Towards a new balance of power
Sir: Tibor Szamuely (14 February), compar- ing Russia and China, remarks that China, unlike Russia, was not expansionist in the past and has not pursued expansionist policies under A. her communist rulers.
This-does not seem to be correct. K. P. S. Menon, sometime ambassador to China, saw maps of China embracing 'Nepal, Bhutan, parts of India, Burma, Siam, Vietnam, Malay. Nehru in the palmy days of Hindu Chini Bhai (fraternisation) asked Chou En-lai why such maps were still being published. Chou En-lai answered : 'By mistake; they will shortly be revised.'
In India 8,000 square miles of territory were taken from Kashmir without any notice and when Indian frontier guards entered the area on routine duty they were shot dead. There was an outcry in the Indian parliament and Nehru Was told by China that she wanted it because it was the shortest route from Tibet to Sinkiang. Other areas taken from India totalled 3,800 square miles and Pakistan has made a gift of 3,000 square miles of Pakistan- held Kashmir. Tibor Szamuely must be blind and deaf if he is not aware of what China has done to Tibet. Systematic colonisation of Tibet by Chinese settlers, compulsory marriage of Tibetan girls to Chinese, removal of yeung Tibetans to be educated in China and settled there, destruction of monasteries, execution of recalcitrant monks—this is what China has 4one to Tibet after invasion.
The Chinese after the 1962 war retreated from India because the Chinese did not want to face America, who seemed to be on the point of joining the fray to support India.
China and India were fast friends and, with Nehru, comrades. The rape of Tibet altered all that. When the Dalai Lama escaped to India and was given asylum and Tibetans by the hundred began reaching India after in- credible stories of hardship and terror and gave out details of atrocities, then° China changed her attitude. Even so, Nehru never expected the sudden invasion of NEFA and the resulting collapse of the unpreparod Indian army in NEFA. Assisting the Nagas, training them, equipping them with arms, het hostility
has been unremitting. China, which used to say Kashmir is India's, began to declare Kashmir is Pakistan's. And almost daily in Chinese broadcasts, India, assisted by revisionist Russia; is declared enemy No. 1. All this because the Dalai Lama found asylum in India.
Mr Szamuely's experience of Russian prisons has embittered him, but he is at least alive. If he had been in Tibet he would not have lived to tell the tale.
N. R. Sengupta
91 Chowringhee, Calcutta 20
Previous page
