Maj Gen Mrinal Suman (retd.) speaks with Col Anil Bhat (retd.) on Tibet and its future | SAM Conversation
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00:00 Welcome to SAM Conversation, a program of South Asia Monitor. Today, we are going to
00:21 discuss Tibet and its future. Very often, we refer to the border that we have on the
00:39 Line of Actual Control, well over 4000 kilometers as the India-China border. That is not so.
00:50 It is the India-Tibet border. Tibet was gobbled by China in 1950, October. It was annexed.
01:05 We have the pleasure of inviting Major General Mrinal Suman, who has traveled to Tibet and
01:14 who will give us very interesting and significant views of, descriptions of some of the places
01:27 there, including the capital Lhasa, as late as seven decades after Tibet was annexed by
01:38 China. I myself have had the opportunity of interacting with Tibetans. There are at least
01:57 12 places in India where there are Tibetan settlements or clusters, beginning from the
02:03 north, Boundela, Arunachal, sorry, from the northeast, Boundela, Arunachal, Darjeeling,
02:13 Dharamsala, Mukhlodganj, then Dehradun. Dehradun has a couple of them, Dehradun and Clement
02:22 Town, Gangtok, Kalimpong, Kulu, Pathankot, Dalhousie, Majnuka Tila in Delhi, and Payalakuppe
02:42 in west of Mysore district, Karnataka, which is the largest, the largest of the Tibetan
02:48 settlements in India. I have had the opportunity to visit and interact with the settlements
03:00 in Majnuka Tila Delhi, Dehradun, Pathankot, Dalhousie, and Dharamsala. And I've had the
03:07 opportunity of interacting with some of the veterans who fought the Chinese before 1950.
03:24 It goes without, you know, there's no doubt about all the kinds of massacres and all kinds
03:41 of harassment of Tibetans and not to mention exploitation. Major General Mrinan Soman whose
03:55 travel will give us some very good descriptions of some of the places he visited. General
04:08 Soman. Yes, please. I had the privilege, as you said, being a fogey, we all served on
04:19 the, and I agree with you, it should be called Indo-Tibet border and not Indo-China border.
04:25 Because we, in our heart of heart, whatever be the government stand, we recognize Tibet
04:30 to be an independent country, which has been annexed by China illegally. So, whenever I
04:35 served on the border and looked across the line of control and looked at the Tibetan
04:42 plateau, I always wondered what the life would be of the Tibetans as an enslaved community.
04:50 I possibly couldn't have gone there while in service. But after retirement, I got two
04:55 opportunities. First one was, which came our way, was like, it was a pilgrimage to Kailash
05:03 Parvat and Mansarovar Lake. And that we had done through Nepal. We went to Kathmandu,
05:11 from there we flew to Nepalganj, then Simicote and by a helicopter to Hill South. There,
05:17 on foot we crossed over to Taklakot in Tibet. It was a shorter visit, about six, seven days.
05:25 But the second visit was much larger, longer, and it was started with a train journey from
05:32 Beijing to Lhasa, which is in central Tibet. And subsequently, we carried out road visits
05:38 from Lhasa to Shigatse in the west and Ningchi in the southeast. So, it really covered the
05:46 complete Tibetan plateau as such, from west to southeast. And from Ningchi, we flew out
05:52 to Chengdu. If you ask me about my overall impression of the ground situation in Tibet,
06:01 it's a bit like a desert. The story of Tibet is a saga over apathy and indifference to
06:07 the cultural genocide of Tibetan Buddhism. Sadly, brutal decimation of an ancient, rich
06:15 and peace-loving culture by ruthless China has been totally ignored by the world without
06:22 any pangs of consciousness. They have forgotten about the Tibetan human rights and nobody
06:28 talks about it. Today, Tibet presents a sight of a state under foreign siege. A deceptive
06:37 calm hides the underlying tension. But there is no cheer in the air. You hardly hear a
06:43 laughter. You hardly see smiling faces. The Chinese flag flying over Potala Palace is
06:50 a constant reminder to all the residents of Lhasa that China is the ruler. Very sad. I
07:00 felt very hurt. I felt very sad. Sorry for the Tibetans to see their temporal seat of
07:07 the Dalai Lama having to have a flag of Chinese domination flying over it. There are army
07:16 camps with the dormitory blocks and troops barracks visible across the whole of Tibet.
