Tibet: Asia's Hungary Reaction in India
SABAVALA, SHAROKH
Tibet Asia's Hungary—Three Articles All of Asia is eagerly anticipating a historic encounter that will take place in a few days—between India's Premier Jawaharlal Nehru and Tibet's Dalai Lama. It...
...And a co-signatory, at the very first test, has shown what it thinks of the Indian desire really to live at peace with everyone...
...In any case, Panch Shila is a failure...
...Perhaps Indians were unusually naive to think that it did, or perhaps, knowing the dangers they were willing to experiment, both at home and abroad...
...In April 1955, the principles were incorporated in the final communique of the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia...
...It is nearly three years now that Tibetan tribesmen have been in revolt against Chinese Communist repression...
...It then went on openly to support the British Indian Government, to denounce the "Quit India" movement which Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress party had launched, and to help the British and Indian police hound and capture many leaders of the freedom struggle...
...Nehru came down to Parliament to wonder aloud if these letters were "ever written...
...Today, the principles lie buried in the ruins of Tibetan monasteries in Lhasa, together with Tibetan autonomy, Sino-Indian friendship, Indian pride and at least part of Nehru's reputation...
...But this time the comrades from across India's borders are conspicuously absent...
...The Committee is sponsored by the party President, Indira Gandhi, who is Nehru's daughter...
...Richard Lowenthal, a frequent contributor to these pages, is the well-known authority on the Communist movement in Europe and Asia...
...Here we present a series of articles on the significance of Tibet's revolt, as seen from three different angles...
...Then Peking released letters between the God-King and the Chinese authorities in Lhasa to substantiate the claim that the former remained friendly to the Chinese regime...
...Pleased with this solution, Nehru then went on to suggest a wider application...
...Today, Tibet has paid the price of this Indian indifference...
...Indian Communists no longer hide their willingness to be agents of foreign powers...
...In Bombay and Calcutta there have been protest meetings and processions...
...This, then, is the setting for the most recent and savage exposition of ruthless suppression of a weak people by a strong country...
...Never has Parliament seen such an uproar...
...During the first few days of the fighting in and around Lhasa, the Chinese Embassy went on from one blunder to the next until angry Indian mobs began demonstrations outside its once open doors...
...3. Non-interference in internal affairs...
...Jayaprakash Narayan, a honorary president of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, is a founder and leading figure of the Praja Socialist party in India...
...2. Non-aggression...
...This was the last straw...
...Twenty-four hours after the refutation, Indian Communists made the same charge after "the Peoples' Government of China, in all sincerity, has asked us to look into this matter...
...In New Delhi, the Chinese Embassy circulated a statement saying it would be "impolite" for the Indian Parliament to discuss the internal affairs of a friend and neighbor...
...Nehru told Parliament the next day that it could discuss anything under the sun, provided the Speaker so permitted...
...But before public opinion in this country properly could grasp the significance of Hungary, the Suez battle permitted Nehru, at least in Indian eyes, to vacillate his way out of what otherwise was developing into an awkward and delicate situation between New Delhi and Moscow...
...Never before have all sections of the press combined to denounce what they called "anti-national" elements in their midst...
...In the South Indian state of Kerala, where the Communists rule, the state Government is busy subverting the Constitution...
...Throughout the years of independence, some Indians have persistently pointed out what Nehru, apparently, has just discovered...
...This charge was refuted by Prime MinisPanch Shila Following are the five principles of international relations negotiated in June 1954 by Indian Premier Nehru and Communist China's Foreign Minister Chou En-lai...
...The two Prime Ministers discussed the future of the common neighbor in whom both were vitally interested, decided that whereas India would concede Chinese suzerainty, China and India would guarantee Tibet's autonomy...
...Hungary was ignored by all but a few...
...India, too, is paying a price in anguish about its inability to help a neighbor with whom it has age-old religious and cultural ties, in uncertainty about future relations with a great power across the border, in doubts about a policy of which this nation was inclined to be so proud...
