QUESTIONS CONCERNING TIBET

Amit Bhattacharyya Part 1

(Author's note: In March 2008, all leading Indian newspapers and TV channels published and telecast news of a rebellion in Tibet, which incidentally was the fiftieth year of the “free Tibet” rebellion in 1959. Almost immediately after that, most of the media, as if all of them were expecting such an event to happen, started publishing news about how bad the Chinese authorities are, how the Chinese Communist Party, since the days of Mao Tsetung, had suppressed the genuine aspirations of the Tibetan people in China for freedom, how the PRC encouraged Han chauvinism and above all, how China had occupied Tibet, which was, according to them, never part of the Chinese territory. Not only leading newspapers, but many periodicals in both English and Bengali, if not also in other vernacular languages, started a slander campaign against China and Communism. Many eminent personalities belonging to different professions, while criticizing the forcible suppression of the protest movements inside Tibet, also poured their venom on the Communist ideology. However, what is significant is that all of them kept total silence on the Tibetan serfdom associated with the Dalai Lama rule and the fundamental socialist transformation brought about by the CPC in association of the people of Tibet in the 1950s. Most of the writers, in their haste to denounce the recent bloodbath, only betrayed a profound ignorance of the historical relations between China and Tibet and the part played first by the British and then by the US imperialism as also by the then Indian prime minister, Pandit J.N.Nehru. While dealing with the question concerning Tibet, one should strictly adhere to facts; one should keep in mind the fact that China of today is totally different from what it had been during the time Mao Tse-tung was at the helm of affairs, that today's China has deviated so much from Mao's policy and the ideology of Communism associated with him that it had become a capitalist power long time back. So the policy pursued by the present-day government of China can never be the same as that pursued earlier. This essay seeks to analyze the events right from the ancient period and will continue until the late 1970s, after which, along with the change in the colour of China in the post-Mao phase, there might have been changes in the policy towards Tibetans and other small nationalities.


“Most of the kaloons* of the Tibetan local government and the reactionary clique of the upper social strata colluded with imperialism, gathered together rebellious bandits, rebelled, wrought havoc among the people, held Dalai Lama under duress, tore up the 17-article Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, and on the night of 19 March, directed the Tibetan local army and rebels in an all-out attack against the People's Liberation Army garrison at Lhasa. Such acts which betray the motherland and disrupt the unification of the country cannot be tolerated by the law…”(Premier Chou En lai's 'Order of the State Council of the People's Republic of China' dt. March 28,1959; *The local government of Tibet is called kasha and its six members are called kaloons in Tibetan). The rebellion was crushed within three days by 22 March. According to official reports, about five thousand armed rebels were killed; the number of casualties on the PLA side is not known. In March 2008, on the fiftieth anniversary of that rebellion, sections of the Tibetan population rebelled against the Chinese government and raised the “Free Tibet” slogan. The movement spread to some other areas and countries including India. Within a few days the movement was quelled in China.

This movement raised a hue and cry in some quarters both in India and abroad and brought into the focus some questions, some of which are historical in nature while some others are directly related to the present situation in China. The following questions are being raised: whether Tibet was historically part of China; what was the policy of the People's Republic of China and the stand of Mao Tse-tung towards small nationalities in general and Tibet in particular;the policy of the PRC towards Tibet after 1949; what happened in 1959; what was the role of US imperialism and the government of India led by Nehru towards the issue of Tibet etc. What is evident from the discussions that have come up since March 2008 and available in India is that some pertinent questions have virtually not been dealt with at all, or only in passing. One is the historical relationship between China and Tibet; the other is the nature of the dark, cruel serf system in Tibet that was uprooted by the Chinese Communists and how a new socialist society was created there. For the sake of convenience, I propose to divide the whole discussion into the following sections: 1) Was Tibet historically an integral part of China? 2)British imperialist designs on Tibet(Early 19th century--1949); 3) Tibet in the China-USA-India Relationship; 4) Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai on the question of small nationalities in China; 5) Background of the Rebellion of 1959; 6) Nehru and Tibet; 7) Why are foreign powers such as the USA interested in Tibet? 8) Tibetan serfdom 9)Transformation of Tibet from a feudal country into a socialist one; 9)Is China a threat by example? Section 1: Was Tibet historically an integral part of China? China, admittedly one of the largest countries of the world, is the home of fifty-six nationalities. Nearly 94% of her people belong to the Han nationality. Besides the Han, there are many minority nationalities such as the Mongol, Hui, Tibetan, Uighur, Chuang, Miao, Yi, Kirghiz, Tatar and others. The interesting point is that the population of the minority nationalities in China is small, but the area they inhabit is large. The Han people comprise 94% of the total population--an overwhelming majority, but they are settled in about 40 to 50 per cent of the total land area in China. On the other hand, the other 50 to 60 per cent of the land area is, as we can well understand, very sparsely populated by the other 55 small nationalities of China. All these nationalities contributed through long years of cooperation and interaction, to its formation as a united country.

