By Tharchin Y Gonpo
Bangalore

There has been a lot of speculation over the upcoming Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao's scheduled visit to India. In fact the whole world would be watching the whole dialogue process between the two Asian giants in rapt silence. Particularly America has been conscious about the emerging India-China axis, which could pose a possible challenge to the United State's dominancy in the world.

The main agenda of the upcoming visit would be to solve the long pending border dispute between the world's two most populous nations and the strengthening of trade integration as the secondary objective. Chinese premiere has clearly mentioned well ahead of his New Delhi visit that china believes in 'mutual accommodation while taking the reality into account'. But the fact will come only after the dialogue and lets wait and see whether the Chinese counterpart will budge from their old arrogant stand. However the reality should come to light that every citizen in this country should be aware of the ground realities. Despite having promised lot of mutual respect to each other's sovereignty and friendship during the famous Panchsheel agreement signed between the two, Nehru was shocked when the Chinese armies captured large chunk of India's northern frontiers and eventually led to war in 1962. The popular "Hindi-Chini bhai- bhai" slogan got shattered and remained just a distant dream.

The ground reality is that historically Tibet had been a buffer state and the bridge between the two ancient civilizations in India and china. According to the international law when the stronger nation attacks the buffer zone, the action is considered an aggression towards the neighboring nations also. But what happened when the Chairman Mao's People's Liberation Army entered into Tibet in 1949 and finally captured the whole of Tibet in 1959, the Indian government remained a mute spectator. Instead Nehru the then prime Minister of that time succumbed to the mighty forces of china and signed Tibet as a part of China in the Panchsheel agreement. That pact has created a blunder and not only shattered the dreams of Tibet's independence but India also gave up its centuries old traditional neighbour by exposing its hundreds of miles of border to millions of Chinese red guards stationed in southern Tibet.

From that day onwards the seed for the border dispute between two Asian giants has been sowed. Thus its northern frontiers along with china remained a dispute forever. Thus their difference between the respective relations with Tibet cast a dark shadow over sino-Indian relations. Infact Tibet remains a lump in the throat of sino-Indian ties. It can neither be spat out nor swallowed. Until and unless Tibet gets freedom and assign her natural role of buffer state between two Asian giants there will not be eternal solution for the sino-Indian border dispute.

I know Chinese officials especially the premiere Wen Jaibao is very much aware of the protest he is going to face from Tibetans and Tibet supporters all over India. We will never keep quite. India is democratic country, we will shout for FREE TIBET and embarrass him wherever he goes. We have the recorded history proving Tibet was an independent nation. But its sad that Chinese are altering history to favour their colonial ambitions.

Tharchin Y Gonpo can be contacted at ttharchin2000@yahoo.co.in