Problematic Lama:

July 19/2011: The Dalai Lama has flown to the USA and met President Barak Obama at the White House. Not only the spiritual leader of Tibetans, the Lama has long become an icon for freedom and struggle in the world. A free country usurped by China in 1949, Tibet and its people have fanned out far and wide all over the globe. Although Dalai Lama lives mostly in India, the man, at his age of 76 years, travels like a nomad throughout the world and speaks articulately about his country.

China has, since occupying Tibet, become a global economic power. Due to immense natural resources and huge skilled manpower it has been able to mass produce goods of all kinds albeit low quality. Dreaming to be a 21st century colonial power of some kind and struggling to hold on to new colonies it has located to be lucrative in Africa and South America, China can ill afford too much international prejudice now as it did during Tiananmen Square times. Those days were surely different from now.

Therefore, Obama paying much too much attention to Dalai Lama, listening, and possibly reacting to most what he had to say would certainly be giving Chinese international policy formulators sleepless nights. It may be added that China probably never ever would dream of an American military intervention in any part of the world where it has any interest, economic or otherwise. Hence it can be safely said that the way the Chinese government has reacted to the Lama-Obama meet is most amusing to all those who watch that particular international theatre. The Chinese could be seeing this phase of the Lama’s tour as possibly one of his last. A young man struggling for freedom of his people and country could be one thing. An old man, who may die anytime from the stress of traveling itself, could speak the last words which may ring like death bells for further Chinese advancements in the economic field. Let us all admit that though we in India refer to China as the ideal instance of economic success, rest of the world does not look at the situation as being so very pretty. Apprehensions and maybe even misapprehensions do exist about Chinese global formulations and many are uneasy about them.

Quite understandably perturbed over the Lama’s successful USA visit, China has been compelled to summon the US envoy in its country and has given him an earful. Yet this disapproval so publicly aired against the American treatment meted to Dalai Lama might also show an undercurrent of fright that China probably has started to suffer from. It is now being muttered by diplomatic circles that the clout the Chinese had been wielding for some years past in the African continent has started diminishing. The Chinese nature of being overbearing and grabby has resulted in local dislike for them in many Central African nations. Cases of locals assaulting Chinese engineers and representatives are becoming common. Along with this, many other countries have started tiring of Chinese goods dumping on their home markets and destroying local production centers. India may now be the singular country in the world which has not started opposing this kind of a Chinese invasion and destruction of its local small and medium industries. However, global dislike has started being felt by the Chinese so they are asserting themselves, maybe out of fright.

Now if we come to look at the Indian scenario, there would be great dismay. No one says It is advisable in today’s world to fight something just for the heck of fighting. Still, standing up to national interest must be the priority of all policy formulators, diplomats and politicians in any country. In India we are not privy to such a mindset. If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits India, our government actually prepares to bend over backwards to explain why the F-16 and Hornet deals could not materialize. If there are apologists for this kind of a foreign policy, no one needs to worry. On the other hand, they should also reflect if India could, very gently but audibly, ask the Secretary of State why Prez Obama referred to Indian students as being ‘hungry’ who will gobble up jobs intended for the youth of America or why students from India are radio tagged as if they are high profile terror suspects when, in reality, the university they had gone to attend turned out to be an American double crosser institute.

America is great as a country to travel in. The people of that country are wonderful and much less in numbers than Indians. Their economy is in a slump so they are subdued. Yet their government is as anti Indian today as it ever was. Therefore, India needs desperately to be able to stand and speak up for its own interests. Always trying to please the US will not only shame this country, it will also lose out many opportunities for the future.