Relations between China and Tibet were established on a firm basis during the rule of the Tang dynasty in China(618-907 AD), though contacts and exchanges between the Han and Tibetan nationalities and between their ancestors, antedate written history. During the Tang rule, there were no less than 100 missions exchanged between the two countries and eight treaties concluded by them. In 641, Emperor Tai Tsung of the Tang dynasty married Princess Wen Cheng to the Tibetan king, Sron-tsan Gampo. She took with her silk-worm eggs and a large number of Han craftsmen specializing in brewing, rice-milling, paper and ink-making. This helped in promoting the economic and cultural development of Tibet at that time. According to Buston, the historian of Tibet, the Chinese princess was largely responsible for the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet and the Tibetan looked upon her as an incarnation of the Divine Mother(Tara). When Emperor Tai Tsung died and Emperor Kao Tsung was enthroned, king Sron-tsan Gampo wrote to the Tang prime minister, saying: “On this occasion of the enthronement of the emperor, if there are subordinates who show disloyalty I am willing to dispatch troops to join in the expedition against them”. The new emperor bestowed on him many titles of honour. Such close relationships between the Tibetan and Han nationalities became further strengthened in 710 AD, when another Han princess, Chin Cheng, was married to the then Tibetan king Tridetsogtan during the reign of the Tang emperor Chung Tsung. Thousands of pieces of
silk and brocade, Han acrobats and musical instruments as also copies of classic works were sent to Tibet. All these helped in facilitating further access of the Tibetans to the handicrafts, techniques of production, music, scholarship and culture of the Hans. In 729 AD again, the Tibetan king Tridetsogtan wrote a memorial to the Tang emperor Hsuan Tsung in which he said: “I, a relative of the former emperor, also have the honour to be married to Princess Chin Cheng and we are thus members of one family, and the common people throughout the land live in happiness and prosperity”(italics ours). This is a document of historical importance as Tibet and the Tang empire were described as “members of one family”. Thus matrimonial bonds helped promote social, economic, technological and cultural contacts of a profound nature between the Tibetan and Han nationalities. Large numbers of Tibetan emissaries were frequently sent to the Tang court; they presented tributes and applied for trade. The Tibetans thus were not treated as “men from afar” as was the attitude towards the foreigners during the rule of the Manchu dynasty, but one of their own.

In the middle of the 9th century when the Tang rule was coming to a close, the Tibetan king Lang Darma of Tibet was killed by the upper strata of the lamas and chaos reigned supreme. During that long period of turmoil, a general, in response to a proposal from some quarters to install a new Tsanpu, declared: “How can a new Tsanpu be installed without the conferment of the title by the great Tang dynasty.?” The French scholar Grenard, in his book Le Tibet put forward the view that the Tibetan ruler Sron-Tsan Gampo had already recognized the Chinese emperor's sovereignty over Tibet.

During the period of Sung rule in China(960-1279 AD), Tibet became weak and divided and the Sungs, faced with internal problems, could hardly devote any attention to Tibet. Thus there was a weakening of the link between the two nationalities. Tibetan-Chinese relations took a definite turn with the rise of the Mongol dynasty(Yuan) from 1271 to 1368 AD, following the great conquests of Jenghis Khan and his grandson Kublai Khan, who ruled as emperor of China. Its consequence on Tibet-China relations was of the most far-reaching nature. Kublai Khan enforced the pacification of Tibet with even greater energy and ferocity than his predecessor Monga, who had already set up pacification bureau along the western border of Szechuan. Kublai set up a new pacification bureau in the frontier of Tibet in 1269 enabling him thus to dominate its two most important provinces of U and Tsang. Tibet was also divided into administrative districts as in China proper and a system of local government established.

The Tibetans who retained traces of their earlier martial spirit were not the easiest of people to rule and Kublai Khan felt that Buddhism was as good an instrument as any to induce docility among his spirited subjects. Since Buddhism had already taken root in Tibet, this move, from the point of view of the Chinese state, was a master stroke of policy. Thus the system of merging political and religious rule into one entity was introduced in 1275 during the reign of Kublai Khan. As a first step, Kublai invited Sakya Pandita, head of the great Sakya monastery to his court and thereby gained his support to carry forward his plans for the promotion of Buddhism in Tibet. Later, Sakya Pandita's nephew Phaspa was similarly invited and he made a great impression on Kublai Khan, who rewarded him for his adaptation of the Tibetan and Brahmic script to the existing Mongolian language. Moreover, as C.A.Bell writes in his Tibet Past and Present, Kublai Khan himself “became a convert to Lamaism and gave the sovereignty of Tibet to his visitor. Thus began in Tibet the rule of the priest-kings”. The Sakyapa Lamas were to rule Tibet since then as a theocracy.

It is pertinent to point out in this connection that events in India also played an important part in cementing the Tibetan-Chinese relationships. Towards the end of the 12th century, the last pro-Buddhist dynasty in India—the Palas of Bengal and the Senas after them—were swept away by the Muslim invasion. Fugitive monks fled to Tibet taking with them their precious Sanskrit manuscripts which were translated into Tibetan. Quite naturally, the Tibetans were alarmed at the growing expansion of Islam in India and its possible consequences for them should the power breach the Himalayan wall. Thus Tibet came to lean even more on the Mongolian court. The decline of Buddhism in India and the stopping of the Tibetan route to Bengal merely intensified this trend. The attempted invasions of Tibet by Ikhtiyar-ud-din of Bengal in the 13th century and Muhammad-bin-Tughlug in the 14th century proved that Tibetan fears were not baseless.(In the modern period, Rahul Sankrityayana was one of the very few who braved all hardships and natural obstacles of an apparently insurmountable nature to go to Tibet on foot and mules more than once).

