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 CHINESE RESIDENT 271
Iw
several occasions during the recent fighting gone round
the dead Tibetans, and invariably found that they were
peasants. A Lama was never seen. If we could be quite
sure that the originators of all this fighting would fight
themselves, I was not sure that we would have been so
ready to suspend hostilities.
Before the close of his visit I asked the Amban if the
it Nepalese and Kashmiris kept on good terms with the
Tibetans here. He replied that they got on well enough
with the ordinary people, but avoided the Lamas, as contact
with them was liable to lead to trouble. He added that
the Nepalese representative had been ordered by the
4 Prime Minister of Nepal to advise the Tibetans to be
reasonable and come to a settlement with us, and to tell
!i them that the British respected the religion of others and
t1f would not interfere with theirs. I said I had heard of
iC this, and if the Tibetans had only followed this good
bi advice, which was given a year ago, we might have settled
up everything at Khamba Jong. What the Prime
ki Minister of Nepal had said about the tolerance of other
i, religions was perfectly true. We had many millions of
I Buddhists under our rule, about 200,000,000 Hindus, and
4 70,000,000 Mohammedans. The 'Tibetan fear that we
II would interfere with their religion was altogether un-
i founded. The Amban replied that they were so jealous
of their religion that they tried to prevent even Chinese
Buddhists of other sects from their own from entering
Tibet.
On August 13 two Sha-pés, the Dalai Lama's private
Abbot, a Secretary of Council, and the Accountant-
General paid me a formal visit. I remarked that the
Amban had told me that they had drawn up a document
which they had presented to him as a reply to our terms,
r but which was so impertinent that the Amban had said he
could not even mention it to me officially. The deputa-
tion replied that they were really anxious to make a settle-
ment, and the document they had presented to the
Amban merely represented their views, and was not
intended as a reply to me. Their idea was to give the
Amban their opinion, and he would give orders upon it.
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