Arunachal to host Dalai Lama despite China's protests (News Feature)

By Sunrita Sen Nov 7, 2009, 10:04 GMT

New Delhi - The remote town of Tawang in India's eastern Arunachal Pradesh was preparing Saturday for a much-awaited visit by the Dalai Lama that has stirred a hornet's nest in India-China relations.

The Tibetan spiritual leader is set to embark on a week-long visit to Arunachal Pradesh Sunday despite repeated protests by China which claims the region is disputed territory.

India, which maintains the north-eastern state is an integral part of the country, has described the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India, as an honoured guest who is free to travel where he wishes as long as he does not indulge in politics.

But for followers of the Tibetan spiritual leader who were gathering at Tawang, one of the region's most revered monasteries and birth place of the sixth incarnation of the Dalai Lama, it was an occasion for joy.

The remote town in the eastern Himalayas is perched at an altitude of over 11,000 feet close to the border with China.

'The mood is one of sheer excitement and anticipation, coupled with a sense of awe,' said lama Lupon, a priest at the Tawang monastery.

Indian flags fluttered alongside Buddhist prayer flags on the roads in Tawang as monks braved the winter chill to put up welcome arches and mandala paintings, IANS news agency reported.

'Everything from the main prayer hall to the throne from where the Dalai Lama would lead a three-day prayer session for some 30,000 followers is ready,' Guru Tuku, the abbot of Tawang monastery said.

Besides devotees from the region, hundreds of followers had converged from neighbouring Bhutan and Nepal, IANS reported.

Tempa Tsering, an aide to the Dalai Lama's confirmed that the visit would be taking place. 'His Holiness will be arriving in Delhi from Tokyo on Saturday and on Sunday he will leave for Arunachal Pradesh with a small delegation,' Tsering said.

'He is going there to hold a religious discourse. he will not be talking to the press,' Tsering added.

The Dalai Lama is scheduled to inaugurate a museum and a library at the Tawang monastery and address the monks on the day of his arrival.

He is scheduled to hold his first prayer session at a school playground near the monastery on Monday.

The Buddhist leader will also visit nearby towns of Bomdilla and Dirang and Arunachal capital Itanagar before returning via Delhi to Dharamsala, the northern Indian hill town which has been his home in exile for 50 years.

When the leader fled to India in 1959 after the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Tawang was one of his first stops.

China sees the Dalai Lama as a separatist and years of talks with his representatives for greater autonomy for Tibet within China has made little headway.

Nor has there been much progress in several rounds of dialogue between India and China to resolve long-standing boundary disputes largely over Arunachal which China claims and parts of Jammu and Kashmir, which India says is illegally occupied by China.

The two Asian countries share a long border largely along the Himalayan mountain range which has never been formally demarcated.

Both countries indulge in aggressive border patrolling. The Indian Army has said their were 270 intrusions by Chinese troops to Indian territory in 2008.

China in turn has accused India of transgressing the so-called border called the Line of Actual control and of building bunkers on the border of India's north-eastern Sikkim state.

China briefly occupied part of Arunachal Pradesh which it claims to be southern Tibet during a war with India in 1962 before withdrawing to their unmarked border.

Both Indian and Chinese media reports in recent months have been highlighting the mistrust between the two sides though meetings between top leaders have ended in statements saying there were no strains in ties.

China on Tuesday accused the Dalai Lama of trying to sabotage India-China relations.

India-based analysts say that the Dalai Lama's 'religious' visit was still a political statement when it involved Arunachal Pradesh.

India has reiterated that the Dalai Lama was free to go anywhere as long as he did not indulge in political activities.

Despite 'outstanding issues' relations between India and China would acquire greater dynamism and relevance in the days to come, India's Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, a former ambassador to China, said at a recent seminar.

The two countries recently announced they would work together on climate change talks scheduled to be held in Copenhagen next month. Burgeoning bilateral trade stood at 52 billion dollars in 2008.

But many Indian commentators feel that tensions between the two major Asian economies can only continue.

'With both the Asian tigers fighting for the same space globally, economically and politically in Asia, it defies logic that they can ever strike friendship, invoke trust and ever become strategic partners,' columnist Nitish Sengupta wrote in the Asian Age newspaper.