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
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THE RIGHT TO GO TO LHASA 299
was to bring upon me the censure of Government. That,
of course, is what I had to risk. I knew that. I was not
acting within my instructions. I was using my discretion
in very difficult circumstances with what the Government
of India afterwards described* to the Secretary of State as
a fearlessness of responsibility which it would be a grave
mistake to discourage in any of their agents." And if I
really was in error, I think that those who tied their agent
down for time and bound him within such narrow lines
before they were aware in what conditions he would find
himself at Lhasa, cannot themselves be considered as
altogether faultless.
In another matter also I at this time acted on my
own responsibility. In the original proposals of the
Government of India regarding the terms about which I
was, without committing Government, to ascertain how
the Tibetan Government would be likely to regard them,t
was one by which the agent at Gyantse was to have the
right of proceeding to Lhasa to discuss matters with the
Tibetan officials or the Resident. This reached me before
I left Gyantse, and when the 'l'ongsa Penlop asked me for
our terms to let the Dalai Lama know what we wanted,
I gave him this among all the rest. Subsequently, I
received instructions not to ask for permission for the
Gyantse agent to proceed to Lhasa. T did riot, however,
at once withdraw the clause from the list of terms,
because in the course of negotiations it might prove
useful as a point on which I could, if necessary, make
concessions to the Tibetans. But when I found the
Tibetans raised no special objections to the clause, pro-
vided the trade agent went to Lhasa only on commercial,
and not political, business, and only after he had found it
impossible to get this commercial business disposed of by
correspondence or by personal conference with the Tibetan
agent at Gyantse, I thought there would be no objection
to taking an agreement from the Tibetans to that effect ;
for, under such limitations and provisions, there could be
no grounds for assuming that in going there the trade
agent at Gyantse would be taking upon himself any
* Blue-book, III., p. 75. f Ibid., p. 22.
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