India, China and the Tibetan unrest

How far can you go, just to assert and highlight your nationalistic demands?

A teenage Tibetan monk (18-year-old!) in Sichuan Province of China, died last week after setting himself on fire.

Now it emerges that, it was the 44th self-immolation since the suicidal protests began in 2009.

According to the activists for independent Tibet, self-immolations are protests against China's heavy-handed rule in Tibet.

Chinese Government has blamed the Dalai Lama for his provocative stand against them.

On the other hand, Dalai Lama maintains that activists are aggravated by a widely held conviction that policies in Tibet, curb religious practices and are a threat to Tibetan culture and language.

Why is this news important to India? There are geo-political reasons. And then there is ever growing lack of trust between India & China.

After the Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, in India, during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, Tibetans established a rival government-in-exile here.

Several thousand Tibetan exiles are settled in the area, and most live in and around McLeodGanj in Upper Dharamsala, in Himachal Pradesh.

As per Chinese experts, India intrudes into many of the issues the Chinese military sees as important. Tibet is one of them. And not to forget, the border dispute with no-solutions-in-sight status.

Some of my more knowledgeable friends, claim that principal agenda of China, is to keep India preoccupied with the events in its neighborhood. This could effectively mean, India, is eventually constrained to play a larger role in Asia or the world. 

However from a humanitarian standpoint, I kept thinking, about that young monk, who destroyed himself by fire.

What could have been his thoughts? How can one set himself on fire, for a cause as far-fetched as patriotic fervor?

It indicates, may be, the conviction about self-destruction on account of coercing tendencies and policies of China. Although, Tibet is a autonomous region, within China.

Back home in India, I sometimes feel, we need some war-like situation or even catastrophe, to remind ourselves that we are actually a big nation of continent size. Remember Kargil?