07:24 These are surrounded by high protective walls and barricades. And troops with the apprehension
07:31 of an occupation army locals are not allowed anywhere in these camps. You can't even take
07:37 their photograph. For that matter, you are told by your guide, the local guide, "Sir,
07:43 you cannot take a photograph of a Tibetan policeman with a weapon, Tibetan army person,
07:48 or Tibetan military convoy, or Tibetan police post." Tibet, in fact, is in true sense of
07:56 the word a police state. It is dotted with police stations manned mostly by hands from
08:02 China. And we all, as students of Chinese history, know that a strong China has always
08:10 been an expansionist China. Coercion and intimidation are well-tried-out instruments of China's
08:17 state policy. China has never lived in peace with its neighbours. Even today, it's not
08:23 doing that, whether it's South China Sea or with India. As you said, in 1950, Tibet was
08:32 annexed by China. It has been amalgamated as a part of China and it is called Tibet
08:39 Autonomous Region, TAR. Well, it's autonomous only in name, because the total control is
08:45 in Chinese hands. The locals have no say whatsoever. It has an ethnic Tibetan as the chairman, but
08:53 he's just a figurehead, namesake leader of the area. And he's subordinate to the branch
09:01 secretary of the Communist Party of China. And he is the real power wielder. And nothing
09:07 moves in Tibet without his concurrence or without his orders. The local head, who's
09:14 a Tibetan, is just a lackey and then he follows the dictates of the Chinese power builders.
09:23 You also talked about the ruthlessness of the Chinese when they occupied and the damage
09:34 they did to the local culture. It is estimated that more than one million, thus 10 lakh Tibetan
09:40 natives have been killed by the Chinese so far to suppress their urge for freedom, their
09:46 demand for freedom. And as the Chinese, as the Tibetans are highly religious by nature,
09:52 the Chinese have understood the importance of their places of worship. And they know
09:57 that unless they target their monasteries, they will not be able to damage their spirit.
10:05 So they have been in a systematic manner, they have been destroying and ransacking them.
10:10 Over 6,000 big and small monasteries have been ransacked so far. They've been burnt,
10:18 damage done to Tibet's relics, heritage, architecture has been truly horrendous and is beyond redemption.
10:26 On ground, when you talk about the people, you find that there's a minimal interaction
10:31 between the Chinese and the natives. It is like what used to be during the heydays of
10:36 the Raj in India, that there was a population which was from the ruling elite, the white
10:44 people and they were the natives, the slaves. The Chinese behave like the masters and treat
10:50 the natives with disdain. They walk around like that. The Hans from the mainland China,
10:56 they occupy all senior government posts and running prosperous businesses. They're enjoying
11:02 a much higher standard of living. And they strut around like rulers, demonstrating all
11:07 the trappings of an occupation force. I mean, there's no doubt when you see a person walking
11:12 from a distance from his gate, you can make a choice whether he's a Chinese or he's a
11:17 humble Tibetan. On the other hand, the Tibetans are treated with suspicion and have been condemned
11:23 to menial jobs. Their condition is worse than that of the slaves of the older days. You
11:29 feel very sorry for them when you see that all janitors, all sweepers, load carriers,
11:35 laborers are Tibetans. Some of them manage public toilets to make a living. Many peddlers,
11:43 local stones and other local produce. And it's heartbreaking to see a once proud community
11:49 degraded to the status of bonded labor. Poverty continues to afflict most of them. Along with
12:00 treating the local Tibetans with disdain, they're also trying to make sure that the
12:05 people get integrated into the mainland China through demographic offensive and obliteration
12:13 of Tibetan identity. They've been bringing in Hans, the immigrants from the mainland
12:20 China to come and settle down in Lhasa and other major cities. Urban areas already have
12:28 nearly 50/50 population of the immigrants and the local Tibetans. However, in the rural
12:37 areas where the occupation is generally agriculture or where the nomadic people stay, the population
12:43 the Tibetans continue to be in majority. But what strikes one most is the transformation
12:52 that the Tibetans are undergoing as far as the infrastructure is concerned. I mean, you
12:57 got to give credit to China for what it has been able to achieve. At the time of 1950,
13:04 when they came into Tibet, there was not a single major proper highway. First, they created
13:13 one constructed one highway across Xichang. Today, there are three additional highways
13:19 which are linking mainland China with Tibet. Kungit-Tibet railway is a high elevation railway,
13:27 is an engineering marvel. It runs across Kunlun Mountains, nearly 2000 kilometer long railway
13:36 line with 550 kilometer of the track laid on permafrost. No one ever imagined then the
13:45 trains can run across the Kunlun Mountains. But the Chinese have been able to achieve
13:50 it. And not only that, when we traveled in that train, we were surprised that along with
13:56 like what we have with every birth nightlight, they also have an oxygen switch that if you
14:03 are feeling uncomfortable, you press the switch and a couple of puffs of oxygen are pumped
14:08 out to the people who are sitting in that bogie. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, credit
14:14 to them for that. Lhasa, after having connected Lhasa with the mainland China by train, they
14:21 constructed a road towards the west to Shigazi, which is a 240 kilometer long road. Then they
14:28 have connected it to the southeast to Ningchi as well, which is another 435 kilometer railway.
