Chinese officials should read their own reports and history on how Tibet, which was clearly not theirs, was first ‘liberated’ and then brutally ‘pacified’
-By Claude Arpi for First Post
One can argue that the Chinese are history lovers; they have a recorded history for several millennia (which is not the case of India, where history was usually transmitted in the guru-shishya parampara form); however, since the advent of the Communist Dynasty in 1949, the Mandarins in Beijing seem to have lost this sense of history. There is a simple reason for this: the Communist ideology has to prevail over history.
The Middle Kingdom’s relation with Tibet is an example of the Chinese amnesia about the recent past.
From immemorial times (to use Chinese terminology), the Tibetans have turned to India for their religion, culture, trade, and civilisation in general; Tibetan Buddhism is still today synonymous with the Nalanda tradition. Similarly, Tibetan script has evolved from the Brahmi script, which can’t be included in the Chinese knowledge system.
One could multiply such examples; even politically, Tibet was an independent nation till it was invaded by Mao’s Army in 1950-51.
The fact that Tibet, India, and China sat on an equal footing for six months at the conference table in Simla in 1913–14 is the best proof that the Nationalist regime could not deny Lhasa the right to negotiate a treaty (even if, at the end, it was not ratified by China for unrelated reasons). Click here to read more.
