The 83-year-old Buddhist monk has made India his home since fleeing the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 1959. File photo/AFP/Chris Weeks
AFP
ON THE WEB, 15 May 2019
Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to meet the Dalai Lama during a 2014 visit to India but a “cautious” Delhi did not allow it to happen, a new book has claimed.
The 83-year-old Buddhist monk has made India his home since fleeing the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 1959 — and has been a thorn in Beijing’s side ever since.
“In 2014, when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Modi, I requested a meeting with him,” author Sonia Singh quotes the Dalai Lama as saying.
“President Xi Jinping agreed, but the Indian government was cautious about the meeting, so it didn’t happen,” according to excerpts from the book published Wednesday.
In the book “Defining India – Through Their Eyes”, Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was concerned about maintaining good relations with China.
The Dalai Lama’s personal spokesman Tenzin Taklha told AFP he didn’t have any comments to make, without either confirming or denying the contents in the book.
The Dalai Lama set up a government-in-exile in Dharamshala in northern India and launched a campaign to reclaim Tibet that gradually evolved into an appeal for greater autonomy — the so-called “middle way” approach.
India, which gave him asylum in 1959, has supported the Tibetan leader but of late the government has maintained a distance, citing diplomatic sensitivities.
Singh, the editorial director of NDTV news channel, says the meeting had the “promise to change the course of China-Tibet relations” if it had been allowed to happen.
The Dalai Lama is also quoted as saying he had “very good relations” with Modi, who is seeking a second term in the ongoing general election.
“He is quite an active Indian prime minister, continuously visiting many countries. That, I admire at his age.”
A global symbol of peace, the Dalai Lama was briefly hospitalised for a chest infection in Delhi last month.
The book is set to be released on 20 May.
In the renewed fervor of Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai — is Hindi-Tibti Bye Bye? At Tibet’s expense? Is Tibet expendable?
As Tibet Bhu has commented- this news is to be taken with a pinch of salt. It is in the thick of election time and just one more thing to blame Modi for something. No doubt the MSM hate Modi. But Modi is all set to win and He is good for India. A strong India is a better India. You can be rest assured that a Mahagatbhandan would be more than happy to appease China and in such a scenario given the lack of cohesion within it will render us Tibetans as inconsequential.
I would take this with a pinch of salt. I don’t believe the Chinese are prepared to meet HH Dalai Lama without a tangible result. They are not prepared to give the Dalai Lama any credit or raise his profile by meeting him directly. Chinese policy has been of denial rather than acceptance of the Tibet issue. When Bill Clinton visited China in 1998 and told the audience that the “Dalai Lama was a good man”, the Chinese national broadcaster omitted that part of the speech to the public because this would go against their propaganda of portraying the Dalai Lama as an “enemy of the state”. They have continued to call him a “separatist” even when the Tibetans has relinquished independence in favour of genuine autonomy. Having demonised him for the last sixty years, the Chinese can’t embrace the Dalai Lama and say, it’s all hunky dory. They have continued to demonise him, no matter what he does or says, to make the domestic Chinese Han population firmly against the Tibetan leader and in favour of the CCP policies in Tibet. Even Chinese artists who sometimes meet the Dalai Lama are frowned upon and chastised and forewarned. I don’t see any chance of the CCP leader meeting the Dalai Lama. Even if they want to talk to the Tibetans, they will send people from the “United Front” organization to arrange protocols and agenda before a direct meeting. People must remember, nations work for their self interest and not out of charity. India has inescapable geopolitical and security interest in Tibet. It will make sure that the Tibet issue plays a role in ensuring India’s security and interest in the Himalayan region. Bhutan is a sovereign country but it doesn’t have diplomatic relation with China. It’s in large part because of India’s disdain for Bhutan to have such diplomatic relation.
All the way since 1978 Delhi must have played the big boss for preventing the “effective” dialogue between DL and Beijing.
Now all the potential Tibet cards have already been played out by Delhi without much gain but for Dalai Lama the best time for his suffering people is long lost.
Shame on Prime Minister Modi and his NDA government. For all its pro-Tibet stand/talk of the BJP, this is a pure let-down.
If it hadn’t been for Sonia Singh’s book, we would’ve never learned about this. I wonder why His Holiness kept quiet about this for all these years. It would have been explosive had he come out in the media back in 2014. Political pressure? Maybe.
When I saw the headline on ndtv’s website I was extremely excited and happy: “President Xi Jinping Agreed to meet the Dalai Lama”. I am sure thousands of Tibetans around the world must have gone through a similar sort of emotional roller-coaster. Very happy and excited one moment and hugely disappointment the next when they realize she was writing about something that almost happened back in 2014….but was blocked for whatever political reasons by the Indian government.
Even now as I write this I find it very sad and upsetting on so many levels. Another missed opportunity for us Tibetans: so many things could have developed out of that meeting or at the very least it would have been an amazing historic moment.
To be fair we have had our share of meetings with “Chinese government officials” in the last decade or so but nothing concrete came out of them. Yet I feel (and I am sure many would agree with me on this) that this is on another level: this is not some generic Tibetan envoys meeting some junior party functionaries. This is ‘the’ top guy meeting with our ‘top’ leader. Perhaps I am being too optimistic and giving President Xi Jinping bit too much credit. But you never know, right? Again so many amazing things could have come out of this. The very fact that it was blocked by the Indian government speaks volume about their priorities and primacy of their own interest vis-a-vis…