The Himalayan (Mis)Adventure–II

Amit Bhattacharyya

The government of the People’s Republic of China, formed on 1 October 1949, sought a peaceful solution to the Tibetan problem and invited the Tibetan authorities on 21 January 1950 to send representatives to Peking to “negotiate a peaceful solution of the question”. While on 30 January 1950, it demanded the withdrawal of the “goodwill mission” sent to foreign countries, it offered “appropriate regional autonomy”. (Ibid, p.189). Here we would like to say something about the nature of serfdom in Tibet.

Serfdom in Tibet: Those who are very critical about the Chinese government’s policy towards Tibet maintain a total silence on the social condition, the nature of serfdom, and the oppression of people in Tibet before the implementation of democratic reforms. In fact, the Tibetan authorities–serf-owners themselves-were–were of such a brutal type that it would put to shame the most abominable and despicable of the feudal lords in other parts of the world.

“The Tibetan social order was somewhat like the manorial system and chattel slavery in most of medieval Europe”, stated T. T. Li. (Tibet Today and Yesterday, Peking). This statement is, in fact, an understatement of the existing reality. In reality, it was worse than that. In Tibetan serfdom, there were serf-owners of three types, commonly known as the “three manorial lords”. They were nobles with manorial holdings and private perks; the local government with landholdings and enjoying the right to bestow or confiscate land; and the monasteries. They possessed most of the land and controlled what little trade there was with the rest of China and the Himalayan border areas. These lords were also usurers. Given the backward social conditions, it was no surprise that the economy generally was a barter economy rather than a money economy.

The serfs, quite naturally, had no lands of their own. They were the property of the serf-owners, as were their children and their children’s children. Bound for life to the master’s land, they had no personal freedom or political rights whatsoever. Their masters regarded them as nothing but “talking cattle’–much similar to “instrumentum vocale” of the days of Roman slavery, which could be bought, sold, and exchanged as commodities or simply given away as gifts. They had been subjected to exploitation, torture and repression of various types, such as corvée, taxation of various types, such as birth tax, child tax, poll tax. marriage tax, purchase tax, “jail tax” and whatnot.

There were no schools, no hospitals, and the most common scourges of venereal diseases and smallpox made considerable inroads into the population. Wheeled transport was unknown, except the Dalai Lama’s car, which he took as a joy ride every morning to drive around the grounds of the Norbulinka palace. As P. Carraso points out, forced celibacy, polygamy, and polyandry were the common features of the Tibetan social system (Land and Policy in Tibet).

The extent of brutality associated with Tibetan serfdom can be gauged from various methods of torture to kill and maim people, treated as two-legged beasts. Every manor and monastery had its private prison and its own collection of weapons and instruments of torture. The serf-owners and their henchmen were free to torture the serfs at will–flogging them, cutting noses, gouging out eyes, chopping off limbs, and executing them. In fact, the Tibetan Revolutionary Museum–formed after the People’s Republic of China- houses instruments of torture collected from different parts of Tibet, the skins of old men and children, human skulls, bones of serfs who had been buried alive, and hands fried in oil. The musical instruments used in the halls, where religious ceremonies were conducted, were made of human limbs. Bugles made of maiden’s leg bones, small drums made of human skulls and skin and a rosary made of 108 pieces of parietal bones. Before the liberation of Tibet, an area called Parkor was marked as the site of torture and a slaughterhouse. Here, some fifty different instruments are on display. Among those, there is a heavy stone cone. When placed over the head and pounded with a stone, the victim’s eyes protrude, making it easy for the tormentors to gauge out. Before the execution of a serf, a bugle was sounded. Some were disembowelled and paraded through the streets of Parkor before they were put to death. Others were tied naked to a red-hot copper horse mounted on wheels and paraded around Parkor before they were killed. That is not all. There were two scorpion dungeons in Lhasa, one of which was in Parkor and the other just beneath the Potala Palace. Before the democratic reform, many serfs were thrown into these dungeons and stung to death by the venomous creatures which sucked the blood of corpses. (For more details, see Tibet: Myth and Reality, Beijing Review, March 1988). Anna Louis Strong in her book entitled Tibetan Interviews, furnishes a picture of a Tibetan herdsman whose hands were cut off by the serf-owner as the serf tried to save his wife from being taken away by him.(For more details about the Tibetan issue and the role of India, see Amit Bhattacharyya’s booklet entitled Questions Concerning Tibet, published by Towards a New Dawn, Jalpaiguri, Kolkata Book Fair, 2016).

