How Dalai Lama’s presence in Ladakh just can’t be a coincidence

The fact that the Dalai Lama will stay for a month in Ladakh is definitively a re-assertion of India’s policy vis-à-vis the Tibetan leader. On 24 April 1954, the Indian Ambassador to China, N Raghavan, who was himself conducting the talks, informed his Foreign Secretary in Delhi that at the suggestion of Zhang Hanfu, the Chinese deputy foreign minister, the plenary sessions on the previous day had been cancelled: “He and I carried on informal discussions between 12:00 and 13:00 hours and 19:00 to 23:15 hours.” Raghavan explained that it was ‘royal fight’ from beginning to end: “Zhang took a very recalcitrant attitude but finally gave in on most points,” except for Demchok. The prime minister’s birthday call With regard to the one-month visit of the Tibetan leader to Leh, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China has so far kept quiet, but Zhao Lijian earlier protested about the Prime Minister’s phone call to the Dalai Lama: “The Indian side also needs to fully understand the anti-China and separatist nature of the 14th Dalai Lama. The new policy would not only reject as “historically false” China’s claim that Tibet has been part of China since ancient times, but also “make clear that Tibet includes not only the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region of China but also Tibetan areas of Gansu, Sichuan, Qinghai and Yunnan provinces.” It has serious implications for the Tibet-India border too.