Aamir Khan does it again……

Now I must say he is a darn good actor and seems to be great director judging by his last effort Tare Zameen Par. But he does seem a little lacking in political savvy. First he royally screwed up the Narmada issue. He supported it with words that did more harm for the movement and his reputation.

Now he has gone and done it again with this decision to carry the Olympic torch. Olympic spirit is good. Sportsmanship is great but man a little patriotism is good too. Just for one moment …. a fleeting moment think of what would China done if the whole Tibet-Olympic issue was India’s problem. I am sure there would not been any torch relay in China. Instead it would have put massive pressure and a barrage of words to repudiate India.

Why .. why then Aamir you think that you have to be such a good soul and pray for the Tibetans. I am sure the Buddhist monks and the Dalai Lama do enough praying  for the collective solace of the Tibetan people.. What they need is some solid action to get back their home land. Support and solidarity followed up with some action.

But Aamir Khan I do thank you for one thing. You have successfully managed to put this in the radar of the TV news folks and the public with one statement and decision. Right or wrong I do applaud you for that. I  hope this will set the ball rolling on the discussion on India’s role the Tibet issue. Next to China it is India that has a central role in this mess. A very vested role.

Politically it is the right issue to flex some muscle. This will be using Chinas own strategy of keeping the enemy off balance. If China is busy in Tibet then it will stop making mischief in Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Militarily it is the right thing to raise noise on . Hopefully it will help bring back some kind of a buffer zone between China and India.

Socially it is a good cause. We have officially more than 100000 refugees from that country. I am sure unofficially there are much more. Then there are the children of these refugees born in this country. They are Indians by birth and nationality but have  extremely strong emotional ties to Tibet.

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This post is dedicated to Pasang Dolma (apologies if I have misspelled her name).She is of a Tibetan ancestry whom I met while on flight from Bombay to New York. She was on her masters and  had some pretty strong opinion about Tibet, India and China.