IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| India and Tibet : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
INTERVIEW WITH TONGSA PENLOP 205
a negotiator before that date. Would not I, therefore,
show patience up to then ?
I asked him whether he himself would be inclined to
be patient if he had been attacked four times at night
after waiting eleven months for negotiators to come. He
admitted that he would not, and would feel more inclined
to go about killing people ; but he said I was the repre-
sentative of a great Government, and ought to be more
patient than he would be. I said I had named June 25
as the date up to which I would receive negotiators, but
since then I had been again attacked at Kangma, and I
could not answer for it that the Viceroy would still allow
me to receive negotiators.
I said no Englishman liked killing villagers who were
forced from their homes to fight us. We knew they did
not want to fight, and we had no quarrel with them. But,
unfortunately, it seemed impossible to get at the real
instigators of the opposition to us except by fighting, in
which the innocent peasant-soldiers, and not the authors
of the trouble, suffered most. If these latter would only
lead their men I would be better pleased, for then they
would appreciate what opposition to the British Govern-
ment really meant. The 'T'ongsa Penlop was much
amused at the suggestion, but said the leaders always
remained a march behind when any fighting was likely to
take place.
Continuing, I said that, though I had little hope that
any settlement would be arrived at without fighting, yet,
fighting or no fighting, I had to make a settlement some
time, and one that would last another hundred years. If
the Tibetans had only been as sensible as the Bhutanese,
and come and talked matters over with me, we could
easily have arrived at a settlement long ago. All we
desired was to be on friendly and neighbourly terms with
States like Bhutan and Tibet lying on our frontier. War,
though it could have but one result, gave us much trouble,
which we had no wish unnecessarily to incur. We, there-
fore, much preferred peace. I sent my respects to the
Dharm Raja, and asked the 'T'ongsa Penlop to write to
me often and give me advice regarding the settlement
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