14:37 And it has a, can you believe it, a design speed of 160 kilometers per hour in that sort
14:42 of terrain. It's amazing. And they are also now planning, when we went there, there were
14:49 plans of what to extend it, the railway line from Shigazi to Zangmu on Nepal border as
14:56 also to Yadong, which is closer to Timut India border. But as it happens, whenever you carry
15:05 out lots and lots of infrastructure development projects and the first casualty is the green
15:13 space, Lhasa, which had 22 large parks, has only three large parks today. The rest of
15:19 them have all been taken over by concrete jungle. To change the demography of Tibet,
15:26 as I said, they have been bringing in large number of immigrants, migrants from the mainland,
15:33 and these migrants have to be housed. And for them, they have been constructing sprawls
15:37 of unsighted buildings, rows of uninspiring residential blocks, the typical what we see
15:44 at times in the communist countries. Arcades and shopping malls are also coming up, but
15:50 most of them are owned by the migrants, that is the Huns from the mainland China.
16:02 What is surprising or what can we, where I give credit to China for having carried out
16:06 so much of infrastructure, I also marvel at the spirit of the Tibetans. To date, even
16:18 after say 74 years, yes, 1950 to 24, 74 years, 74 years of rule, they have not been able
16:29 to crush the ethnic pride of the Tibetans. They have been systematically annihilating
16:36 Tibetan culture and religion, but have not been able to, let's say, extinguish it as
16:41 such. In recent past, there was demolitions carried out at Larung Gar Buddhist Academy,
16:49 which is considered the largest Tibetan Buddhist institute, both from academy as well as the
16:54 monastery and in the world, and is supposed to be keeping the Buddhist knowledge alive.
17:01 After the garb of decongesting, they started demolishing large number of its buildings
17:06 and thereby destroying its assets.
17:08 If I may just add, sir, they have a kind of, you mentioned Tibet, you mentioned that Dalai
17:26 Lama, they go bonkers. They still, even after 74 years, they still cannot, they haven't
17:37 been able to beat the spirit, the Tibetan spirit. And they are very, very, you know,
17:46 it's like a red rag. Talking about any praise of Tibetan or of the Dalai Lama is like a
17:56 red rag to the Chinese communists.
17:58 Absolutely. Absolutely. Then I was telling you, after along with that, there is a Jatav
18:04 Gaon Narnari, which is also has been demolished. Can you believe it that the Buddhist, even
18:10 today, need police clearance to congregate to celebrate their festivals? Every gathering
18:17 of the monks is overseen by armed troops. Yes, they conspire against China. That is
18:23 the sense of insecurity that Chinese suffer to date. If a group of monks want to visit
18:28 another monastery, they have to file an application spelling out the purpose and duration and
18:35 how many people would be attending it. Then the local police station of the Buddhist places
18:40 from where they are going and where they are going, the destination are to be had informed
18:44 and armed policemen is detailed to escort the group. Even our tourist bus was accompanied
18:52 by a policeman all through our stay in Tibet. And after a small, doing a small round of
18:59 an area, it would go back to a police station, give a report and obtain security clearance
19:05 to proceed further. And the Chinese are so scared of the Tibetans interacting with others
19:12 lest they reveal the true state of affairs that the Tibetans are not issued passports.
19:19 They can only get visa, the permits to visit the Chinese mainland. They can never, never,
19:25 never get passports. We in a hotel where there was a young boy, maybe around 20, 22, perhaps
19:31 he was born after Dalai Lama had left Tibet. He has never seen him. He's only perhaps heard
19:38 the story from his parents. So one day while serving us in a very high stone, he says,
19:43 "Sir, you from India?" I say, "Yes." "Are holiness there?" We said, "Yes, with us." "How is he?"
