The month of March saw widespread protests against Chinese rule by Tibetan people inside the People's Republic of China. The protests took place not just in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and other parts of Tibet, but also in several other towns and provinces of China where Tibetans reside. Tibetan exiles in other parts of the world, including in India, have also staged many protests and demonstrations. Tragically, in the course of the agitations inside China, a number of people have been killed and wounded in clashes with Chinese security forces. According to reports, the situation there continues to be very tense.

The problem of Tibet has been festering for many decades now, causing great suffering to lakhs of Tibetan people both inside Tibet and to those living as exiles in India and places far from their homes. The ruling Communist Party of China and the Chinese state blame the problem on “reactionary” forces within Tibet and their foreign backers, but the Chinese people need to ask how come this problem has persisted for so long, why there is strong discontent among Tibetans.

Historically, there has been much variation over the centuries in the relationship between Tibet and China. However, for the last nearly six decades, the People's Republic of China has had effective political and legal control over Tibet, which has been termed an autonomous region of China. There is little doubt that resentment over Chinese rule runs very deep among Tibetan people, periodically bursting out into the open, as happened last month. Some of the stated reasons for this discontent are: interference in the social and cultural traditions of the Tibetan people; the relative poverty and backwardness of Tibet, especially outside the main city of Lhasa; and the influx of non-Tibetan people of the Han majority in China who are perceived as dominating political and economic power in the region. The presence of the chief Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama, in exile outside of Tibet has served as a powerful focus for anti-China sentiment.

A definite complicating factor in the modern relations between China and Tibet, which was not there in earlier times, has been imperialist and big power interference. In the first half of the twentieth century, Britain intervened very actively to pit Tibet and China against each other. It wanted to keep an independent Tibet that looked towards Britain for protection, as a buffer guarding the northern border of the British Indian empire. In the post-World War II period, the United States, which was locked in combat with the People's Republic of China as part of the Cold War, has been the imperialist power most directly involved. Its CIA has actively intrigued in this region. It is also unlikely that without US encouragement the Nehru government in India would have welcomed the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, after he fled Tibet in 1959, and allowed him to set up the headquarters of a Tibetan government in exile here in Dharamsala.

At present, both the government of the People's Republic of China and the Dalai Lama say that they stand for autonomy for Tibet within China. Periodic rounds of negotiations between the two sides have also been conducted. However the tragedy is that more than half a century later no solution to the problem appears to be in sight. Two factors in particular seem to come in the way of a mutually acceptable solution. On the one hand, unlike the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China was never constituted as a voluntary union of different nations and nationalities organised in republics that had the right of self-determination up to and including secession. Instead, China was constituted as a single, multi-national state, in which no right of self-determination of the different nationalities was recognised. On the other side, the Tibetan movement for self-rule has from the beginning looked towards the United States and other foreign powers. These powers have no real interest in or respect for Tibetan independence. Rather, they are interested solely in using the Tibetan cause as a pinprick or a pawn in their contention with China. The Indian state too has been playing a double game of both swearing that it respects China's claims over Tibet and at the same time encouraging the Tibetan cause whenever it suits its interests.

Events are showing that the problem of Tibet cannot be brushed under the carpet and that a solution must be found. However, this cannot be found on the basis of denying or suppressing the aspirations of the Tibetan people, nor by looking to the US and other imperialist powers for a solution.