Meanwhile, there were also some economic and administrative factors which helped in cementing the Sino-Tibetan relationships. First, Tibet sent tribute missions to China and likewise in appreciation of the tribute, got gifts which sent in value those which he received. Second, the bartering of Tibetan horses for Chinese tea was common and restrictions put on it often evoked tribal uprisings. Third, hereditary Chinese titles given to the Tibetans made a powerful impression on them. Fourth, single system of administrative divisions, military garrisons and currency(including paper currency) prevailed throughout China, including Tibet where Yuan banknotes were being found even in the 1980s.

Friendly contact between the Tibetan people and the other nationalities of China was developed further during the Ming dynasty(1368-1644). The Ming rulers favoured the Kargyu(White) Lamaist Sect, to whose high clerics it gave political appointments. It is in fact untrue to maintain, as some Western writers do, that ties with the rest of China were severed under the Ming or that Tibet was linked only with the minority nationalities but not with the majority Han nationality. In the Ming period, the appointments of Tibetan officials from China's capital continued. The statistics of the Board of Rites of the Ming dynasty show that in the 1450s, about three to four hundred Tibetans came to Peking to present tributes every year, and in the 1460s, the number reached four thousand. Economic exchanges also grew. The museums and archives of Peking and Lhasa abound in evidence of all this. In Tibet the Kargyu local rulers, who rose with the Ming, also fell with them. But the links did not break.

When the Ming dynasty was on the verge of collapse, the rule of the King of the Law of the Kagyud Sect in Tibet also tottered. Another lamaist group, the Gelug or Yellow Sectled by its pontiff, the Dalai Lama, became important. After the troops of the Manchu dynasty(1644-1911) pushed forward south of
the Great Wall, the Fifth Dalai Lama came to Peking from Tibet in 1652 to congratulate and asked emperor Shun Chih to confer titles of honour on him. In 1653, when the fifth Dalai returned to Tibet, the Emperor conferred upon him the title of Dalai Lama which was officially established from then on. The functions, powers and organization of the Tibetan local government(kasha) were defined by Emperor Chien Lung of the Manchu(Ching) dynasty—a system that continued till 1959. Relations between the Tibetan and other nationalities in China became closer during the Ching rule. In 1791, the Gurkhas from Nepal launched a largescale aggression against Tibet on the pretext of a minor incident on the Tibet- Nepal border. The troops of the local Tibetan government were defeated by the invaders and it was felt that all Tibet would fall victim to the Gurkha invasion. The Dalai and Panchen appealed to Peking for help.

With the support of the Tibetan people, the Ching troops succeeded in driving out the invaders from Tsang in May 1792. Thus were the southwestern frontiers of the China consolidated and the Tibetan people brought to understand from their personal experience the value of the great support given them by the central government. Thus the fraternal feelings between the Tibetan people and other nationalities, including the Han, were consolidated further. It thus goes without saying that the sending of troops had far-reaching significance in cementing the bond between the Tibetans and the Hans. When the first Chinese republic was founded in 1911 after the end of the Ching rule, its multinational colour was emphasized in the new flag of five strips, one of which stood for the Tibetan nationality. The period starting from the first Opium War(1840-42) and the signing of the Treaty of Nanking(1842)—the first of a series of unequal treaties the weak Chinese government was forced to sign—witnessed the penetration of foreign capitalist/imperialist powers in a very big way. The internal crisis of China intensified further in the years after 1911. Throughout China, imperialist-backed warlords, of whom Chiang Kai-shek was historically the last, ran riot. And it was then that the British imperialist rulers of India, seizing their advantage, became bolder in inciting separatism in Tibet. Thus from the historical point of view, Tibet was an integral part of China and there was nothing unnatural or unjustified in the entry of the PLA into Tibet after revolution was complete in China in 1949.

Section:2 British imperialist designs on Tibet

The British capitalists showed a keen interest in Tibet long before China was defeated in the First Opium War(1840-42) and was forced to sign in 1842 the Treaty of Nanking—the first of a series of humiliating treaties with the Western intruders. The British-Indian authorities sent two missions to Tibet in the last quarter of the 18th century, led respectively by George Bogle and Turner. The purpose was three-fold. First, they wanted Tibetan authorities to exercise their influence to curb the marauding activities of the Bhutanese hillmen in Coochbehar whose ruler was an ally of the East India Company. The British wanted to utilize the relationship woven round old cultural, religious, trading and political ties between Tibet and the Himalayan borderlands(Spiti, Lahul, ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan and Assam Himalaya) for their own benefit. Second, as mercantilism was the order of the day, the East India Company was very much concerned at the outflow of the specie from Britain to China in order to pay for Chinese tea, silk, porcelain and brocade. They were keen to find a local source for the specie. Tibet was a likely source. They were interested in the gold of Tibet. According to S.Camman(Trade through the Himalayas), “The gold of Tibet has been proverbial since the days of
Herodotus, who spoke of the great ants in the desert north of India who threw up sandheaps full of gold. Gold is found in the sands of most of the rivers flowing out of Tibet, such as the Indus, the Yellow River and the Upper Yangtse. In fact, the latter, in its upper reaches, is even named 'the river of golden sands'(Chin-sha-kiang)”.

