WI: India saves Tibet from Chinese occupation

In the book "Tears of Blood-A Cry For Tibet", the Dalai Lama believes that if Tibet interacted with India from the moment of it's independence, Tibet would've been recognized as a independent nation or at least be treated more seriously. India's independence and the Chinese conquest of Tibet were only ten months apart.

So, what if India intervened in the Chinese invasion of Tibet on the side of the Tibetans?
 
Honestly I can see China getting upset and going after India which can really get out of hand, leading into the first full scale war in Asia since WWII; though India would end up being backed by the Western bloc and China with well the USSR of which would bring the Cold War tensions into South Asia.
 
I'll recycle an old post of mine:

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India using force is almost ASB territory as long as Nehru leads India in 1950-51. He was anxious to see the PRC admitted to the UN, anxious to preserve India's position as a "neutral" power that could broker a peace agreement for the Korean War, etc. Moroever, he believed that "We cannot save Tibet, as we should have liked to do, and our very attempt to save it might well bring greater trouble to it." http://books.google.com/books?id=-5z3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA124 (He was also worried about Pakistan taking advanatage of any India-PRC conflict.)

The only POD I can see making Indian involvement more likely would be if something happened to Nehru, and Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vallabhbhai_Patel became Prime Minister. Patel was much more concerned over the PRC's takeover of Tibet than Nehru was; see Itty Abraham, *How India Became Territorial: Foreign Policy, Diaspora, Geopolitics* (Stanford University Press 2014), pp. 124-6 for a summary of his views. Patel observed that previously concerns over India's security had overwhelmingly focused on the Northwest, Tibet having formed a buffer on the Northeast. This buffer was now gone, and Communist views could easily be sold by the PRC in the "weak spots" of "Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Darjeeling, [and] tribal Assam" bercause of serious pre-existing class and national resentments. Patel warned that "Chinese irredentism and Communist imperialism" were different from, and much more dangerous than, the imperialism of the western powers. http://books.google.com/books?id=-5z3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA126

But there is an obvious problem with having Patel lead India into war with the PRC on account of Tibet: His health was very poor by mid-1950, and he died on December 15, 1950...
 
What about diplomatic support, then?

What does diplomatic support mean?

The People's Republic was intent on reclaiming all those territories recognized as Chinese. Tibet, for all that it had been autonomous and even functionally independent, was still recognized as Chinese. Voiced Indian opposition would not prevent China from doing this.
 
Look at Taiwan and those islands in the South China Sea; China *still* reckons all that's theirs...
 
I'm pretty surprised this one got legs.

Wasn't India militarily a lot weaker than China?

The current Dailai Lama, the famous one, was a young child at a time so his take is not authoritative.
 
I'm pretty surprised this one got legs.

Wasn't India militarily a lot weaker than China?

The current Dailai Lama, the famous one, was a young child at a time so his take is not authoritative.

I imagine that China would be hard-pressed to deal with two wars, one on its northeastern frontier in the area of Korea and one on its southwestern frontier in the area of Tibet. Then again, would India actually be able to project any sizable amount of force up to the Himalayan plateau? Was this a war India could even fight, never mind win?
 
The POD for this would actually need to be much earlier than Indian Independence in 1947. You'd need to lay the groundwork for it in the 1930s around the time of hte 13th Dalai Lama's death in 1933. HHDL was trying his hardest to modernize Tibet, going so far as importing Japanese military advisors and sending boys off to England to learn modern industrial techniques. Tibet gained semi-recognition because of its relationship with the British, culminating in Charles Bell's appointment as a British ambassador to Lhasa, and resulting in British recognition of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet (as opposed to sovreignty) into the 21st Century.

The 13th Dalai Lama's quest to modernize Tibet was not unchallenged. At one point the monks of Sera monastery stormed the Norbulingka and shouted offenses (and literally shat all over the garden) at the Dalai Lama. Sera was the epicenter of the Tibetan traditionalism and they were opposed to the DL's formation of a standing army, of decreasing monastic taxes, and modernizing Lhasa's infrastructure and education. The new Tibetan army was employed and successfully laid siege to Sera, capturing the monks and the leaders of the revolt. (At least I'm pretty sure it was Sera. If not Sera, than Drepung. But definitely not Ganden since Ganden Monastery was the source of most of the Dalai Lama's official power. The government of Tibet from 1642 - 1959 was actually called "Ganden Phodrang," or "Palace of Ganden.") Once the DL died in 1933, the lynchpin for Tibetan modernization was gone and the traditionalists took over, torturing what modernists were left, closing the western-style schools HHDL had opened, and destroying or neglecting the institutions they built (like the army and the infrastructure).

Strengthen and focus the 13th Dalai Lama's efforts at diplomacy with Britain, strengthen economic connections with India, position the modernists to take power in Tibet, and India could be willing to go up to bat for Tibet. But I think by 1947, it was way too late to change anything.

I've actually been floating around the idea of writing an Independent Tibet TL, hence why I've been thinking about this.
 

raharris1973

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Wasn't India militarily a lot weaker than China?

