Is China pitching Tibetans Vs Tibetans
By Colonel Satish Singh Lalotra
“In saving Tibet, you save the possibility that we are all brothers & sisters. – Richard Gere.
In the last year military standoff between the two Asian Giants across the LAC, new paradigms of military statecraft have been postulated, which India has yet to chew and digest in its entirety. If the news reports in the past few weeks are any indication, it stands to conviction that India as a last refuge to the Tibetan diaspora has to redo its math.In the month of April this year an Indian national daily took out a scoop by stating that special units composed of Tibetans were being raised by the PLA(People’s liberation army )with recruitment initiatives going on in an overdrive in the TAR/Tibetan autonomous region. There have been reports too that China intends to create a special Tibetan army to seek its deployment in the TAR with an avowed aim to blunt the Indian initiative of SFF employment which hitherto was kept under the warps by successive dispensations of this subcontinent.
It is extremely difficult to ascertain out the veracity of these reports which appear in the Indian media of and on. The entire rigmarole of recruitment initiative of Tibetans in TAR by the PLA was a quick response to the lightning speed with which SFF raised the bar of brinkmanship a notch higher by its quick manoeuvres on the night of 29/30 th August 2020 and took control of the Kailash range south of the PangongTso lake in eastern Ladakh. Having served with SFF/Est 22 for more than 3 and half years I was naturally beguiled with the new revelation of Tibetans getting into focus of attention of the PLA, which hitherto relegated this hardy tribe to the margins. In fact prior to the 1990s there was a tendency in China and PLA in particular to invoke the cast/class background as the foremost criteria while recruiting the Tibetans in the PLA. The sons of big farmers, aristocrats, wealthy traders who took part in the famous uprising and against the Chinese were barred from recruitment procedures. Only the sons of the so called proletarian families with clean backgrounds and sound family connections were given the luxury of joining the army.
In fact the rise of Deng Xiaopeng ushered in an era of change with the kicking in of an “Open door policy” which envisaged waiving off class distinctions for recruitments with everyone in the same league vying with each other to serve the motherland. It has to be understood that the major part of recruitment in the PLA takes place in the winter months annually when the farming season is slack and drafting is easy unlike in India where everything is dictated on the anvil of expediency of a given situation. The recruitments take place in the sub -military district (SMD) in every county (Dzong) of the TAR/Tibetan autonomous region which reflects the open door policy of Deng Xiaopeng in its entirety. The officer in charge an equivalent to ‘Thoantang” i.e the Regimental commander is generally at the helm of such drives for drafting of recruits in the PLA in their areas of jurisdiction.Not to be left behind to carve out a name for himself the present Chinese president Xi Jinpingin August 2021 exhorted the country to extensivelymobilise the Tibetans in the TAR to participate in a struggle against separatism and to teach truncated Chinese history to the Tibetans with an eye on the Tibetan diaspora living in exile in India.
Beijing has in fact pulled out all stops in the way of indoctrination of these gullible Tibetans in the TAR to the detriment of all and sundry. For Beijing is aware that anything short of such an activity will not let them reach their objective of complete subjugation of Tibet even after so many decades. After the SFF march over the famous Kailash range in Aug 2020 in eastern Ladakhrange, the CMC, Central military commission has gone on an overdrive to strengthen military training for the high school students of Tibet too with an eye to capture the captive audience in TAR who till now were only bystanders to the whole imbroglio developing in front of them. These high school students are the backbone of PLA on the Tibetan plateau.Slowly and steadily these recruitment agencies have been unfolding their sinister game plan of utter subterfuge and spreading of canards like discrediting of Tibetans living in exile in India. Their oft repeated refrain being that HH Dalai Lama and most of his 80000 (eighty thousand ) followers have jettisoned their own brethren in Tibet to their dismal fate of deprivation, poverty and underdevelopment .They have in fact injected lies in the heart and minds of local Tibetans to the extent by asserting that it is they the Chinese who have brought money, material and a change of world perspective in their lives to make them amalgamate with the rest of the world.
A new hitherto fore concept unleashed by the wily Chinese in all its monstrosity is the ‘Open mobile schools” to integrate the nomadic and shifting border population of Tibetans all along the LAC to inculcate a jointness of border defence management by instilling in them that by grazing in the remotest of the Tibetan plateau they are guarding their borders and the grazing rights to sustain themselves.This linearity of thought and action has been lapped up by the Tibetans in TAR, and now they identify themselves more vehemently with their areas.It is only a matter of time that the wily Chinese may up the ante and steer away the gullible Tibetans from their normal grazing activities by goading them to ingress into the Indian territories to grab the grazing grounds as has been the wont in the central sector of Barahoti so often as also in areas like Demchok, Hanle ,etc in the Ladakh region. In contrast to the above active participation of the PLA in mobilizing the hearts and minds of the Tibetans in Tibet what has India done except to treat the Tibetan diaspora with a sense of indifference and pariah like attitude by keeping them under the warps.A ready and potent force of Tibetans is languishing in the various TRCs, Tibetan refugee camps spread all along the length and breadth of India awaiting their gainful employment and a sense of self-worth. Has Indian dispensation risen to the actual status of a graceful host to accommodate the trials and tribulations of its Tibetan guests since 1959?
Has India ever undertaken programmes in our border areas to integrate tribes like the Bhutias, Lepchas etc which derive close affinity with the Tibetans and tried to assimilate them in the national security framework? We in fact have repeatedly slighted this potent force from flexing its muscles to our own detriment.There have been systematic acts of omission and commission in the past which having further pushed this race into the arms of oblivion doesn’t portend well for a country of India’s stature. ‘WE CHAT” a very forceful means of two way interaction app was the only via media by which these Tibetan diaspora living in India were able to speak to their parents and near and dear ones in mainland Tibet . But in the aftermath of Galwan incident in last year May/June this app too has been banned by the GOI, being a Chinese product.
If indications coming from the Tibetan plateau are anything to suggest or nudge us into an action driven mode, India may have a restive Tibetan population on its hands which may change loyalties and cross over their affections to our adversaries i.e China under pressure of expediencies of changed geo-political landscape. Has India done any perspective planning to make safe this Tibetan population and use it for its own ends off course with a legitimate quid pro quo which till date appears to be missing?There is no doubt that communist China sees with a jaundiced eye the fact that India has been able to recruit several thousands of its Tibetan diaspora in SF,F a force multiplier in itself. The PLA knows that they cannot trust the Tibetans and its exile government in Dharamshala to do their bidding. India on its part must now put to rest its moribund Tibetan policy and go into an active overdrive by taking help of all force multipliers in the shape of Tibetan diaspora living in India, US,UK ,Canada ,Germany and Scandinavian countries ,” Radio Free Asia ” beaming from Washington ,DC as also the exile government and its appendage the CTA (Central Tibetan administration) to shape up its narrative to call the bluff of PLA and its master the Chinese government . Only a multi-pronged attempt can dislodge the Chinese hegemony being perpetrated in the high Himalayas.
(The writer is a retired army officer)