Third, Tibet occupied a very special place in the Chinese tributary system because of its unique position as the centre of Lamaistic Buddhism. The Ching rulers sought to strengthen their position in Mongolia—where Lamalism held sway—with the help of the Tibetan high authorities such as the Tashi or Panchen Lama. It was thus felt by the E.I.Company that a good word put in by him to the Chinese would make conditions of trade and commerce at Canton easier for the British. About the overall nature of the Chinese-Tibetan relationship, Bogle wrote: “The Emperor of China is acknowledged as the sovereign of the country; the appointment to the first offices in the State is made by his order, and in all measures of consequence, reference is first had to the Court of Peking, but the internal government of the country is committed to natives”. By the mid-19th century, however, circumstances changed substantially to the advantage of the aggressive designs of the British capitalists. India had, by then been brought under the firm control of British rulers. Moreover, Chinahad been defeated in the Opium Wars and that exposed her weakness to the foreigners. To add to these, the competition between Britain and Russia for supremacy in Asia became more acute than ever before. Then the end of the Napoleonic wars boosted the strength of Britain to a large extent. In the light of all these developments, the Himalayan regions fell prey to British aggression—the Kumaon, Garwal, Lahul, Spiti, Ladakh, Bhutan and Sikkim. In view of the continuing pattern, an assault on Tibet became inevitable. On 25 April, 1873, a deputation from the Royal Society of Arts put pressure on the Duke of Argyll, Secretary of State for India, to promote a more active policy towards Tibet both on commercial and strategic grounds. However, because of the intense Anglo-Russian rivalry that had been going on during that time, Britain looked upon China as a possible bulwark against Russian attack. Thus at the Anglo-Chinese “Convention relative to Burma and Tibet”(24 July, 1886), the British agreed to deal with Tibet through China only. The Sikkim Convention of 1890 was thus negotiated directly between British and Chinese representatives.

All this, however, underwent a transformation with China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. Thus to the British policy-makers, the possibility of China being treated as a bulwark against Russian expansion became non-starter. The pressure against Tibet began in earnest to open a second trademart in Tibet. Deep commercial interests of the British were involved. The coming of Lord Curzon as Viceroy of India merely exacerbated the situation. China's relationship with Tibet was no longer treated as an internal affair of China, but described as a piece of “constitutional fiction”. Bazaar gossip about Russian intrigues in Lhasa, emotive words like 'prestige' were brought into play in a calculated manner, to heighten tension, and then to launch the aggressive assault. The 'crime' of the Tibetan authorities, it seemed, was their refusal to open relations with the British-Indian government.

Francis Younghusband embarked on his notorious expedition and crossed into Tibet. The Chinese and he Tibetans could offer no more than passive resistance, but their offers to negotiate were haughtily brushed aside, on one plea or the other, until finally their dash to Lhasa was made and a Convention imposed by the victors upon the vanquished. The slaughter of the helpless Tibetans—a needless act of cruelty and barbarism—made a mockery of its supposedly peaceful intentions. Taraknath Das in his book, British Expansion in Tibet, has related various acts of vandalism, foremost of which was the looting of monasteries. The Lhasa Convention(1904)- imposed upon the Tibetans, contained a heavy indemnity clause(article 6), while article 9, had it been carried out, would have reduced Tibet to the status of a British protectorate. The designs of British imperialism were clearly expressed in the words of Captain V.F.O'Connor, who served for a time with the British mission in Peking before returning to the Imperial Civil Service in India: “Tibet includes the sources of the Yangtse-kiang, the Mekong and the Jalween, and borders on the great Szechuan province—the most thickly populated and one of the richest in China. Our influence exerted from so commanding a position would certainly facilitate future negotiations regarding such questions as the trade of the Yangtse Valley and Yunnan, the construction of railways from Burmah and elsewhere through these and adjacent provinces, and the treatment of the Europeans generally over the whole of Southern China”.

However, as a result of the demands of international diplomacy, involving the need toplacate Russia in Asia in order to meet the growing threat of Germany in Europe, Britain modified for a time her expansionist policy towards Tibet. To get China's signature to the Lhasa Convention, the indemnity was drastically reduced and the offensive article 9 was made specifically inapplicable to China. The Anglo-Chinese Adhesion Convention was signed in Peking in 1906 and reaffirmed China's suzerain rights in Tibet. Later Article II of the Anglo-Russian Convention(31 August 1907) pointed out that: “Conforming with the admitted principle of the suzerainty of China over Tibet, Great Britain and Russia engage not to enter into negotiations with Tibet except through the intermediary of the Chinese government”. We are reproducing these statements only to show that the changes in the Western imperialist attitude towards the relationship between Tibet and China from time to time were determined by their own aggressive designs. We will see that they would change their own stand again and again in future. The Chinese government took measures to make this suzerainty effective as they realized it quite well that unless this were done, the foreign devils would again try to isolate Tibet from China. As a result of these measures the Dalai Lama, who had designs of his own, fled the country and sought refug in Darjeeling. Meanwhile, with the fall of the Manchus in China in 1911, an
expansionist policy was instituted once again. Previous treaties with China were jettisoned and the notorious Simla Conference of 1914 convened after much pressure on the Chinese government. The Chinese delegate merely initialled its provisions and his action was promptly repudiated by his government. Thus, in law the convention was null and void. It also recognized the traditional status of Tibet. Article II stipulated that “the Governments of Great Britain and China recognized that Tibet is under the suzeraintyChina…”.

