What if Nehru told the Dalai Lama to take a walk?

Would India shuffling the Dalai Lama away prevent the Sino-Indian War?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • No

    Votes: 15 88.2%

  • Total voters
    17

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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What if, after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, rather than letting him set up a refugee government in exile at Dharamsala, India privately pressured him and his retinue to keep moving, out of India altogether. Where would the Dalai Lama most likely go besides India?

I feel like the simplest choice would be Sri Lanka, not tons further and Sinhalese politicians could probably be persuaded to take him out of Buddhist solidarity.

Could this improve Sino-Indian relations to the point they never have a war? Why or why not?
 
Hardly this would change much on Sino-Indian relationships. There was much territorial disputes so not matter where Dalai Lama is.
 
My guess is that if the Dalai Lama had fled to India during the "Hindi-Chin bhai bhai" (India and China are brothers) era which lasted from 1949 - 1955, India might well have told him politely but firmly "to move on" (the way a lot of countries did with the Shah of Iran after he fled until Sadat of Egypt finally granted him permanent asylum). But by the late 1950s, the territorial disputes over Askai Chin and the McMahon Line had gotten so bad that even telling the Dalai Lama to leave India would not have prevented the breakdown in relations and eventual border war of 1962. By then, both Mao and Nehru were firmly set in their positions regarding the border and it was clear that one or the other was going to press the issue eventually.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
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I voted yes, thinking that India's making comments about Tibet and hosting the Dalai Lama made Mao see the border disputes in a more sinister and paranoid light.

From 59 on, he attributed more of the trouble in Tibet to Indian plotting. Also, according to Bruce Riedel, Mao misattributed US CIA operations in support of Tibet infiltrators that were originating out of *Pakistan* to India.

If the DL had been asked to move along, and accordingly, the notion of Indian designs on Tibet hadn't gotten so set in, Mao has a better chance of attributing Tibetan troubles to his go-to villain, the Americans, and their running-dog lackeys in Pakistan, rather than to India.
 
"Hindi-Chin bhai bhai"

India-China bro bro! :p

But yeah, I agree that it would not have been enough to end the territorial disputes. To add to it, as India moves closer and closer to the USSR, when the Sino-Soviet split occurs, India will almost certainly ally with the USSR, further straining relations between the two.
 
One thing to remember is that India was a democracy, and Nehru could not have safely ignored Indian public opinion which was in 1959 very sympathetic to the Dalai Lama and hostile to the PRC's "brutal destruction of what was seen as Tibet's India-inspired culture...Public support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans in general was so strong in India that Nehru's government was politically compelled to honor the request." https://books.google.com/books?id=6mrU4FBGqCAC&pg=PA80
 
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