India’s Tacit Reopening Of The “Tibet Question” Would Entail Far-Reaching Consequences

Multipolar processes would continue, but their trajectory would radically change, and Indo-Sino tensions would become a globally significant factor in the New Cold War.

India’s News 18 reported on Tuesday about how “In A Tit-For-Tat Move, India To Rename 30 Places In Tibet In Response To China's Arunachal Aggression”, which followed The Diplomat’s report titled “China-India Name War Intensifies in the Himalayas”. According to both outlets’ sources, newly re-elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to reciprocally respond to China’s renaming of Indian-controlled regions that it claims as its own, thus informally reopening the “Tibet question”.

India recognizes Tibet as part of China, but renaming residential areas and geographic features there just like China has done in Arunachal Pradesh would imply a tacit change in this policy similar to how Prime Minister Modi thanking the Taiwanese leader on X for his congratulations implied a change to that one. The unmistakable message that the second move sent was analyzed here, which can be summarized as him signaling that he’ll play hardball with China during his third term after finally losing patience with it.

Their decades-long unresolved border dispute, which reached crisis proportions during summer 2020’s lethal clashes over the Galwan River Valley, remains one of the world’s most important geopolitical fault lines. It’s prevented these Asian Great Powers from closely coordinating their actions in BRICS and the SCO, thus impeding both groups’ ability to accelerate multipolar processes. Each side blames the other for this, which is why tensions have escalated in a tit-for-tat fashion and will likely continue to do so.

If India informally reopens the “Tibet question” through the reported means, then comprehensive cooperation between it and China in those two aforementioned multipolar groups would likely become impossible to imagine for some time, if ever again. China takes all perceived threats to its territorial integrity very seriously, though India could plausibly deny any such threat so long as it doesn’t officially rescind recognition of China’s control over Tibet and instead point out China’s hypocritical reaction.

After all, if China protests this move, then India could rhetorically ask what the problem is since China renamed Indian-controlled land first. Although the difference is that China lays formal claim to Arunachal Pradesh (which it considers “South Tibet” despite only briefly controlling it during their 1962 war) while India doesn’t claim Tibet or recognize it as occupied territory, that point is still a powerful one for reshaping popular perceptions. Western media would also be expected to giddily amplify it too.

The latest trouble in Indo-US ties, which was explained in detail here and stems from India’s refusal to subordinate itself to the US as its “junior partner” by sanctioning Russia, might then become a thing of the past. American policymakers would struggle to justify perpetuating their pressure campaign against India as its fierce competition with China publicly worsens and they possibly return to the brink of war just like four years ago. Indo-US ties might therefore rapidly improve as Indo-Sino ones deteriorate.

So long as India doesn’t officially change its policy towards Tibet, then Russo-Indo ties will remain strong, though they’d be at risk of worsening just like Sino-Indo ones if Delhi either laid claim to Tibet or recognized it as occupied territory since Moscow would consider that a provocation against Beijing. Since Prime Minister Modi only appears interested in tacitly changing his country’s policy towards that region and Taiwan as part of a psychological tit-for-tat against China, however, there’s nothing to worry about.

In that event, the latest drama in Indo-Sino ties will likely play out mostly in the media as these Asian Great Powers try to win the rest of the Global South over to their respective side, though it also can’t be ruled out that large-scale military drills might be staged on both sides of the border too. Nevertheless, no hot war is expected to break out since that would create opportunities for their corresponding rivals to exploit, plus Russia could mediate in a serious crisis if requested by both of them to do so.

With all these dynamics in mind, the consequences of India tacitly reopening the “Tibet question” would likely be: 1) a sharp split in BRICS and the SCO that each would blame on the other; 2) the Global South being pressured to choose sides; 3) worsened Indo-Sino ties; 4) improved Indo-US ones; and 5) a more important Russian mediating role. Multipolar processes would continue, but their trajectory would radically change, and Indo-Sino tensions would become a globally significant factor in the New Cold War.