Section: 3 Tibet in China-India-US Relations

With the end of British colonial rule over India, the Chinese expected an easing of tension in the Himalayas. However, the Chinese soon learnt to their dismay that the Government of India continued with the policies of its British imperialist predecessors, not only in Tibet, but also in Bhutan and Sikkim. Early in 1947, when India was still a Colony, an Asian Conference was convened in New Delhi to which both Chinese and Tibetan delegations were invited. A huge map of Asia displayed in the conference hall put Tibet outside the boundaries of China. Only after an immediate protest by George Yeh of the Chinese Foreign Office was a correction made somewhat reluctantly. What motivated the organizers to make such a cartographic aggression? The answer seems to lie in the expansionist designs of the would-be Indian ruling classes and their political representatives.

On 25 April1947, when India was still a British colony, the external affairs department of the government of India, of which Nehru was in charge as a member of the viceroy's 'interim government', informed the British secretary of state for India that “Government of India now wish to be represented in Tibet…and should be grateful to know whether His Majesty's Government desire to retain separate Mission there in future. If they donot, it would seem feasible to arrange transition from 'British Mission' to 'Indian Mission' without publicity and without drawing too much attention to change, to avoid i f p o s s i b l e a n y c o n s t i t u t i o n a l i s s u e b e i n g r a i s e d b y China”(N.Mansergh,editor-in-chief, Constitutional Relations between ritain and India: The Transfer of Power 1942-7(Documents released by the British Government), Vols.I-XII, London, 1971-1983, Vol.X,p.430). At that time, civil war had been raging in China, and Nehru and his associates, who claimed to be the champions of democracy, sought to resort to surreptitious methods to grab the land of other people to fulfil their expansionist designs. In fact, when World War II was drawing to a close, the Indian ruling classes cherished wild dreams to become a zonal power in Asia—from the east coast
of Africa to Pacific—under the umbrella of the Anglo-American powers. Nehru, the top political representative of the Indian ruling classes and the future prime minister of India nourished ambitions to become the fourth big power in the world, besides USA, USSR and China, her empire spreading from the Middle East to near Australia, including Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. After the end of direct British rule in India, the Indian rulers devoted their attention to India's northern neighbours: the Himalayan kingdoms of Kashmir, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet. Even before the end of direct colonial rule, the Nehrus wanted to annex Kashmir at a time when Jammu and Kashmir(J&K) was a
native state under British paramountcy. Although a plebiscite or referendum was to be held before a final decision on the “ceding of Kashmir to the Indian Union” was to be taken, the Indian ruling classes did not allow the people of J and K to decide their own fate through a fair plebiscite. Thus J and K was torn into two parts—about one third under the occupation of Pakistan and the rest under the virtually military occupation of India—and ravaged by hostile forces.

It is pertinent to refer to the observation made by Neville Maxwell in his India's China War: “In the case of Sikkim, India in 1949 seized the opportunity of a local uprising against the ruler to send in troops and bring the state into closer dependence as a protectorate than it had formally been under the British(and in 1974 Nehru's worthy daughter and then India's prime minister Indira Gandhi marched Indian into Sikkim and annexed it into India); in the same year(1949) India signed a treaty with Bhutan, in whichshe took over Britain's right to guide Bhutan in foreign affairs. New Delhi's influence in Nepal continued to be paramount, and was increased in 1950 when the Indian Government helped the King of Nepal to break the century-old rule of Rana clan. The new Government thus took over and consolidated the 'chain of protectorates', as Curzon had described the
Himalayan states”(pp.67-68).

Needless to mention, India and the US were also interested in Tibet, which was an integral part of China. As we know, China in the last years of the 1940s had been passing through an intense civil war and the victorious PLA under the leadership of Mao Tse- tung had been giving telling blows to the Japaneseaggressors and Chiang Kai-shek's troops. The US imperialists had been supporting Chiang's rotten regime against the Communists. They trained and transported 4,80,000 of Chiang's troops from the south to Manchuria and north China. Still, the US could neither 'save' China nor its lackey Chiang who fled the Chinese mainland to Taiwan in 1949. The US was also engaged inespionage and sabotage in China's far-flung provinces of Sinkiang and Tibet and conspired against the Communist revolutionary movement. When the Sinkiang troops rose against the Kuomintang, the US vice-consul tried to escape to India through Tibet and was shot by the Tibetan guards. The US consul fled with his men to India and was received in Sikkim by an official of the US embassy in Delhi. L.Natarajan in his American Shadow over India noted: “These reports indicate that the unusual US activities in Sinkiang
could not have been possible without the acquiescence of the Indian Government”(p.181).

