An American look at the Tibet story

The book begins with the West’s earliest encounters with Tibet, the mythical land, variously described as heavenly, tortuous and Shangri-La. These early descriptions follow the usual imperialist narrative for all faraway lands—a gaze that starts with wonder and turns to colonialism.

The book is a Western perspective of the Tibetan and, indeed, a 20th century story. The point of view of authors Lezlee Brown Halper and Stefan Halper is understandable, considering Stefan Halper’s years with the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and later academic career at the central observatory of the Western gaze, Cambridge University.

Through the 19th century, Tibet was part of the colonial ‘Great Game’, the fight for dominance between Russia and Britain. In the 20th century, the birth of Communist China, the defeat of the Kuomintang, the rise of the People’s Liberation Army and the end of World War II sealed Tibet’s fate. After China invaded Tibet, there was almost no hope for a reversal of its destiny. The Tibetan catastrophe began as a local issue, a land-locked country with a small population, having no relevance to world power politics and with two of the world’s most populous countries on either side.

For the Halpers, Tibet becomes a story of Chinese aggression, and Nehru’s deference to the Chinese and American efforts against both these tides. To Indian readers, the amount of ink spilt on India’s role in the Tibet story may come as a surprise, considering how little India ever cared about, or acted on, the issue. The Halpers miss the wood for the trees; they focus so much on the extraneous that almost no Tibetan perspective comes through.
Territorial claims by countries are based on historical narratives. The Halpers completely miss this facet of the story. Why did the Chinese want Tibet? Wikipedia may provide a more nuanced answer to this than the book. If one conceded that the book’s attempt is to get a bird’s eye view of the big nations’ actions around Tibet, the absence of Soviet Union’s perspective negates this concession.

By focusing so much on innocuous memos sent by the Americans and India’s role in the Tibet issue, the book becomes less relevant to a serious student of Tibet. India at the time was a weak, impoverished country. Its compulsions were: keeping itself together, handling a bloody partition, problematic borders on all fronts, famines, Kashmir (something that discredits India’s moral high ground on Tibet), etc. Nehru became prime minister  at possibly the most difficult time in Indian history. It is fashionable now to lampoon him; that is the fashion the authors end up playing to.

The root of such misreading of historical context in the book is a result of its anachronistic structure and lack of a cohesive argument on, or idea of, what really happened. On one page, you are reading of the events in 1964 and, on the next, you return to 1959—the chains of causation jumbled in the process. The most interesting event described in the book is the tripartite meeting between the US, France and UK.

In this meeting, the US had tried to push the issue of Tibet’s position in the UN. The other two nations rejected any such action outright. They had colonial and post-colonial interests that would come into question at the UN. This is really the crux of the failure of the international community—there have always been too many skeletons in every nation’s closet to be able to take a fair position.

Among the West’s first emissaries to Lhasa, Sir Francis Youngblood and George Bogle’s farewell notes had an uncanny comment on Tibet’s future. “Farewell, ye honest and simple People! ...while they (West) are engaged in pursuits of Avarice and Ambition... may ye continue to live in peace and contentment,” Bogle's farewell note to the Panchen Lama said. Today, the Tibetan claim of independence is dead. It is a human rights issue to be resolved within that frame. China, a country bigger than India, is facing the range of problems that comes with such size. Xinjiang is simmering; Tibet is an open sore; Hong Kong is getting assertive; and labour unrest is common. Will the Tibet story change course again, someday?