India needs course correction on Tibetan policy: Yashwant Sinha

DHARAMSALA: India should undertake course correction on Tibetan policy and stand more firmly for the cause, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said today.

"I hope in future there will be course correction and India will stand more firmly in support of Tibetan cause and tell Chinese in very clear terms that the genocide and destruction of civilisation and religion of Tibet is something which is not acceptable to India as indeed it is not acceptable to progressive global opinion," the former finance and external affairs minister said here.

Sinha, the Chairman of All Party Indian Parliamentarian Forum for Tibet, was speaking to mediapersons on the concluding day of his three-day visit to Dharamshala from September 15-17.

During his visit, Sinha met several members of the Tibetan government-in-exile here.

"Many people in India including me believe that by not supporting the cause of Tibet in 1950 when the Chinese aggression took place, we made a huge strategic mistake.

"As apart from the fact that India and Tibet always had very deep civilisational relationship, Tibet also acted as a buffer zone between China and India and by letting that buffer collapse we invited China to our borders and we experienced the result of that in 1962 with the Chinese aggression," he said.