonomous Region, and in 2017 new exiles numbered 57, a sharp drop from over 2,000 a decade earlier.
Dharmasala, from where the Tibetan government-in-exile, Nikkei reports, is also agog with rumours about changing stance of the Government of India. Tibetan exiles, it points out, are
"deeply worried about the 83-year-old religious leader", with Modi trying to "lowering the standing of the Tibetan government-in-exile."
In fact, the word has spread that the Dalai Lama may be in serious condition has quietly spread. "I have heard that His Holiness is not well," Migmar Chodon, a 49-year-old housewife in Dharamsala has told Nikkei. "Though I don't know well about it, I am worried"
In 1959, Tibetan people rose in revolt in Lhasa, Tibet, which had been occupied by China's military, the People's Liberation Army, and the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India. At least 130,000 Tibetans later left their homeland. At present, 85,000 Tibetans live in India, about 8,000 of them in Dharamsala, which hosts the Tibetan government-in-exile and a temple where the 14th Dalai Lama lives.
Meanwhile, a career diplomat of the Indian Foreign Service, MK Bhadrakumar, who has served in the former Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey, has suggested that there is much truth Nikkei's report.
He believes, Modi knows, the bitter India-China legacy "is not his creation and, therefore, he is best placed than any of his predecessors to put a full stop to the delusional belief that we are holding a ‘Tibet card’ with a unique potential to leverage Chinese policies toward India."

Comments

TRENDING

Will Trump administration use US religious freedom report to further pressure India into submission?

Already under pressure from the Trump administration, which has reportedly asked India—successfully, some would say—to remove high tariffs on American products, there is reason to wonder whether Washington might use the recommendations of the latest United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Annual Report to further act against the Government of India.

Gujarat No 1 here too? Cops justify torture, insist: Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, migrants are 'naturally prone' to crimes

A new report, "Status of Policing in India Report 2025: Police Torture and (Un)Accountability", states that Gujarat tops the list of 16 states and one Union Territory, with 63% of its police personnel "strongly endorsing" torture. Furthermore, 49% of Gujarat’s police personnel were found to have what the report calls a "high propensity" for torture, considering it "necessary and acceptable" for obtaining information across various crime categories—second only to Jharkhand (50%). In sharp contrast, Kerala has the lowest percentage of police personnel "justifying" torture (3%) and the lowest "high propensity" for violence (1%).

A traditional Marxian view? Like nuclear weapons, AI poses 'direct existential threat' to human civilization

The other day, I was talking with YS Gill , whom I have known as an incisive analyst since my youth, when he, like me, was associated with the Communist Party of India (CPI). A passionate science activist committed to creating awareness of scientific thinking, he told me about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it would lead to mass unemployment. Predicting that AI would replace human intervention in India’s call centers, he estimated that about 70 lakh people would be rendered jobless.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

A conman, a demolition man: How 'prominent' scribes are defending Pritish Nandy

How to defend Pritish Nandy? That’s the big question some of his so-called fans seem to ponder, especially amidst sharp criticism of his alleged insensitivity during his journalistic career. One such incident involved the theft and publication of the birth certificate of Masaba Gupta, daughter of actor Neena Gupta, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, which Nandy was editing at the time. He reportedly did this to uncover the identity of Masaba’s father.

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

Martyrs’ Day at Sanand: Remembering Vinod Kinariwala amidst politics of remembrance

I was urged by a close relative, considered across my family as a binding force, to attend a grand ceremony on Martyrs' Day, March 23, along with four other relatives. The event, called Veeranjali (homage to martyrs), was to be held in an open space near Sanand town, about 15 kilometers from Ahmedabad. Martyrs' Day has been observed across India since independence, as it was on this day in 1931 that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru were executed.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.