19:52 He said, "He's fine, keeping well. He's getting 80. So obviously he's in good health, good
19:58 health and we are looking after it." "Sir, can I visit him and meet him and bow before
20:04 him?" I say, "Yes, if you come there, everyone does it. He is available to all the Buddhists
20:10 in Dharamsala." He says, "Sir, my only vision in my life is to go across state before him.
20:18 But I know I will never be able to do that because I will never get the passport. They
20:22 will never let me go from here. I can only go to mainland China and come back." And when
20:27 we were moving around, the Chinese, the policemen and the military person of whom we came across,
20:34 they also make it very obvious that you are not welcome. I mean, at times, their looks
20:39 tell you, "Who the hell has called you here? Why have you come here?" They are quite happy
20:45 if there are no visitors, no tourists. And the Han population, as I told you, has already
20:52 overwhelmed and now a stage has come that in all their schools and colleges, Mandarin
20:58 has become compulsory and not the local Tibetan language, which seems to be dying. Because
21:04 now even the big banners and the road signs, everything is in Mandarin. But as I said,
21:13 you are very impressed with the spirit of the Chinese, I'm so sorry, with the Tibetans
21:21 that they have, because the Chinese have not been able to crush it, despite grave atrocities.
21:27 And you said very rightly that these people are very worried, they are very scared of
21:33 Dalai Lama. I mean, you cannot, in Tibet, you cannot utter the word Dalai Lama. If you
21:42 say his holiness, you are bound to land up in jail. That is the worst offense that can
21:48 be there. So, Dalai Lama or his holiness are never heard or spoken in Tibet, because the
21:57 Chinese are very worried about it. And that's why Chinese have banned Google, Facebook,
22:01 WhatsApp and all such social media. You'd be surprised, Anil, at Takla Kot, when we
22:07 were crossing by road, when we were going to Mansarovar Lake, the moment we crossed
22:15 into China and sat in Chinese buses, we went about maybe five kilometers, the buses were
22:21 stopped at a place where the road was slightly wide. And we were asked to take our complete
22:26 luggage down, our handbags, our bedding, everything that you had with you. So, we had to lay it
22:32 out on the ground, on the tarmac. So, the policemen came, they started checking each
22:38 and every item. They did not want any individual to carry any printed material, which will
22:47 maybe even remotely connected with Dalai Lama. I mean, they are so scared. I mean, it is
22:55 laughable, but they took our cameras and cell phones, went through the complete galleries
23:01 to find out, are we carrying any photographs of the Dalai Lama? I mean, that is the level
23:09 to which they are afraid of the Dalai Lama. But they want to remind the people that we
23:18 are the rulers, so that when you go, every house in Tibet is mandated to fly the Chinese
23:24 flag on the top. They can have the Tibetan flag, but the height of the Chinese flag has
23:31 to be more than the Tibetan flag, the Tibetan prayer flag. Because they say the Chinese
23:38 flag is supreme and it must appear to be supreme. And non-compliance is considered an act of
23:44 defiance. Foreign visitors at every place are tailed by the police. They want to find
23:57 out whom are they meeting, what are they talking. They will try to eavesdrop. When we went to
24:02 the local market in Lhasa and we were trying to buy some local saffron, which the people
24:08 were selling, we could make out there was a man standing right next to us, who was pretending
24:14 that as if he's also one of the buyers, but he was trying to overhear what we were talking.
24:19 They are worried that the locals may not let out a few things which they don't want us
24:26 to hear. That is the level of fear that they have about Dalai Lama and his becoming a symbol
24:34 of Tibet's struggle for independence. Now, I tell you that as far as the Dalai Lama is
24:41 concerned, I have sort of feel very strongly that it is time that certain steps are taken.
24:52 Make sure that Dalai Lama's power, his influence and his, let's say, respect over the people
25:01 that he commands, over the people of Tibet is not reduced or made or let the Chinese
25:08 reduce it. He's the only symbol of Tibet's struggle for independence as far as the international
25:14 arena is concerned. And China considers him to be the biggest impediment in the integration
25:20 of Tibet in mainland China. And they know that till the time the Dalai Lama's sway is
25:29 not reduced or he's not replaced by a pro-China boy as the next Dalai Lama, they will never
25:38 be able to get full control of the Tibetans' minds.
