In My View

Buddham Smaranam Gachhami….

The troubles in Tibet this spring reminded one of another summer forty-four years ago in what was then South Vietnam's capital, Saigon. On 11 June, 1963, a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, sat cross-legged on a busy Saigon street intersection; doused himself in gasoline and lit himself afire. The picture became a poignant reminder to the world of all imperialist outrages for all times to come.

American news correspondents who were present in the city then had been forewarned the day before by a Buddhist monk. He had told them that a ‘big thing' would happen the next day. Nevertheless, most of the hacks that day had decided to ignore the advance billing. They were bored with the languishing story of the conflict of Buddhist monks with the South Vietnamese government, continuing for more than a month.

The Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, was protesting against the US-backed Ngo Dinh Diem regime's repression of its own embattled people. Eventually though, the CIA staged a coup against the Diem regime; killed him and put another military ruler in his place, only to continue the losing war against the communist north.

Today's American correspondents might not have been informed in Beijing, or even Lhasa about the Buddhist upsurge in Tibet. They would have been busy with then on-going Chinese National People's Congress session. Or their bosses in Washington and New York might have felt harassed by the ever expanding crisis of the American economy, with just the week of the Tibet story being dominated by the American Federal Reserve's panicked reaction. Mortal fear seemed to have engulfed the US central bank with a Wall Street crash of the multi-billion dollar, Bear Stearns, a financial behemoth.

In fact, the predominant story of the past few months had been the economic crisis in the USA. The front pages of the world's newspapers were too full with stories of the American economic woes. The headlines had been fuelled in no small measure by the now unseated ‘demi-god' of high finance, Alan Greenspan writing in the Financial Times that the current US turmoil is the worst since Second World War.

However, the ceremonial lighting of the Olympic torch was also approaching. Moreover, its intended destinantion was Beijing. Would that have made the contrast between a rising China and an USA on the decline starker, under the circumstances? Surely, the path of the torch could have been peppered by demonstrations of embittered Chinese, but that would have garnered, at best, sidebar coverage. Would that have been enough to divert the world's attention from the failing financial institutions – pillars of modern Western establishment – to something else?

For the USA the misfortune lay in the fact that they did not find a Thich Quang Duc. The fiery sense of indignant righteousness that could have propelled a Dalai Lama follower to self-immolate either in Lhasa or in Dharamshala or anywhere else in the world was missing. Instead, what was seen on the streets of Tibet was marauding Tibetans threatening lives and limbs and vandalising properties of Han Chinese settlers in pure sectarian disgrace. Of course, the clapper boys of the international media, including their brethren in Indian national media were at attendance to elevate the same into a great frontier of a battle for ‘self-determination.'

Indeed, the Palestinians have possibly had a laugh at the faint attempts of the Tibetans to register their anger. The former, battle-hardened in the intifada against one of the most armed security forces of the world, Israel Defence Forces, have succeeded on many occasions to turn the face of a media towards their plight. This is the media whose moguls still suffer from the bunker mentality of Holocaust concentration camp victims.

Having said that one has to keep in mind that the Chinese have invested an enormous amount of their face on the Olympic Games, 2008. That is a vulnerability they would now have to live with till end-August when the Games wind down. Beijing should have known better that there were no debutante's balls in Big Power politics. Thus, as a stark reminder to all who care, the Chinese predicament is not born of its scientific socialism but is a product of its emotional nationalism. Yet, the Chinese cannot possibly plead ignorance.

They know that the CIA's decades-long subversion of the People's Republic – in which India also was a willing party at least till the end-1950s – was ended when Richard Nixon showed his desperation for a relationship with Beijing in light of the Cold War. So Beijing should have known that it was astrategic to invest so much in a global sporting spectacle that was susceptible to the machinations of a few.

But be that as it may, Beijing should also know that Great Powers do not leave loose ends. They would have to acknowledge that the Dalai Lama leads a sizable section of the Tibetans as their spiritual leader. China would have to acknowledge his pre-eminence and sit across a table with him to discover what he wants for his former land. A gesture like that would disarm many Tibetans who have otherwise borne the brunt of a lack of economic development in the country's west.

For all of India's fulminations, even New Delhi would fall in line then. Because howevermuch it works under the pressure of the Americans and their fellow- travellers in the country's policy establishments, they could not but read history's lessons: that the USA is declining, and China rising.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in