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Articles: My Thoughts | NEHRU...The great SELFISH leader
- Mr. HARI BABU GUNDAVARAPU
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Alternatively, we could have objected to the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, albeit in soft, diplomatic language, insisted on retaining our mission in Lhasa as per the 1906 convention with Tibet and agreed to and ratified by China; protested when they forced Tibet to surrender its sovereignty and permitted it to maintain only regional self-governance in 1951, and in 1956 when they began to deny them self-governance, eventually forcing the Dalai Lama to flee. Granting political asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 would then have been justified. As a result, the Chinese would have certainly remained hostile to us on this point, but respected us for what we are.
Instead, in 1955, while relinquishing the rights and privileges India had enjoyed in Tibet from the times of Colonel Younghusband's expedition in 1904, Nehru declared: 'Free India has no wish to continue with any imperialistic rights or privileges.'
India as a nation itself was an imperialistic creation. India's borders, including the addition of the state of Greater Assam to the Union, were a British creation. If we rejected our rights in Tibet as an imperialistic creation, what rightful claim had we on the borders fixed in accordance with British expansionism? But without the military might to back it up, Nehru did exactly that.
India, under Nehru, was an antithesis of most of the theories he applied in governance. Taking advantage of the British imperial legacy when it suited us while otherwise denouncing it roundly, we managed to lose all the respect China had for us, to be replaced by contempt. Which made it easier for them to ambush and capture or kill our patrols and take punitive action against us in 1962.
In retrospect, it can be said that Nehru's greatness and his many sterling qualities eventually came to naught on account of his lack of understanding of the concept of sovereignty in general and national interest in particular. He failed to fix the national goal. His hatred of imperialism and love for democracy mixed with socialist leanings and the prime ministerial responsibility that demanded pragmatism and cold national interest left him confused and irresolute.
Nehru, therefore, knew not where our borders should be fixed, or why. Yet, after Independence, he went on to fix India's northern and northeastern borders, left undemarcated by the British, on his own, without consulting China, leave alone getting them to agree.
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