Author: Manraj Grewal
Publication: The Indian Expresss
Date: March 21, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/286995.html
A day before US Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrives
here, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said he was open to talks with
Chinese premier Hu Jintao despite the tragic events of the past few days.
"It's still not too late," he said even as the Tibetan Government-in-exile
told the media that the crisis in Tibet had escalated with Chinese forces
laying siege to a monastery besides arresting over 600 people.
But with a twinkle in his eye and a laugh
on his lips, the Dalai Lama seemed intent upon dealing with the vexed issue
of China with his gentle humour. In a free-wheeling interaction with the media
for an unprecedented third time in five days, he welcomed British Premier
Gordon Brown's offer to intervene and said he was ready for any dialogue with
Hu Jintao, the man behind the crackdown on the Buddhist monks in 1989. Outside
his palace, Hu Jintao continued to be the favourite whipping boy of protesters
who chanted, "Aloo poori tel mein, Hu Jintao jail mein."
Conciliatory as ever, the Dalai Lama said
it was still not too late to talk to China, although the solution to the Tibet
issue lay in bilateral talks and not in mediation. "China always likes
a direct interaction," he said.
"I have no moral authority to ask young
Tibetans involved in the peace march to the China border to stop or shut up...But
I met them yesterday to warn them about the consequences of their action...Now
I am waiting for their decision," he said.
On New Delhi's reaction that it was "distressed,"
Dalai Lama said: "Its reaction to China in Tibet can be described as
overcautious but I am not being critical."
When told that a spokesman of the Chinese
foreign ministry had described him as a devil with a human face, he laughed,
saying, "One devil unfortunately creates more devils."
At his expansive best, the Dalai Lama dwelt
on his see-saw relations with China, telling how the Chinese delegation in
talks with his emissaries had gone from being cold to downright hostile in
half-a-dozen meetings. "In February 2006, they brought up past differences,
and five months later they began to call me a 'splittist' while stepping up
repression in Tibet."
Gently mocking China for refusing to see his
point of view, the Dalai Lama remarked that while "we don't want an independent
Tibet," China was busy mouthing its own "Tibet-is-part-of-China"
mantra. "Except for China, the whole world trusts me," he laughed.
The Nobel laureate for peace was at his witty
best as he delineated the change in China over the past decades. "The
Mao era was of pure ideology, Deng Xiaoping dumped it for money. He used to
say it should not matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it caches
mice. Jiang Zemin made it a party of the middle class but now under Hu Jintao,
the country is seeing a class struggle and widening disparities. China, it
looks to me, is happy to practise Capitalist Communism."
Taking potshots at the Chinese leadership,
he said he feared they had no idea about the situation at Ground Zero. "Its
leaders seem to be rather simplistic in their solution to the Tibet issue.
They are convinced that Tibet is already liberated and now it's a simple question
of suppressing it. They forget that it has a long history as a nation with
a rich culture." He added: "They also seem to forget the difference
between the rule of law and rule of terror."
Asking journalists to bear with his rambling
answers, he said China had three of the four attributes required for an aspirational
superpower. "It has the population, the economic power, the military
muscle, including nuclear weapons it acquired with the help of friends like
Russia and even Italy. But what it lacks is moral authority.
It's time it made up for it."
