Tibet a tale of mice and men by Premen Addy 12 Apr 08 (http://dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=EDITS&file_name=edit3%2Etxt&counter_img=3)
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Faced with the lurid spectacle of a Muslim rabble in Kolkata demanding the expulsion from India of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, he made a chivalrous call in the dead of night at the safe house in which she was quartered and 'persuaded' her to leave the country for more welcoming shores.
He has now issued a brazen warning to the Dalai Lama to stop making statements on Indian soil that were likely to offend Tibet's Han Chinese overlords in Beijing. What do they know of India, who only India know? Is the GDP the only thing that makes an Indian walk tall? Has fear of China reduced Indian freedoms, values and traditions of hospitality, to a pitchblende of shaming casuistry and cowardice, diminishing India and the Indian people?
Hearing Mr Mukherjee few would believe that it is the murderous apparatus of the Han Chinese imperium that has been gunning down unarmed Tibetan monks by the score on the streets of Lhasa and in cities in the adjoining Tibetan-populated provinces of Sichuan, Gangsu and Xinghai. The taking of innocent lives has provoked no response from the Indian Minister whose. Why not empower him to lead a tributary mission to the Forbidden City and kowtow to the rulers of the Middle Kingdom? They might in their generosity even accept India as an autonomous region of the Celestial Empire.
Most Governments, West and East, have little to boast about in their dealings with China, the allure of the Chinese marketplace having anaesthetised their souls. The Anglo-American great and good (mostly Right-wing), reborn Marco Polos all, have gushed in season and out on the economic miracle that is China, the superpower of Napoleonic prophecy. The stable Oriental despotism of inebriated Occidental fantasy is illusion at war with reality.
Three notable Chinese scholars of the Chinese Communist state, now resident in the US, are refreshingly sceptical: Yasheng Huang, Minxin Pei and Gordan Chang have written extensively on China's economy and described and analysed in detail Beijing's "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Some of what they say would fit in well with a rendition of England's 18th century South Sea Bubble and Engels' History of the English Working Class in 1844.
Although Deng Xiaoping arrogantly called China's invasion of Vietnam in early 1979 a replication of the lesson taught to India in 1962, it was Beijing in the end which had more to learn than teach, as Gen Giap wryly remarked. Vietnam had earlier humbled the American superpower. No one is suggesting surely that China's military strength has ever equalled that of the United States.
When Vietnam fought America, the Soviet Union held the ring. When India fought Pakistan, and America and China made threatening noises on Islamabad's behalf, the Soviet presence neutered the threat. The possibility of a widening conflict is deterrent enough. Besides, India itself is not without means to inflict unacceptable damage on any potential aggressor. Sleep well, comrades of the Indian Press.
The timidity of Governments on Tibet has been subsumed by the rage of the streets in world capitals. The mayhem engulfing the relay of the Olympic torch in London reached its denouement in Paris, showing that Tibet is now a charged metaphor that transcends political and linguistic frontiers. Paris 1789 has been joined by Paris 2008: Globalisation has fulfilled its role and bridged the centuries.
The romance of pan-Asianism bred the Indian fairytale of China's reciprocal goodwill and friendship, notwithstanding Chinese nationalism's antecedents in the sterner school of imperial restoration. It was MN Roy who, way back in1922, dismissed India's pan-Asian dream as no more than the ineffectual vapourings of "proud intellectuals with inferiority complexes."
Rabindranath Tagore's prescient lecture, with its sparse title, Nationalism, was appreciated neither in Japan, where it was first delivered in the aftermath of World War I, nor subsequently understood or absorbed by Chinese audiences when the poet visited China. Japanese and Chinese nationalists alike, barring a small minority, saw him as a representative of a broken civilisation.
Yet India's enduring belief in the grand illusion of a new civilisational alignment would brook no denial. The philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in 1943 visited Chunking, China's wartime capital, in the company of India's Agent-General, KPS Menon, where he gave a speech on the Buddha. Menon's despatch, describing this surreal event, was masterly in its presentation, humour and insight.
Radhakrishnan, he said, spoke as if he were addressing his fellow dons at All Souls College in Oxford. At the end of his spellbinding oration, Radhakrishnan asked a Chinese listener what he thought of the concept of 'Dharma', little realising that the man, Chen Li-fu, understood little English and, as a leader of the underworld, had even less interest in the subject. But he was a generous donor to Kuomintang party funds and was a trusted associate of Chiang Kai-shek!
Menon suggested that India would be better served discussing practicalities with China - an exchange of agricultural specialists, for example - instead of indulging in high falutin' exercises that failed to resonate with Chinese leaders.
Hindi-Chini bhai bhai was of this absurdist vintage. Mao Tse-tung appealed to Jawaharlal Nehru for medical help during the Japanese occupation of China. The response was the Kotnis Mission and it brought a warm letter of thanks. Yet, less than a decade later, a Chinese Communist publication, World Culture, described Nehru as "a rebel against the movement for national independence, a blackguard who undermines the progress of the people's liberation movement, a loyal slave of imperialism". Mao took a dim view of India and Indian culture, as he made clear in a conversation with Richard Nixon and Mr Henry Kissinger. He likened India to a cow, the lowest form of animal in Chinese mythology.
However, India possessed no copyright on poor judgement. Consider the New York Times editor, Harrison Salisbury's "Dissenting Introduction" (for the paper's edition) to the Soviet journalist Victor Louis's title The Coming Decline of the Chinese Empire, a spirited defence of whose sanctity was a triumph of realpolitik over good sense.
To Sardar Vallabhbhai belongs the last word. He got it right with his warning that, with China's occupation of Tibet, India would have two frontiers to protect instead of one against Pakistan.
__._,_.___
*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf
*****************************************
MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm
*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm
*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/
*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm
*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm
*****************************************
Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm
****************************************************
VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/
****************************************************
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
__,_._,___