Meanwhile, taking advantage of the civil war, the Tibetan government of serf-owners established contacts with the US government as early as 1946(The readers will find a discussion on Tibetan serfdom in a separate section in this paper). The pretension of the government of the Tibetan serfowners to independence was encouraged by the US imperialists. An American, Lowell Thomas, visited Tibet in 1949 and handed over a letter from president Truman to Dalai Lama. Returning from Tibet, he declared in Calcutta on 10 October 1949 that “the Tibetan authorities wanted outside help to hold back the progress of Communism and that India would have a majo role to play in lending such help. He suggested that US might find some way to supply modern arms and give advice on guerrilla warfare, and also disclosed that he in fact carried scrolls and oral messages from the Tibetan rulers to president Truman and Dean Acheson, the secretary of state(Natarajan,pp.186-87).

What were the Nehrus doing by then? On 27 July 1949, the Reuters reported that Nehru was planning to visit Lhasa in near future. On 29 July, the London Times reported from Delhi: “Neutral observers are cautiously disposed to interpret recent signs of closer liaison between the Government of India and the Dalai Lama's Government in Tibet as a gratifying indication that an important new bulwark against spread of Communism westward is being created”(Quoted in Natarajan,pp.187-88). It was reported that H.S. Dayal, India's political officer in Sikkim, left on a special mission to Lhasa in August 1949. An American news agency reported on 10 January 1950 that “accord has been reached between India, the United Kingdom and the United States on measures aimed at preserving Tibetan autonomy”. That such an accord, according to Natarajan, had been reached was denied by a spokesman of the external affairs ministry in New Delhi days later but it was not denied that consultations took place. The Lhasa government also sent a “goodwill mission” to visit India, the USA and other countries, but not to the China. Natarajan holds that “the Lhasa aristocracy was actively canvassing for foreign help to fight China. The Anglo-American powers were anxious to keep Tibet separated from China, and Indian policy was aiding their effort”(p.188). Thus it is evident that it was the US imperialists who had been quite blatantly interfering in the internal affairs of China and hatched conspiracy to cut off Tibet from China. In that nefarious game, Nehru-led Indian government was a willing accomplice. In fact, the developments in Tibet had much to do with the India-China War of 1962. More on the USIndia role later.

Section 4: Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai on the question of
Nationalities

On 1 October 1949, Mao Tse-tung, on behalf of the people of China and the Communist Party, proclaimed the victory of the New Democratic Revolution and the establishment of the People's Republic of China. On that day, he declared: “The Chinese people have stood up…nobody will insult us again…” What was the attitude of the Chairman of the CPC and the Premier of the People's Republic of China towards the small nationalities of China? Did they favour the policy of subjugating small nationalities by the imposition of the control of the dominant Han nationality? Did they incite Han chauvinism against the rest, as some Western scholars and Indian writers both yesterday and tomorrow sought and are seeking to argue? We will see that both in theory and practice, they upheld the equal rights of nationalities and opposed Han chauvinism. Mao Tse-tung was quite conscious of the presence of Han chauvinism within the Chinese society and sought to combat it throughout his life. He knew that these were reactionary ideas of the landlord class and the bourgeoisie fed by the Kuomintang and that these generated a policy of discrimination towards the small nationalities. Similarly, Chou En-lai, the Chinese Premier, in many of his statements, criticized such an attitude and made the government stand clear and also implemented that policy to the best of his ability. Let us refer to some relevant statements which would make the stand of both the CPC and the PRC clear.

In a Party policy statement entitled On Coalition Government made to the Seventh National Congress of the CPC on 24 April 1945, Mao Tse-tung categorically explained Party policy regarding minority nationalities. He wrote: “The anti-popular clique of the Kuomintang denies that many nationalities exist in China, and labels all excepting the Han nationality as “tribes”. It has taken over the Governments of the Qing(i.e, Manchu) Dynasty and the Northern warlords in relation to the minority nationalities, oppressing and exploiting them in every possible way. Clear cases in point are the massacre of the Mongolians of the Ikhchao League in 1943, the armed suppression of the minority nationalities in Xinjiang since 1944 and the massacres of the Hui people in Kansu province in recent years. These are manifestations of a wrong Han-chauvinistic ideology and policy”. Mao went on to say: “In 1924, Dr. Sun Yat-sen wrote in the 'Manifesto of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang that 'the Kuomintang's Principles of Nationalism has a two-fold meaning, first, the liberation of the Chinese nation, and second, the equality of all nationalities in China', and that 'the Kuomintang solemnly declares that it recognizes the right to selfdetermination of all the nationalities in China and a free and United republic of China(a free union of all nationalities) will be established when the anti-imperialist and anti-warlord revolution is victorious”.

Then Mao wrote: “The Communist Party of China is in full agreement with Dr. Sun's policy on nationalities as stated here. Communists must actively help the people of all the minority nationalities to fight for it, and help them,…to fight for their political, economic and cultural emancipation and development… Their spoken and written languages, their manners and customs and their religious beliefs must be respected”. Then Mao referred to the correct attitude of the Shansi-Kansu-Ninghsia
border regions and the liberated areas in northern China towards the Mongolian and Hui nationalities (SW, Vol.III, 1965,pp.205-68). The policy towards Tibet was not different from this one.

