NEW DELHI – Eleven months after the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradeshled to a steep slide in bilateral ties with China in 2017 and atwo-and-half month standoff at Doklam, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’snote to skip functionslink>ofthe Tibetan leadership in exile is a reflection of India’s cautiousapproach towards Beijing as it embarks on the task of mending fences withits northern neighbour, Indian Express has reported.

The Foreign Secretary’s note to Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha on February 22,came a day before he flew down to Beijing and held talks with Chinese ViceForeign Minister Kong Xuanyou, and called on Foreign Minister Wang andState Councillor Yang Jiechi.

This was the first bilateral stand-alone visit by the Indian ForeignSecretary after a year then Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had visitedBeijing in February last year.

Many believe that the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh from April 4to 12 last year had provoked Beijing to take diplomatic and military movesthat impacted the relationship adversely through much of 2017.Gokhale was India’s ambassador to Beijing in 2017, and had beenconsistently dealing with China’s hardening of position on all major issuesconfronting the two countries.

For Gokhale to take this position of non-participation in events of theTibetan government-in-exile, New Delhi has a precedent — there was nogovernment-level participation in their “50 years of exile” events in 2009,when they had celebrated the “Thank You India” campaign. In fact, Gokhalewas Joint Secretary (East Asia) in the Ministry of External Affairs in 2009.

While New Delhi had consistently maintained that the Dalai Lama hadtravelled six times before and was a revered religious leader, who isdeeply respected as such by the Indian people, and no additional colourshould be ascribed to his religious and spiritual activities and visits tovarious states of India, Beijing had reacted sharply and had perceived hisvisit to Arunachal Pradesh as giving him political and official backing —since Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, as well as Minister ofState (Home) Kiren Rijiju, had received him there.

China, which portrays the Dalai Lama as a separatist “wolf in sheep’sclothing” and fumes over India keeping him as an honoured guest, had thencancelled Foreign Minister Wang’s visit to India for a trilateral meetingin April.

Beijing had then stopped sharing hydrological data on Brahmaputra frommid-May, which was followed by the standoff in Doklam from mid-June. Theborder standoff was resolved only in August end, just ahead of PrimeMinister Narendra Modi link>’svisit to Xiamen in China for the BRICS summit in October.

Though Modi met President Xi Jinping twice during that period — in Juneduring the SCO summit and again in Xiamen during the BRICS summit — andthey agreed to “not let differences become disputes”, there was littleprogress in normalising the strained ties.

Gokhale’s visit to Beijing last month was aimed at laying the roadmap forthe coming year, including discussions on visits by respective foreignministers and other officials.