I feel this is as much a case of a compassion deficit as a case of geopolitics. While our strategic interests require us to prevent Nepal from becoming a hotbed of anti-Chinese or anti-Indian activities, the high-handedness of our police is uncalled for. Managing dissidence has never been a strong point of our police force and political classes alike.

It is possible to keep a check on anti-China activities without brutalizing Tibetans. The individual Tibetan in Nepal is deserving of our sympathy, however differently we may view the role of China in the region.

It is a terrible thing to lose your homeland to a bullying neighbor. It might be hard for those of us with a country to conceive but think of the horror of losing your roots, heritage, history, culture - all at one fell swoop. People live with the loss all their lives and pass it on to their children. It is easy to pick on some Tibetans in Nepal who have indulged themselves in vulgar extravagance and illicit wealth but such people are not representative samples of the Tibetans living in Nepal. The vast majority of them are simple and hard working people who have been our neighbors for thousands of years and become innocent victims of expansionism and power games. They are people like us who have run into a misfortune we would dread for ourselves and not wish on our worst enemies.

A little empathy will take us a long way in dealing with the issue. We need to feel a little more secured about our relations with China and not try to ingratiate ourselves to paranoid Chinese bureaucrats at every opportunity. That only makes us look feeble and encourages the Chinese to keep making such demands. That strategy has worked before and can work again. After all China too needs us , just like we need them, sometimes much more so than we think. A hostile Nepal allied to American and Indian military interests is the last thing a visionary China would want in South Asia.