25:43 Dalai Lama, even today, it's amazing that as I told you that when we saw the Tibetan,
25:52 the Chinese flag flying over the Potala Palace, we felt hurt. It pained us somewhere. The
25:58 Indians are not used to seeing the temples of the religious places bearing the flags
26:04 of the rulers or the ruling countries. But that was so. So the flag flies very high over
26:11 the Potala Palace. Yet the people, we saw hundreds of the devotees covering long distance
26:18 and they were lying prostrate at every step. They were lying prostrate, marking out the
26:24 place, getting up again lying prostrate because they wanted to measure the distance up to
26:30 the Potala Palace, up to the seat of their Dalai Lama by their body length. Their faith
26:37 defies description. North Bolingka is the summer palace of the Dalai Lama. The Chinese
26:44 have recently opened it. Earlier it was closed, nobody could go there, but now it has opened
26:48 it more as a tourist spot than anything else. There are no photographs of the Dalai Lama
26:56 or any of his relics. Yet the people go there. There is a lamp, the butter lamp, which is
27:02 burning. People go there. I've seen the local Tibetans in tattered clothes, poor impoverished
27:09 people going there to carry homemade butter to keep the lamps lit. And they would offer
27:16 whatever tonne or those tattered notes that they have, the local currency, as their donation
27:24 because they are waiting that their spiritual head will return one day to free Tibet. Now
27:35 we have to hear, the government has to step in and take a lesson from what the Chinese
27:40 did with Panchen Lama. As we know, the Panchen Lama is the second most important religious
27:47 dignitary in Tibet. He's next only to the Dalai Lama. And it's a very strange system
27:53 where the Dalai Lamas, when he's selected, the Panchen Lama plays a key role. And when
27:58 the Panchen Lama is selected, the Dalai Lama plays a key role. After the escape of the
28:04 current Dalai Lama in 59, Panchen Lama, Kyaltsen, he sided with the Chinese. He thought that
28:10 by siding with the Chinese, he may be able to save their culture by humoring them, by
28:17 being reasonable with them, being reasoning it out with them, and maybe able to sort of
28:22 help the local Tibetan population as well. But soon he became disillusioned. And in five
28:29 years time, that is in 64, he was imprisoned and kept under house arrest. Thereafter, he
28:35 was brought to Shigatse in 89. And he was only 51 year old when he died. Locals are
28:42 convinced that he was poisoned. Because he had started taking anti-China stand. The moment
28:49 he died, the Chinese, the Dalai Lama chose a local boy called Naima, Gedun Naima, as
28:58 the next Panchen Lama. But the boy went missing soon after his nomination. And to date, he's
29:04 untraced. No one knows where that boy has gone and where his even family has gone. People
29:11 say that he's somewhere. And in his place, the Chinese government conspired to select
29:20 a man called, boy called Norbu. He was the son of two Communist Party members as the
29:24 11th Panchen Lama. Today, he is a Panchen Lama, but the locals do not recognize him.
29:31 They call him as a stooge of the Chinese. And Panchen Lama's official residence is in
29:37 Shigatse. Like Dalai Lama stays in the Potala Palace, he stays in Shigatse Monastery. But
29:44 this Norbu, the present Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, doesn't have the courage to come and
29:50 stay in Shigatse because they fear that he will be killed. When he comes to Shigatse
29:55 on a visit, the city is converted into a police fortress and locals are forced and even paid
30:03 money to send two persons per family to attend his addresses. This is China. So this is what,
30:14 just one second, this is what I come to the point what you said. If Tibet is China's Achilles
30:21 heel, that Dalai Lama is a lethal dagger in the Chinese heart.
30:26 Yes. Sir, in my book, China's Bloody Bulletless Borders, I have some photographs of Dalai
30:40 Lama's entry into India and his being escorted by personnel of five Assam rifles. And in
30:53 1967, when we had skirmishes in Nathula and Chola Sikkim, they lost almost 400 personnel
31:05 and after that they pressed very hard that we should not fire at each other. And that
31:13 continues even what happened in Galwan in 2020. They used these, you know, horrid medieval
31:25 barbaric weapons, iron rods with nails on them. We didn't fire back at them. We eventually
31:36 killed many more than the 20 of 14 Sam rifles, 14 Bihar which they killed, many more, but
31:48 not with bare hands. But in 1975, they captured in December, October 1975, they captured five
32:03 personnel of five Assam rifles and they killed them by torture. Because the five Assam rifles
32:14 represented the battalion which escorted him, which gave him a guard of honour. So, that's
32:24 the kind of attitude they had. But I must thank you, sir, for a very, very great expose
32:37 of what things are like in Tibet. After all, in this iron curtain, in China, there's very
32:47 little that comes out. And thank you very much, sir, for giving us this description.
33:00 Thank you. My pleasure.