In 1950-51, I doubt it.

Compare the performance, training and equipment of Indian soldiers during WWII against that of either the Chinese Nationalist and Chinese Communists during WWII, the Indians had a more modern military all around.

India should have been ashamed of its shellacking in 1962, less than 20 years after WWII. The only thing that I think can account for the shift was over a decade of erosion of Indian wartime skills and aging of equipment, combined with over a decade of Soviet-style militarism on the Chinese side, combined with a first-mover advantage in the disputed areas.


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As a modification to the OP if you think Indian military support implausible.

Could India at least have used the *threat* of recognizing and militarily aiding the Tibetans to win an agreement with the PRC that recognizes India as the sole sovereign owner of the Aksai Chin and Northeast Frontier Agency (Arunachal Pradesh) and suzerain over Nepal and Bhutan, in exchange for New Delhi's recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet?
 
Could India at least have used the *threat* of recognizing and militarily aiding the Tibetans to win an agreement with the PRC that recognizes India as the sole sovereign owner of the Aksai Chin and Northeast Frontier Agency (Arunachal Pradesh) and suzerain over Nepal and Bhutan, in exchange for New Delhi's recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet?

Probably not this last part. I don't see much to benefit India here, and moreso, I don't see anything to indicate that India even wants this. By 1962, they already have a mess on their hands with the Pakistan(s) as well as NE India. The rest, maybe.
 

raharris1973

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Well modern India has enjoyed and expected dominant influence over Nepal and Bhutan, and flexed their muscle to exercise it to the exclusion of China as late as the early 1990s. But perhaps satellite status is the most they would ever want or consider convenient.
 

cgomes

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I'm pretty surprised this one got legs.

Wasn't India militarily a lot weaker than China?

The current Dailai Lama, the famous one, was a young child at a time so his take is not authoritative.
Five years before, Indians were the largest group of soldiers in the british forces, so in terms of military experience, India has it way better.
A war with china over tibet sounds hellish though, infantry butchering eachother on mountain passes...
 
Five years before, Indians were the largest group of soldiers in the british forces, so in terms of military experience, India has it way better.
A war with china over tibet sounds hellish though, infantry butchering eachother on mountain passes...

A Sino-Indian War TL over Tibet does sound fascinating though wonder where Pakistan would fit into this scenario as well as whether such a conflict would have still erupted with a Nationalist China?
 
Well modern India has enjoyed and expected dominant influence over Nepal and Bhutan, and flexed their muscle to exercise it to the exclusion of China as late as the early 1990s. But perhaps satellite status is the most they would ever want or consider convenient.

Yes, but India's privileged status with Bhutan (their relationship with Nepal has been much more complicated and involves Maoist guerilla resistance) is one of the results of the Chinese invasion of Tibet. India doesn't have much to gain in that area by negotiating with China over Tibet. Even negotiating in favor of Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh is small peanuts compared to Tibetan market access. I.e. there's not enough to gain for either India or China to gain by negotiating. OTL is basically a best-case scenario for China minus a Bhutanese invasion, and it involved hardly any negotiating on their part. India has very little to gain by negotiating for unrestricted access to Nepal and Bhutan (something they mostly had all this time anyway) or even their border conflicts.
 

raharris1973

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Well two scenarios can play out here.

Late PoD - the Patel scenario. Nehru dies before 1948 is over. Patel makes greater commitments to Tibet as he is witnessing communist victory in China. He has a successor who continues these policies after his death.

Earlier scenario-Tibet modernizes and woos India from 1930s.
 
Late PoD - the Patel scenario. Nehru dies before 1948 is over. Patel makes greater commitments to Tibet as he is witnessing communist victory in China. He has a successor who continues these policies after his death.

This (for Tibet) ends either in a long-standing guerilla conflict like the Naxalites in India, or the Tibetans (supported by India) might be able to force China to the negotiating table for an Inner and an Outer Tibet similar to Mongolia (and there is precedence, this idea was brought up multiple times at the Simla Convention in 1914, but was rejected by the Tibetans who didn't want to set a precedence for partitioning Tibet). But in the face of a decades' worth of military action, might seem preferable.

Also, you can throw in an Indian negotiator to MacArthur who wanted to expand the Korean War to Formosa, and you have a pretty incredible Pan-Asian story, possibly World War III, which ends in either nuclear hell-fire or an earlier Sino-Soviet Split.

Earlier scenario-Tibet modernizes and woos India from 1930s.

A timeline I've been outlining on paper.
 

raharris1973

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Looking forward to your scenario silver phantom2. I think it will be fun and educational.

However I thought of an additional Pod I wanted to mention. If KMT China loses the war with Japan, either during Ichigo or earlier, it will lose its ranking among the allied big four or big five, it would be mainly Soviet forces liberating China, and between theSe extra Japanese and soviet successes it will be instinctive to the British Raj in India to try to salvage Tibet from the rubble. Once the Raj sets that path, post independence in dismal will likely continue along it.
 
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