Author's Tawang remarks set to ruffle India's feathers.

AFTER GIVING the world a revealing look into the private life of the controversial V. S. Naipaul in The World Is What It Is , writer Patrick French has a take on Tawang -- the bone of contention between India and China -- that may be unpalatable here.

The Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh, the largest Tibetan Buddhist establishment outside the Potala Palace in Lhasa, is claimed by China as part of its territory. " In an academic, historical sense, China's claim over Tawang is very strong, if you look at the archives objectively," French, the author of Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land , said on Thursday. " It is actually Tibet that has a strong claim over Tawang, not Beijing." He was speaking on the sidelines of a seminar on Russian painter and peacemaker Nicholas Roerich at Jamia Millia Islamia.

" No one notices that in India. China is seen as making a wholly unreasonable claim," French, who in Tibet, Tibet has written an engaging account of how a British official annexed the contentious territory. " Tawang is a historically important part of Tibet.

One of the previous incarnations of the Dalai Lama was even born in Tawang," he said. " But as of 2009, it is China which is being provocative." The Dalai Lama, the author maintained, was in an " impossible position". Speaking of China's growing global influence, French said, " The US economy can only work on Chinese cooperation, which holds and finances US debt, and can exert pressure on the US." President Barack Obama, he said, was told by China not to meet the Dalai Lama before his visit to the country -- and he complied.

He added: " In earlier times, China would not have been able to do so." French, who used to be the director of the Free Tibet campaign, quit associating with the cause in 1999. " I went to Tibet and realised the issue is a whole lot more complex and the campaign was not realistic. The battle for Tibetan independence was lost in 1959 when the Dalai Lama went into exile," he said.

His travels in Tibet, French said, revealed the sheer unhappiness of Tibetans living under Chinese communist rule, for all the major decisions affecting Tibetans are taken by Beijing, and the beneficiaries are often the Han Chinese settled in Tibet.

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