The Hindu : Building a gateway to Tibet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 29, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Building a gateway to Tibet

By C. Raja Mohan

CHANGGU June 28. Way up in the mountains and besides the serene waters of a holy lake is the implausible place where India plans to resume its border trade with Tibet. Changgu, a one yak town if you will, has been designated by New Delhi and Beijing earlier this week as the place where the Indian border trade post will be located.

Goods will come through the Nathu La pass about 17 km further up and at a little over 14,200 feet. On a clear day at Nathu La, the old Silk Road can be seen winding its way down to Yatung, just 25 km away. Opposite Yatung one can sight Renqinggang where the Chinese trading post will be set up.

During a visit to Lhasa last year, this reporter was told by Tibetan authorities that modern infrastructure for trade at Yatung has already been set up. New Delhi and Gangtok will have to move quickly to set up matching facilities in Changgu to start the border trade.

Right now there is very little at Changgu, a small settlement which has a few shops on the edge of the lake catering to the growing number of tourists who travel up to Nathu La to take a look at Tibet and shake hands with the Chinese border guards.

But now as Nathu La opens up, trade should start flowing once again between Tibet and Sikkim after a gap of more than 40 years. Border commerce was shut down in the early 1960s amidst Sino-Indian tensions which led up to a short war in 1962.

Dreamers in Gangtok see Kolkata, about a 1,000 km away from Lhasa, re-emerging as the warm water port for Tibet. But hold your breath. All that must wait before the conditions for efficient trade to be established on the ground. Gangtok and New Delhi will have to sort out many things on the ground before trade between India and China can take off at Nathu La.

These include an agreed list of items, consular issues, security procedures. Putting an agreed mechanism could take a quite a while. What Sikkimese are hoping for is an early start to border trade on a small scale.

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Increased economic activity here, many fear will affect the ecology of Lake Tsomgo which is revered by the local people and is the source of Rangpo river. (Changgu is a corruption of Tsomgo which means "ocean head".) There is very little physical space at Changgu. Locals suggest that Kupup, a few kilometres up and closer to Nathu La, there is a lot more flat ground to accommodate checkposts and the trade mart.

While Sikkim hopes that trade with China will bring prosperity, they do not want their fragile ecology damaged by the pollution of all kinds that highways bring. Balancing the imperatives of economic development with those of mountain ecology is a challenge that Pawan Chamling, the Chief Minister of Sikkim, is well aware of.

The Indian Army mans much of the road from Gangtok to Nathu La and provides economic livelihood for man. Until there is a more explicit Chinese recognition of Sikkim as part of India, the Army would be loath to thin out and yield to Border Security Forces. On the Chinese side the regular units of People's Liberation Army have been replaced by border guards for quite some time now.

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Motilal Lakhotia cannot hide his glee at the prospect of returning to Tibet. A leading businessman in Gangtok, Mr. Lakhotia spent seven years in Tibet from 1954-1961 tending family trade in Lhasa. Despite the four decades of chill in Sino-Indian relations, Mr. Lakhotia never changed the name of one of his firms "Sikkim-Tibet Trading Company". His hopes are bearing fruit now.

In the 1950s there were more than 50 Indian families trading in Tibet. The commercial interaction across the Himalayas was facilitated by an Indian Consulate in Lhasa and Indian trade agents in Yatung and Gyantse. China had a Consulate in Calcutta and a trade mission in Kalimpong.

Mr. Lakhotia recalls selling bicycles, automobiles and other light machinery in Tibet. Cars and trucks had to be dismantled on the Indian side, carried over mules across Nathu la and reassembled in Tibet.

"Indian trade with Tibet is already taking place — through Nepal," Mr. Lakhotia says. He believes that much of that will now shift to Nathu La once the pass opens. Lhasa is only 400 km from Nathu La, while goods from the Nepal border travel a much longer distance. If you set out in the morning at Nathu La, Mr. Lakhotia says, "you can have lunch at Gyantse and dinner at Lhasa".

Mr. Lakhotia believes construction material, medicines, automobiles, and fruit and vegetables could have a huge market in Tibet. Although the size of the Tibet market itself is rather small, tourism there is booming and a rail line will connect Lhasa to the heartland of China by 2007.

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On the edge of Tsomgo, 55-year-old Mrs. Bhutia runs a small shop. She is deeply moved by the news that Nathu La might soon open up. She had come here from Tibet more than four decades ago as a child. Her enthusiasm, however, is tinged by a sense of anxiety.

"Will we be allowed to go to Lhasa? What kind of documents do we need?" a desperate Mrs. Bhutia wants to know. Stateless Tibetan refugees like Mrs. Bhutia will have to wait; perhaps not interminably.

As India and China build a new partnership, there is some hope that the Tibet question as well as the complex trans-Himalayan politics of Buddhism will become more amenable to enduring solutions.

(Concluded)