...2. Panch Shila, the five principles of peaceful coexistence, on which their foreign policy is based and which has been upheld as the shield and bulwark of their national security, is worth less than the paper it was first written on...
...The Indian people took a long time to forget this, but they did forget...
...Only now the people in this country are beginning to realize that these unexceptional principles, which should ideally inform relations between sovereign nations, are backed up by nothing more than moral sanctions, that either they are accepted or they are not...
...This is not the first time that the Indian people have been informed of these facts...
...Out of this followed a 17-point declaration confirming the Dalai Lama's rights, privileges and powers, the right to practice Buddhism as the state religion, and the right of the local Tibetan Government to introduce reforms as it sees fit...
...The party has upheld Peking's charge that the Tibetan revolt is Indian-inspired and that Kalimpong in India is the command center of a revolt by feudal elements in Tibet against its "people...
...Sharokh Sabavala, who analyzes the reaction of Indian public opinion, is the Christian Science Monitor correspondent in India...
...1. Mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty...
...5. Peaceful coexistence...
...4. Equality and mutual benefit...
...Meanwhile, what happens to Panch Shila...
...Now they are reminded, for once again the Communist party of India openly has sided with an alien government, but this time against the freely-elected government of a sovereign country...
...But Tibet is not the only one...
...The analogy to Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution was supplied by Asian public opinion itself...
...Imperialism reigns on India's border once more, and its principal victim is in sanctuary within its gates...
...Hustling the Government, the ruling Congress party has set up a Citizen's Committee in Delhi to organize relief for those who may come from Tibet to India...
...For their pains they have been reviled by the Communists, derided by the press as "Washington patriots" and frowned on by New Delhi...
...Within the past six weeks, however, Asian public opinion, especially in India, has become passionately aroused by the Tibetans' heroic resistance, symbolized by the Dalai Lama's flight into Indian exile...
...An official of the Central Committee of the Communist party was summoned to the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi for this purpose, leading members of Parliament to ask India's chief Election Commissioner to cancel the party's accreditation as a national party...
...ter Jawaharlal Nehru on the floor of the Lok Sabha—Lower House of Parliament...
...Reaction in India By Sharokh Sabavala NEW DELHI THE NATIONAL uprising in Tibet—even Indian Government officials unofficially admit it is no less—has revealed at least two things to the people of India: 1. Their Communist party has extra-territorial allegiances which, once again, it has put above national interest...
...Then the Embassy sent for the Indian Communist party to act as interpreter...
...Panch Shila was enunciated by Nehru and Communist Chinese Premier Chou En-lai in New Delhi in 1954, in the context of Tibetan autonomy...
...While the country has raged at what it considered a studied insult to national honor--the party obliquely has called the Government of India a liar—Prime Minister Nehru himself, and for the first time, has branded the Communist policy in India as "submissive" and publicly stated that the "Communists cease to be Indians, having shown a total absence of feelings of decency and nationality...
...Three years ago, when the Russians suppressed the Hungarian upsurge, they also had occasion to point out that the Soviet Union was a signatory to Panch Shila, one of whose principles was non-interference in the domestic affairs of a neighbor...
...The Chinese miscalculated Indian reactions to their Tibetan moves, for which the Indian Government is partly to blame because of its previous exuberant demonstrations of friendship...
...The slogan is still the one which the Chinese and Russian comrades have so often shouted with the Indians: "Down With Imperialism...
...In 1942, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the Communist party of India, which hitherto had branded the struggle in Europe and elsewhere as an "imperial war," invited India to join this struggle against Nazism and support the British paramount power in this country for its duration...
...Chou En-lai told Nehru—Nehru repeated this very recently—that he considered Tibet, not as a part of China, but as an autonomous region which was part of the Chinese state...
...Peking announced that the Dalai Lama had been forcibly abducted from Lhasa...
...A mere signature does not take one nearer acceptance...
...Thus the famous five principles of co-existence and non-alignment were born...
...India, for the first time, reserved the right to disbelieve this story...
Vol. 42 • April 1959 • No. 16
