Dharamshala, 30th August: China would like us to believe that 70 years ago it liberated Tibet. It truly didn’t happen that way. True, on 23 May 1951, Tibet and China signed the ‘Agreement for peaceful freedom of Tibet’, known as the 17-point Agreement. It did, however, seal Tibet’s invasion, not its “freedom.”
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama stated in his memoirs that “under coercion” the deal was foisted on the Tibetan representatives and that even the seals were forged on that deal. The Tibetan leader promptly condemned the agreement when he crossed the Indian border in March 1959 and arrived at Tezpur in Assam.
Curiously, in August, the Chinese Communist Party chose to celebrate 23 May. Nobody understands why the so-called release was not celebrated on 23 May, or even when Xi Jinping, the “core leader,” came to Tibet in July. Was the border situation in Ladakh tense in May in Beijing?
In addition to a strong commitment to PLA recruitment, the Chinese leadership is primarily concerned about the “stability” of the frontiers. In addition to building 605 “moderately affordable” villages on India’s borders, inter-marriage between the Hans and the Tibetans is another strategy of stabilizing the border. This was seldom in the past 70 years: Tibetans always hesitated to abandon their “Tibetanism.” It looks that this is changing. As an article in China Daily says: “The Han-Tibetan couples show the love of togetherness in the region,” the situation has changed.
These undoubtedly figure to be followed by many more Tibetans: Peking calculated that thousands of Tibetan girls marry Chinese migrants (e.g., those who work on a border mega construction project), a page will be changed forever and Tibet won’t be able to become Tibet any more in the future.
This matter must be taken seriously by both New Delhi and the Central Tibetan Administration. Otherwise, border inhabitants across Northern India will soon face new neighborhoods with all the implications. This was probably addressed with Adm Miao Hua and the TMD generals, along with the more extensive Tibetan recruiting in the PLA, to “stabilize” the border.
Article based on CLAUDE ARPI’s “China’s new ethnic ploy in Tibet: Unity via marriage?” on deccanchronicle
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