Writing in the Hindustan Times, an alarmed Prem Shankar Jha says that given the Chinese sensitivities vis-a-vis India, "the immediate need is to persuade the Dalai Lama to postpone his visit to Tawang":
The resulting confrontation has now acquired a life of its own and is leading the two countries towards a war that neither wants. The calibrated escalation of China’s demands and actions suggests that the point of no return will be the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang in November. Wen Jiabao’s request for a meeting with Manmohan Singh in Bangkok should, therefore, be seen as a last ditch effort to avert war...
Fortunately for India, reversing the escalation does not require making humiliating concessions. All that New Delhi needs to do is clear up the misapprehensions that have taken root in the Chinese leaders’ minds.
Read the full piece at the HT: It's a Dim Sum Game
Such suggestions seem to be of a piece with the recent “strategic reassurance” given by Barack obama to China by his refusal to meet the Dalai Lama during the latter's visit to Washington. While Obama may have been bestowed with a Nobel Peace Prize soon thereafter, Maureen Dowd in a recent column quoted Vaclav Havel to put it in perspective: “It is only a minor compromise. But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.” Gabbar Singh had put it pithily in Sholay, "jo Dar gayaa samjho mar gayaa".
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