David Miliband, the Congress-I prince, and the fecklessness of UPA foreign policy

(first published on 7th April 2009 on the now-defunct website, India Banao!)

On March 10th, 1959, the Dalai Lama – leader of the Tibetan people, who had been under Chinese occupation since China’s invasion of Tibet in 1951 – decided to begin a dangerous journey from his Potala palace in his capital, Lhasa, to seek safety and refuge in India (Tibet’s traditional south-eastern and -western neighbour). He arrived on Indian soil by the end of that month, and the 50th anniversary of that perilous and epochal three-week journey was marked by all Tibetans around the world last month with profound sadness mixed with a growing anger.

Now is an apt time, therefore, for us Indians to pause to consider the disaster that the Nehru family has wrought in our Tibet policy -- to which the latest generation has unwittingly added another unseemly chapter recently. Communist China claims that Tibet has always been part of China, although this claim has absolutely no historical validity. It is widely known that India had been ruled by foreign dynasties for most of the thousand years until 1947, but it is less well-appreciated that almost exactly the same thing is true about China.

No Han Chinese dynasty (before the Communists) ever had even suzerainty over Tibet

Over the seventeen centuries between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220AD and the establishment of the modern Chinese republic in 1912, China was ruled by Han Chinese dynasties for just 218 years (from 618 to 755AD by the Tang dynasty, and from 1368 to 1449 by the Ming; the official period of dynastic rule for the Tang extends to 906AD, but after 755 the Tang’s political control was actually confined to just Shaanxi province; and while the Ming continued to control Beijing intermittently until 1638, the Ming emperor was taken prisoner by the Mongols in 1449, and much of western China proper was under renewed Mongol rule after 1449, with Beijing and its suburbs subjected to periodic Mongol raids that eventually paved the way for the non-Han Manchu people to conquer China in 1644 – and continue ruling it until 1911). The “China” ruled by the Tang and Ming (even during those 218 years of their most extensive control) did not encompass for a single day Tibet, Mongolia, Nei Mongol (Inner Mongolia) or East Turkestan (Xinjiang).

The Manchu were certainly not a Han Chinese dynasty, and they reminded the Chinese of this every day of their 267-year reign by insisting that all Han Chinese men shave the front of their heads and wear pony-tails as symbols of their servitude. In the first couple of centuries of Manchu rule, their court in Beijing was dominated by Mongol and Manchu noblemen, with the Han in a clearly subordinated role.

The Manchus established a form of suzerainty over Tibet, continuing a relationship established between the Mongols and Tibetans that went back almost a millennium (and the Manchus also had a similar relationship of suzerainty with East Turkestan, Mongolia and Korea). The only previous Beijing-based dynasty that had strong ties (but most likely of mutual respect rather than suzerainty) with Tibet were the Mongol (“Yuan”) dynasty, which had united much of what constitutes today’s China. But their capital (in what is today called Beijing) was called Khanbaliq, and their court-language was Mongol (rather than Mandarin Chinese).

For modern China to claim “sovereignty” over nations with which the Manchus and Mongols had a tenuous relationship of “suzerainty” (such as Korea, Tibet and Mongolia) is about as ludicrous as India seeking sovereignty over Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan because the Mughals ruled over them in the past, or Greece to claim Pakistan on the basis of the Macedonian Alexander’s rule. Tibet was invaded by Mao’s People’s Liberation Army in 1951, but Mao sought legitimacy not through military conquest alone but by bolstering his case by referring to history – and the alleged political control that “China” had traditionally enjoyed over Tibet. The simple fact is that, if China enjoyed suzerainty over Tibet because of certain rights exercised by the Manchus, India also had substantial residual rights in Tibet granted by the legitimate Tibetan government (led by the Dalai Lama of the time) to British India. The British were foreign rulers of India, but so were the Manchus a foreign dynasty ruling over China.

Nehru lets China’s invasion stand

Jawaharlal Nehru abdicated his responsibility as modern India’s first prime minister by failing to even protest (let alone take military action) to safeguard India’s interests in Tibet, and roll-back the illegitimate Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1951. When Japan marched into Manchuria in 1931, the world protested vehemently, but Mao’s China was oblivious to any protests (although there was even less historical ground for China’s claim over Tibet than for Japan in Manchuria). The virtual silence of Nehru in the face of such naked aggression, however, was especially vital to China – as India had residual rights in Tibet, deep cultural and linguistic affinity (both Tibetan and the eastern Indian languages – Bengali, Oriya, Assamese – are direct descendants of Pali, and Tibetan is completely unrelated to any Chinese language), and a religious tradition (Mahayana) that was very similar to Hinduism.

