The geopolitics in ‘Tibet border’ reference

Dorjee Tshering Lepcha’s speech underlines that India’s development policies for its border areas and its policy towards China are connected, and that both are equally important

Rajya Sabha member Dorjee Tshering Lepcha from Sikkim hit the headlines last week for his call to the Union government to instruct the Indian Army and other agencies working in border areas to start referring to the ‘China border’ as the ‘Tibet border’. However, all of Lepcha’s speech — his response to the Union Budget for 2024-2025 — deserves attention.

The parliamentarian from Sikkim made other direct and indirect references to Tibet. For instance, Lepcha called for restarting border trade through Nathu La and the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage. He pointed out that the route through Nathu La to Kailash Mansarovar was the best of the three overland routes currently available — the other two are through Nepal and Uttarakhand.

Lepcha also briefly made a reference to Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the 17th Karmapa and called for bringing him to Sikkim. Dorje is only one of the claimants to the title of the 17th Karmapa and leadership of the Karma Kagyu sect of Buddhists, albeit one who has been accepted by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. The young Buddhist religious figure later escaped from Tibet to Nepal in 1999, moving to India the following year. However, he left India in 2017, and has not been back since. The Rumtek monastery in Sikkim is a major seat of the Karma Kagyu school, and hence, Lepcha’s call.

The Member of Parliament surely realises that any official Indian government action either switching to ‘Tibet border’ or on the Karmapa would only draw protests from Beijing, and make restoration of border trade and the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage that much harder.

The speech by Sikkim’s lone member in the upper house of Parliament — the state will mark 50 years of its accession to the Indian Union in 2025 — must, therefore, be understood in a larger context. The reference to the ‘Tibet border’ was possibly an attempt to draw attention to arguably more important issues that the speech raises. It highlights the linkages between the Union government’s China policy and questions of politics and development in India’s border states.

Lepcha started his roughly 10-minute-long intervention with a reference to the problem of unemployment among the educated youth in his state. While he sought to portray this as part of a global phenomenon, it was clear that this was an issue that was uppermost in the minds of ordinary Sikkimese, and one whose solution he made clear needed a non-partisan approach. He framed his request for the Union government’s intervention to promote skill development and improve the employability of the state’s job-seekers with a reference to atmanirbharta. It is also in this context of lack of jobs and need for government support that his call to promote organic farming and his demand for the inclusion of 12 more communities in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list must be seen.

The Sikkimese Member of Parliament then identified problems with the state’s infrastructure including the poor state of the section between Sevoke and Rangpo on National Highway No 10 — which he called the “lifeline” of the state — and problems with operations at Sikkim’s only airport at Pakyong. Both are issues that Lepcha has raised repeatedly in Parliament but received only somewhat unsatisfactory answers for. One direct question, for example, on a demand from the Government of Sikkim to transfer the Sevoke-Rangpo stretch from the West Bengal Public Works Department to the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd. elicited a non-committal response from Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari.

Economic logic also dominates the Tibet references in the parliamentarian’s speech as should be clear from his highlighting of trade and pilgrimage through Nathu La. He further pointed out that while the Chinese were constructing villages all along the Line of Actual Control, India by contrast had kept people from accessing border areas through the notification of these areas as reserved forests and wildlife sanctuaries. This is not an anti-environment complaint but a reference to the fact that the Union government’s environment policies are often neither sensitive to local conditions nor acknowledge local knowledge and contributions to conservation and sustainability. Policies that cut off local populations from border areas, forest lands, and traditional grazing pastures whether for national security considerations or environmental ones have implications for local culture, development, and livelihood, as well as for national security, itself.

Lepcha’s speech underlines the fact that India’s development policies for its border areas and its policy towards China are connected and that both are equally important — one cannot take priority over the other.

To return to the headline of calling India’s northern border the ‘Tibet border’, this could be seen as a response to China’s renaming of various places in Arunachal Pradesh, the third instance of which took place in March. However, the question then arises why a government response has been lacking since 2017 when China first renamed places in the northeast Indian state. In fact, it was widely reported in June that the government was planning to rename 30 locations in Tibet according to their names in Indian languages. Nothing has been heard of this idea since.

Renaming the border is probably easy to do and it might even be argued is a necessary reminder of historical facts. But neither the existence of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police nor India’s hosting the Dalai Lama for decades has led to any great expertise on Tibet outside of select pockets in India’s government and society. Or to sustained political and economic attention to India’s border areas or, indeed, to formulating cogent policy towards China. The problem then lies elsewhere.

Dealing with the challenges China poses to Indian interests must not be an episodic affair led by headlines or limited to rhetoric. It demands urgent, sustained action in India’s border states in terms of investments in human resources, improving Centre-State policy co-ordination, and ensuring accountability.

(Jabin T Jacob is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, and Director, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. X: @jabinjacobt.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.