Living in Exile in their own country - KPs

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft - Winston Churchill

Capture of Tibet by China offers many lessons in National security of a country. Tibetans were traditional people living their life dedicated to persuit of self realisation. They were harmless people and have been living that way since thousand of years. With each family contributing  1 member  to be a lama (monk) and surviving through farming and animal rearing. Communist china sought an opportunity of expansion and captured Tibet. Leadership of the tibetans had to flee to India and established their provisional government in India. It was immense loss to India too, Tibet used to act as filler between India and China and except for some part of arunanchal pradesh we had no border conact with China privy to capture of Tibet by chinese dragon.

While the provisional government of Tibet (Dalai Lama) think that one day they would be able to go back to their land but with the arrangements that china has done it is nay impossible. China has done immense infrastructure development in Tibet and also has promoted migration of chinese people in Tibet. Today due to immense economic and political clout of china in world and by  flexing right diplomatic muscles by China, most countries have recognised Tibet as part of China. Few years ago we (India) also agreed to one China policy. 

However hardly half century ago in period preceding WW2, China was being bullied by Japanese.  China which was geographically 20 times bigger than Japan and had more than 6 times the japanese population was under existential threat from japan. Why so ? because chinese leadership was fragmented and their leaders were busy opposing each other. However soon sense prevailed and threat of extinction forced them to unite and china was able to thwart the plans of capture by Japanese. Today China has emerged as a global power due to its unity and today China can defend itself against any adversary.

Four timeless lessons that we can learn from Tibet/China/Japan episode are

1.  You can be harmless and wish peace for all but some one can still capture you for its needs and expansion plans.  so merely good intentions and harmlessness are not enough , we should have muscles to defend ourself.

2. If injustice is happening to your neighbour and you can sleep , wait for your turn you are next. India did not properly respond to Tibets SOS and we soon had to face war with china  and some of territory that we thought as ours was captured. 

3. Unity has immense strength. A united japan thought of capturing disarranged china. But when China got united in course of time it was able to thwart the japanese.

4. Sureshot strategy to absorb a land is to win it culturally and remove people antagonistic to it. China promoted migration of native chinese people to move to Tibet . Similar method of instigating local population and capturing the land was used by Hitler before the 2nd World War and Austria was captured without firing a single shot. 

Let us understand how above four lessons are relevant in kashmir of India. We shall also see whether these lessons of history can teach anything to set things right again. Lets remember that those who dont learn from history become history.

Something similar was being done by our small neighbour to capture Kashmir. Insurgents were asked to march in kashmir and process of radicalisation was started. Kashmiri pandits who were harmless were soon attacked and killed in large numbers. Later on the entire generation of Kashmiri pandits (5 to 6 lacs) in number fled and settled all across India. During 1990s while kashmir was witnessing migration of kashmiri pandits, India was also going through a period of political turmoil and our politicians were more busy in ensuring that who gets to be the PM of India rather than saving the lives of Kashmiri Pandits. (1990s was full of political instability and we had 2 prime ministers). Also we as Indians did not show the unity to save them from their fate and remained largely a mute spectator (Generally speaking).

With Kashmiri pandits removed, one right step by our neigbour and Kashmir could have become independent for time being to be later absorbed by our neighbour. Some countries under influence of china and pakistan would have ratified the independence of Kashmir and India would have lost a strategic position of national security and crown of India.  Today rather than Kashmir we would have been fighting for Jammu and later on some other state if  Indian Army would not have moved to protect our position.

Some of our decisions in the past, including fiasco in tibet and kashmir leave much to be desired. We were suffering from the delusion that being a peace loving nation is a guarantee of our peace. After independence we even had plans of disbanding our army however war with china woke us up to the reality.  So we should have strength to defend ourself (Lesson 1)

We remained quiet for tibetans, lets not forget to speak for KPs or else we will soon face fate like them. permanent migration of KPs has set wrong precedents in country and may lead to some more conflict like these.  (Lesson 2)

United efforts by us can reverse the situation and we should promote migration of people in India (even from south) to live there and set their seperate colonies. Ex Servicemen would be more suitable to this task. Industries should be set up and we should try to win the hearts of Kashmiris and establish kashmiriyat in Kashmir the land famous for its erstwhile Sufi saints and Kashmir shaivism. Economic well being would also lead to promotion of peace among youths and preaching of Jihadi literature should not be permitted (As in 1990s mosques were asking Kashmiri pandits to convert or flee ). Lets us stand up for wellbeing of Kashmiri Pandits, because in their well being lies wellness and peace of our country.

The wise man learns from someone else’s mistakes, the smart man learns from his own, and the stupid one never learns - Ancient Russian proverb