Prime Minister Narendra Modi has wished the Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama on his 89th birthday.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Modi said he had conveyed his greetings to the Dalai Lama.
“Sent my greetings to His Holiness Dalai Lama on the occasion of his 89th birthday. Pray for his quick recovery after knee surgery, good health and long life,” said Modi.
The Dalai Lama has been living in India in exile since 1959 when he arrived in India after fleeing from Tibet’s capital in the wake of a failed uprising against the Chinese occupation and repression. In 1949-50, the Chinese invaded and occupied Tibet. Following the occupation, they mounted an agenda of repression where they clamped down on the natives’ cultural freedoms and stomping on their heritage.
The Chinese regime considers the Dalai Lama as a separatist and is averse to any government’s or politician’s engagement with him. For years, as India reached out to China to manage the bilateral relationship, the Narendra Modi government kept the engagement with the Tibetans in exile in India and the Dalai Lama under wraps but that changed in 2020 when China plunged the bilateral relationship to the lowest since the 1962 war with incursions in Ladakh that triggered the border stand-off that now continues in its fifth year.
In 2021, Modi wished the Dalai Lama on his birthday for the first time in many years. The renewed engagements was a way of telling the Chinese that if you will not respect our sensibilities, we will not respect yours.
Following the Chinese aggression in 2020, which peaked in June 2020 when Chinese personnel killed at least 20 Indian personnel in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley, the Modi government did away with respecting the Chinese sensibilities. The engagement with the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama is part of the broader campaign to counter the Chinese where India has cautious reached out to Taiwan, blocked Chinese investments in India, pushed Chinese companies operating in India to partner with Indian companies, and built partnerships with like-minded countries to counter Chinese belligerence.
India was again said to be playing the ‘Tibet Card’
last month when it facilitated the visit of American lawmakers to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh where the Tibetan Government in Exile is based. The lawmakers met the Dalai Lama and made powerful statements. Following their meeting that draw a
swift response from the Chinese embassy in India
, the lawmakers also met Modi in New Delhi.
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