(TibetanReview.net, Jun21’24) — A high-level, bipartisan delegation from the US Congress that China has condemned for meeting with the Dalai Lama at Dharamshala has met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Jun 20. The delegation of seven US lawmakers, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and which included former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was also hosted by foreign minister S Jaishankar with Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra the night before, reported the timesofindia.com and other news outlets over Jun 20-21.
As images of Modi with the US delegation were shared on social media, experts argued that New Delhi was reshaping its China policy amid territorial tensions and strengthening relations with the US, while some cautioned about a “real risk” of escalating the China-India border conflict as a consequence, reported the scmp.com Jun 21.
“India has once again indicated that it is willing to gradually ramp up pressure on issues like Tibet and Taiwan,” Harsh Pant, an international relations professor at King’s College London, has said.
India’s foreign policy towards China, he has said, has been undergoing a “gradual calibrated change” since 2020, when a border clash killed at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers in the Ladakh region.
The report cited Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Centre’s South Asia Institute (Washington, DC), as saying that it seemed as though India was “trying to signal that it can use its relationship with the US as leverage”.
“It can show China that there are ways that it can push back,” he has added.
Modi’s hosting of the delegation was a “very explicit signal”, he has said, that New Delhi was “fully” behind the delegation’s audience with the Dalai Lama, and that it wasn’t just “politely” facilitating it.
“India appears more risk tolerant now when it comes to how far it’s willing to go with pushing the Tibet issue,” Kugelman has said.
He has also warned that while US-India security relations are deeper than ever before, the US delegation’s meeting with the Dalai Lama could have consequences along the “Line of Actual Control” (LAC), the disputed 3,000-km (1,864 miles) Himalayan border between India and occupied Tibet, in the form of “stepped-up Chinese provocations”.
“That’s a real risk and will be something to watch,” he has said, suggesting that the growing US-India cooperation could have been one of the triggers of the border clashes in the first place.
Still, Jabin Thomas Jacob, a professor of international relations at Shiv Nadar University in India, has said Beijing should remember that New Delhi “does not and cannot restrict access” to the Dalai Lama.
US and other foreign legislators or leaders visiting the Dalai Lama was a “long-standing tradition”, he has pointed out, and there was “no reason” for China to send bilateral relations with either India or the US into a “tailspin”.
Modi has tweeted on X, formerly Twitter, that he “Had a very good exchange of views with friends from the US Congress in a delegation,” adding that he “deeply” valued the “strong bipartisan support in advancing the India-US comprehensive global strategic partnership”.
Likewise, In his post on X, Jaishankar stated, “Pleasure to meet with the bipartisan US Congressional delegation led by @RepMcCaul. Thank @SpeakerPelosi, @RepGregoryMeeks, @RepMMM, @NMalliotakis, @RepBera and @RepMcGovern for joining. Appreciate their strong and continued support for the strategic partnership.”
The delegation’s visit to Dharamshala drew China’s ire, with Beijing urging the Americans to fully recognise the “anti-China separatist nature of the Dalai group”, honour commitments the US has made to China on issues related to Tibet, and stop sending a wrong signal to the world. Their meetings with Indian leaders will likely raise China’s hackles too, the timesofindia.com report felt.