When India Helped Feed Chinese Troops Invading Tibet

NEW DELHI: “It’s a sad story.” That is how Claude Arpi, author, columnist and a leading authority on Tibet began his talk at Delhi’s India International Centre. Claude, who is a Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, was delivering the 33rd Annual Padmapani Lecture organised by Tibet House, founded in 1965 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to preserve and disseminate the unique cultural heritage of Tibet. Titled ‘The Relations Between India And Tibet From 1947-1962’, the two hour talk traced how Mao Zedong, after announcing the creation of the People's Republic of China from the rostrum on Tiananmen Square in October 1949, moved quickly to annex East Turkestan, better known today as Xinjiang, by December that year, and then launched an invasion of Tibet, which had always been an independent nation before that. It also touched upon how India actually facilitated food supplies to the initial PLA and road crews that arrived in Tibet to consolidate their hold on the nation in the early 1950s....Read More