By moving the India-China border several thousand miles inland, China was able to transform Tibet from a peaceful buffer state (a la Switzerland) to a base for missiles (possibly even nuclear-tipped ones) directed at India. The US in the 1950s was keen to act in concert with India to de-legitimize the Chinese invasion, but Nehru refused to go along. The eventual consequence was the humiliating 1962 war, which was followed by China’s half-century-long strategic encirclement of India (with close Sino-Pakistan ties, attempts to cultivate the Bangladesh military, the Maoist take-over in Nepal, and the deep-seated military-cultural relationship with Burma completing the circle).

In October 2008, the foreign minister of the United Kingdom, David Miliband, quietly changed history in a manner calculated to grievously harm India’s (and especially Tibet’s) interests, and promote China’s instead. Miliband quietly changed Britain’s long-standing policy of merely recognizing China’s suzerainty over Tibet – to actually recognizing China’s sovereignty over it. This was very much in keeping with his family’s vocation: David’s father Roy Miliband was a well-known Marxist historian, so the son’s soft-spot for Communist China is understandable. What is not so understandable is the fact that India’s establishment – far from declaring him persona non grata – accorded him numerous platforms in India, which he naturally used to berate us.

Miliband’s change of nomenclature is of transformative diplomatic importance. It crucially undermines India’s stand that the McMahon Line is the legitimate border between India and Tibet (and, therefore, with China, as long as China is ruling Tibet). A treaty signed by Tibet (clearly independent of China at that time, after the ouster of the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1912) with British India at Simla in 1913 asserted that the McMahon Line would be the border between Tibet and India. A subsidiary note to this treaty recognized that China had suzerainty over Tibet, but China later refuted the treaty (thereby effectively repudiating even its rights as a suzerain, since Tibet had expelled all Chinese official representatives after 1912, and none returned until after Communist China’s 1951 invasion).

Until October 29th, 2008, Britain had continued to hold that China only had suzerainty (not sovereignty) over Tibet. David Miliband’s changed formulation, however, significantly weakens India’s bargaining position – particularly because India has never properly framed the question. Mao and Zhou en-lai asserted that Nehru’s India (with its socialist and anti-colonial pretensions) surely couldn’t base its arguments on a colonial-era treaty. But India has never properly retorted that China itself was making an imperialist argument – on the basis of claims by non-Chinese dynasties (like the Mongols and Manchus) who alone had ever claimed any suzerainty over Tibet (which had never been claimed by any Han Chinese dynasty).

Given the way India has framed the question, however, David Miliband’s gratuitous decision to retrospectively change history grievously harms India. A self-respecting nation would have immediately declared such a man persona non grata -- or at a minimum, treated him with cold disdain when next he came visiting the Indian capital. Instead, David Miliband was given a full opportunity to meet the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister (whom the 43-year-old imperial mandarin casually called “Manmohan” and “Pranab” respectively) on his January 2009 visit. It was his nonchalant manner of addressing our ageing ministers that seemed to make the news, rather than any reference to his retrospective alteration of history to India’s detriment.

Instead the latest Nehruvian prince, Rahul Gandhi, took him along to visit Amethi the following day. Insulting the ministers is perfectly alright when you are the prince’s friends after all – and the national interest be damned. The heir-apparent of the Congress-I (whose portrait adorns billboards all across the land, flanked by his mother and the prime minister – showing clearly that he is the anointed leader now) also clearly seemed utterly oblivious to the symbolism of his action. In effect, he was legitimizing Miliband’s treachery towards India by treating him like an old chum – and circumventing the ministers who, under the constitution, still make and implement our nation’s policies.

The following day, David Miliband addressed a business gathering in Mumbai, and came up with this nugget of gratuitousness: “"Resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders." In effect, he was saying in Mumbai (less than two months after the dastardly 26/11 terror strikes on the city) that India’s failure to resolve the Kashmir “dispute” was responsible for 26/11 (and perhaps even justified the attack). There was a cacophony of justifiable outrage over Miliband’s silliness.

Remarkably, however, the Congress-I scion’s Teflon-coated political career was completely unharmed: his Himalayan blunder of gratuitously befriending a man who had demonstrated he was an enemy of India was bad enough. To have circumvented and undermined the ministers of a government led by the party of which he is officially a middling member compounded Rahul Gandhi’s error. But then, for Miliband (this man who Rahul Gandhi had gratuitously befriended against his nation’s interests) to then turn around and slap India even harder the following day was truly abominable. As a nation, our inability to hold the Nehru-Gandhi family to account for its repeated faux pas of Himalayan proportions is what ultimately boggles the mind.