After four years, in Article 50 of the Policy towards Nationalities Chapter VI in the Common Programme of the Chinese People's Political Representative Conference(1949) which, until 1954, served as the provisional constitution of the PRC, it is stated: “All nationalities within the boundaries of the People's Republic of China are equal. Unity and mutual help shall be effected among them to oppose imperialism and the public enemies within these nationalities, so that the People's Republic of China will become a big fraternal and cooperative family of all nationalities. Greater Han nationalism and chauvinism shall be opposed. Acts of discrimination, oppression and splitting the unity of the various nationalities shall be prohibited…”(SW, Vol.III,pp.205-68).

Then in an inner-Party directive entitled Criticize Han Chauvinism dt. 16 March 1953, Mao drew the attention of the party members to guard and fight against such mentality. He observed: “In some places the relations between nationalities are far from normal. For Communists, this is an intolerable
situation. We must go to the root and criticize Han chauvinistic ideas which exist to a serious degree among many Party members and cadres, namely, the reactionary ideas characteristic of the Kuomintang, which are manifested in the relations between nationalities. Mistakes in this respect must be corrected at once… “Judging from the mass of information on hand, the Central Committee holds
that wherever there are minority nationalities the general rule is that there are problems calling for solution, and in some cases very serious ones…What has come to light in various places in the last two or three years shows that Han chauvinism exists almost everywhere. It will be very dangerous if we fail now to give timely education and resolutely overcome Han chauvinism in the Party and among the people…In other words, bourgeois ideas dominate the minds of those comrades and people who have no Marxist education and have not grasped the nationality policy of the Central Committee. Therefore, education must be assiduously carried out so that this problem can be solved step by step. Moreover, the newspapers should publish more articles based on specific facts to criticize Han chauvinism openly and educate the Party members and the people”.

It is quite natural that after the revolution of 1949, the CPC and the PRC would devote their attention to the national and socialist unification of the motherland. The Preamble to the First Constitution of the People's Republic of China(1954) reads as follows: “…All nationalities of our country are united as one great family of free and equal nationalities. This unity of China's nationalities will continue to gain in strength, founded as it is on ever-growing friendship and mutual aid among themselves and on the struggle against imperialism, against public enemies of the people within these nationalities and against both dominant-nation chauvinism and local nationalism. In the course of economic and cultural development, the state will concern itself with the needs of the different nationalities, and, in the matter of socialist transformation, pay full attention to the special characteristics in the development of each…” Here attention has been drawn both to Han chauvinism and the chauvinism of small nationalities. In his essay entitled On the Ten Major Relationships(25 April 1956), Mao pointed out: “…We put the emphasis on opposing Han chauvinism. Local-nationality chauvinism must be opposed too, but generally that is not where our emphasis lies…”(SW, Vol.V,pp.284-306). In Article 3, General Principles, Chapter 1 of the First Constitution, it is written that “the People's Republic of China is a single multi-national state. All the nationalities are equal. Discrimination against, or oppression of any nationality and acts which undermine the unity of the nationalities are prohibited. All the nationalities have freedom to use and foster the growth of their spoken and written languages and to preserve or reform their own customs or ways. “Regional autonomy applies in areas where people of national minorities live in compact communities. National autonomous areas are inalienable parts of the People's Republic of China…”

The idea of combatting both Han chauvinism and local-nationality chauvinism was expressed by Mao also in his On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People(27 February 1957). Closely related to it is the question: why China, instead of adopting the policy of autonomous republics like the USSR, went for the creation of autonomous regions. Autonomous republics in the USSR, why autonomous regions, and not autonomous republics in China?: Chou En-lai answers Chou En-lai also talks about chauvinism of two types—Han chauvinism and minority(local) chauvinism. Han chauvinism can develop into a tendency towards discrimination and minority chauvinism can develop into a tendency towards separatism. This socialist China, in the words of Chou En-lai “is not to be monopolized by any one nationality. It belongs to all the more than 50 nationalities in our country, to the entire people of the People's Republic of China”(Questions relating to our Policies towards China's Nationalities, 4 August 1957, SW, Vol.II, Beijing 1989,pp.253-54). Chou En-lai in that essay dealt with the question of regional autonomy. Why did the PRC opted for the policy of autonomous regions, rather than that of autonomous republics? This question is relevant for the purpose of our present discussion. In China, self-government takes the form of autonomous regions, prefectures, counties or townships, whereas in the USSR, there were autonomous republics and small administrative units, such as oblasts and so on. The forms of autonomy in the two countries differ not only in name, but also in substance. The right to self-government was enjoyed by the nationalities in both the cases. In fact, the differences lie in the way administrative lines were drawn in the two countries and in the particular rights and powers delegated to the autonomous areas. Chou En-lai had attributed the difference partly to difference in historical backgrounds of the two countries and partly to differences between the situation in China in 1949 and that of Russia during the days of the October Revolution. During the 19th century, Russia had already developed, despite the presence of
strong feudal features, into a capitalist country. Moreover, it had also become an imperialist power which had a number of colonies. The rule of tsarist Russia was essentially colonialist with respect to nationalities. Added to these was the fact that nationalities in Russia were geographically separated, each living in its own area.