Let us now get back to the Chinese invitation to come to Peking for a peaceful solution of the Tibetan issue. The attitude of the Tibetan authorities was expectedly hostile. Dalai Lama, as Ghosh maintains, was reported to have appealed to neighbouring countries for help in fighting “possible aggression”. But soon it dawned on them that discretion was the better part of valour. It is reported that they agreed to send a negotiating team, which was supposed to go to Peking via India and Hong Kong. It came to India, but never went to Peking on one plea or another. (Natarajan, ibid, pp.189-90). In the meantime, the Dalai Lama’s brother, Gyalo Thondup, as Ghosh states, came to Calcutta and went in May to Taipei (Taiwan) where he saw Chiang Kai-shek, and then to Tokyo and other places. (Ibid., p.189 and note 36, p.284). On 20 August, the New York Times reported: “The Tibetans have been making more than their normal purchases of arms from India…India has definitely taken up the Dalai Lama’s battle on the diplomatic front”. (Quoted in ibid, p.190–emphasis added).

The Tibetan negotiating mission did not contact even Chinese envoys in India until 6 September. They were advised by the Chinese charged d'Affaires in Kolkata and, later by the Chinese ambassador to go to Peking without delay. But the advice was ignored.

When all efforts failed to arrive at a peaceful settlement, Peking announced that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army would move into Tibet. The announcement was greeted by the Nehru government with an angry protest against any military action against Tibet and a warning that this would damage the prospect of the People’s Republic of China’s acquisition of United Nations membership. When Peking again announced that the PLA had been ordered to move into Tibet, India sent an angrier protest note deploring the Chinese ‘invasion’ and use of force against Tibet. (Maxwell, op.cit, p.70).

Ghosh observes that “the Nehru government forgot that the question of ‘invasion’ and use of force did not arise, for Tibet was recognized as a part of china; and that it itself had already used force to decide India’s relationship with Junagadh and Hyderabad–Junagadh which had acceded to Pakistan and Hyderabad which was then constitutionally outside India”.(Ghosh, p.11).

The Chinese reply was sharply worded. It pointed out that Tibet was a part of China and that the People’s Liberation Army must enter Tibet to liberate the Tibetan people and defend China’s frontiers. While expressing the desire to continue negotiating peacefully to negotiate with the Tibetan government, it warned that no foreign interference would be tolerated. It added that those who would further obstruct China’s membership of the UNO on the pretext of China’s exercise of her sovereign rights in Tibet would only demonstrate their hostility towards China and that the two problems were unrelated. (Ibid).

As we know, Tibet asked India for help, though its nature was not disclosed. (Natarajan, p.191). The reality, however, is that any military intervention in Tibet was beyond India’s capacity, though, according to one writer, US President Truman had offered transport aircraft to help India fight the PLA and open a second front against China when the war in Korea was going on. (Maxwell, op. cit, pp.71, 72, fn). According to Ghosh, when other appeals failed, the Tibetan authorities made direct appeals to the United Nations on 7 November 1950. Although the appeal was sponsored there, it was dropped within a short time. (Natarajan, op cit, p.191 and note 40, p.284). Ultimately, the Sino-Tibetan agreement guaranteeing the autonomy of Tibet within the Chinese People’s Republic was signed on 27 May 1951. (Ibid, p.193).

In his note on China and Tibet dated 18 November 1950, Nehru, as Ghosh writes, “We cannot save Tibet, as we should have liked to do, and our very attempts to save it might well bring greater trouble to it… It may be possible, however, that we might be able to help Tibet retain a large measure of its autonomy. That would be good for Tibet and good for India. As far as I can see, this can only be done on the diplomatic level and by avoiding making the present tension between India and China worse”. (Durga Das(ed), Sardar Patel’s Correspondence 1945-50, Vol. X, pp.336-40–emphasis added). Suniti Kumar Ghosh points out that Nehru’s favourable attitude towards Tibet’s autonomous status within China was totally at variance with his own policy of denial of it when the question of granting of the same status to Indian constituent states was raised. In fact, during the time of the framing of the Indian constitution in the 1940s under the guidance of Nehru, the constituent states of what is called the Union of India were virtually denied any autonomy. It will be seen that used not only diplomacy but also other ways to fulfill his aim–the aim of saving Tibet for India.

Cartographic Aggression: Before going into the discussion on the India-Tibet border, it is good to deal with the Sino-Indian border as a whole. The Sino-Indian border is divided into three sectors. The Western Sector separates the Ladakh area of Kashmir from China’s Sinkiang province and Tibet. The Middle Sector separates three Indian states from Tibet (the disputed areas in this sector were quite minor). The Eastern Sector separates the Indian state of Assam from Tibet.

In the Eastern Sector, the Indians controlled the disputed area, claiming what is known as the McMahon Line–a line drawn up unilaterally by the British–to be the legal boundary. The McMahon line was named after the British delegate at a conference held at Simla in 1914, which was attended by representatives of Britain, China, and Tibet. The Chinese government refused to sign the draft Convention and no Chinese government has ever accepted the McMahon Line. The Chinese today still claim, as they did then, that the traditional and legal boundary includes the southern slope of the Himalayas and was never based on the watershed, which was the basis used for drawing the McMahon Line.

[To be continued]

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Vol 57, No. 51, June 15 - 21, 2025