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Dibyesh Anand (
) is a Reader (Associate Professor) in International Relations at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Westminster University, London.
How does a place acquire geopolitical identity? The answer is not self-evident. The status of a geopolitical entity is not simply reflective of a pre-given reality. The relational and processual nature of identity, studied extensively in the context of the individual and the collective, holds true for geopolitical constructs, too. This paper is an analysis of one such entity--"Tibet." The Seventeen-Point Agreement signed by the Tibetan government and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1951 concretized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet in writing. Even though the Dalai Lama later renounced the treaty after fleeing from Tibet in 1959 and there have been numerous protests against Chinese rule by Tibetans (the March 2008 protests are a recent example), no country in the world recognizes the Dalai Lama's government in exile as a legitimate government and no one denies Chinese sovereignty explicitly. This paper focuses on the period before this authoritative scripting of sovereignty as the defining term in Sino-Tibetan relations. Instead of adhering to the widespread emphasis on Sino-Tibetan conflict, the paper will analyze the role of British imperialism in fixing Tibet's geopolitical identity.
The Tibet question (see Sautman and Dreyer 2006 ) is about the struggle over what "Tibet" was, is, and should be, and the protests of 2008 once again brought the issue into the limelight. Was Tibet once an independent state, or was it always an integral part of China? Is Tibet an occupied country, or is it a backward part of China benefiting from civilizing modernization under the aegis of Chinese state? Should Tibet be an entity based on the exercise of the right of self-determination by Tibetans, or should Tibet always be China's Tibet? A crucial, often neglected, ingredient in the mix of the Tibet question is the West, both as a political actor and as a source of ideas that have shaped the contemporary world. This paper analyses the British imperial scripting of Tibet in terms of sovereignty and the facilitative role played by Western representations of Tibet in it (for a wider discussion of the subject, see Anand 2007...