China, on the other hand, was historically placed differently. In China, there was mutual interdependence among the nationalities, especially in the interior. For long periods, the Han nationality dominated the heartland of China and extended its rule to areas inhabited by other nationalities. However, there were also times when minority nationalities moved into the interior and even established their control over the heartland. That naturally resulted in multi-national settlements, and that is why during the 1949 revolution, there were, unlike the Soviet Union, few, if any, areas in China inhabited by a single nationality. As for example, the population of Tibet is fairly homogenous; but the Tibetan people also live in other areas in mixed communities with other nationalities. As a matter of fact, the historical development in China created conditions favourable for many nationalities to intermingle and mix together. The Han nationality could have so large a population because it had assimilated other ethnic groups.

Another example of mutual assimilation is provided by the Manchu people, a nationality which emerged from the Changbai Mountains in northeast China. By degrees, and particularly during the peak period of the Manchu or Ching dynasty, their population rose to between four and five millions. After the fall of the Manchus in 1911, they continued to exist, but they adopted the Han culture including both the spoken and the written languages. Intermarriages became more frequent after 1911, whereby ethnic differences no longer appeared to be insuperable barrier. After 1949, the Manchus were formally recognized as a nationality. When census forms were filled in, many Manchus
who had married Hans registered themselves and their children as Hans rather than as Manchus, although they had been given the right to choose between the two nationalities. This, according to Chou En-lai, was an assimilation that was not the result of any violent suppression of one nationality by another, but the result of voluntary intermingling among two nationalities for the sake of achieving common prosperity. While the Manchus adopted the Han language, some of the Manchu vocabulary had also been assimilated into the Han language.

Another case is that of the Hui nationality. After the Hui people came to China from Arabia and Asia Minor about 1000 years ago, they spread so widely throughout the country that there is not a single province and probably not a single county, where Hui people cannot be found. Their number had grown because they had absorbed other ethnic groups. This was another case of voluntary assimilation. Chou also dealt with the cases of the Mongols, Zhuang, Yao and other nationalities. Thus Chou En-lai argues: “Owing to historical circumstances, many of our nationalities live in mixed communities, with mutual assimilation and mutual influence. Since China as so many nationalities that are widely distributed and mostly living in mixed communities, we cannot consider adopting the Soviet Union's system of autonomous republics. Such a system presupposes that the overwhelming majority of each of the country's nationalities is concentrated in a certain region and capable of functioning as a separate economic unit”(p.262)

The specific situation between the Soviet Union and China during the revolutionary period was also different. During the October Revolution, the Russian working class rose and seized political power, first in the cities, then in the countryside, including regions inhabited by minority nationalities. Since Russia was an imperialist country, all kinds of colonialist relations had to be smashed. So the task before Lenin and others was to integrate the struggle of the nationalities against tsarist oppression with the struggle of the working class and the peasantry against the capitalists and the landlords. That
is why Lenin stressed the rights of nationalities for self-determination and recognized their right to separation. They could either join the USSR or themselves set up their own independent republics. Chou writes: “…at that time, if the first socialist state was to get a firm foothold politically, it had to stress the right of nationalities to self-determination, leaving them the option of separation. That was the only way to break with all the old political relationships characteristic of imperialism and to make the new socialist state…secure. The specific circumstances demanded that the Russian proletariat take this approach”(.p265). In China, however, history moved in a different direction. China, unlike tsarist Russia, was not an imperialist country. It was a feudal country, which became semi-feudal and semi-colonial after the signing of the treaty of Nanking in 1842 and parts into a colony after the Japanese invaded China in 1931. In old China, although the northern warlords and later the Kuomintang, imposed a reactionary, oppressive rule on the toiling people and on all nationalities, the entire Chinese nation had been suffering under imperialist aggression and control. Under these circumstances, the Chinese people won their liberation. Unlike the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist revolutionaries seized political power not by launching uprisings first in industrially developed major cities, but by establishing liberated areas so as to be able to wage a protracted struggle. During those years of intense struggle, various nationalities of China forged close ties with one another. In fact, some of the bases were set up in Inner Mongolia; in Xinjiang people launched revolutionary movements against the Kuomintang; in southwest China, many people of the minority nationalities carried on guerrilla warfare under the leadership of the CPC; in the interior, people belonging to many nationalities joined the People's Liberation Army; during the Long March, when the Red Army passed through the southwest regions inhabited by minority peoples, it left seeds of revolution; it is also known that a number of minority also joined the Red Army. Thus, externally, the Chinese nation was oppressed by different imperialist powers. Internally, through sharing hardships in the revolutionary and anti- Japanese national liberation wars and finally winning liberation, all the
nationalities developed intimate relationships of comrades-in-arms. According to Chou, these external and internal relations made it unnecessary for the Chinese people to adopt the policy of granting self-determination with the option of separation, as the USSR had done during the October Revolution. Thus the particular historical development in China determined the policy of regional autonomy through cooperation between all nationalities. The Chinese did not advocate right of self-determination as that might, according to Chou En-lai, lead to interference by imperialist powers. That there was basis in such statements is testified by the events during the revolutionary war, when the Chinese warlords were backed and instigated by one imperialist power or another.