Prime Minister Narendra Modi let the world know on Tuesday that he had personally wished Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama a happy 86th birthday in a phone call, in what is being seen as a signal to China.

“Spoke on phone to His Holiness the @DalaiLama to convey greetings on his 86th birthday. We wish him a long and healthy life,” Modi said on Twitter.

Beijing regards the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India for more than six decades, as a separatist, and frowns on any engagement with him.

This is the first time Modi has acknowledged contact with the Dalai Lama since taking office in 2014. Neither has he publicly acknowledged the Dalai Lama’s wishes to him since 2015.

There was no immediate response from the Chinese foreign office or the embassy in New Delhi to the Prime Minister’s tweet.

Modi’s tweet, which was followed by several chief ministers greeting the Dalai Lama, was indicative of a stalemate in the bilateral efforts to de-escalate and disengage at all the friction points along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

“This is the first public greetings. Till last year even party officials were not allowed to publicly greet him,” said Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

In June last year, Chinese troops attacked an Indian border patrol, killing 20. China later said it lost four soldiers during that clash. Relations have been tense since.

Modi’s decision to announce his conversation with the Dalai Lama is seen as a bid to play the Tibetan card just like India’s announcement of the use of the covert Special Frontier Force along the LAC last year. The government not only acknowledged the use of SFF — a force raised in 1962 with Tibetan refugees for covert operations behind Chinese lines — for patrolling the LAC, but also allowed a lot of publicity for the funeral of a SFF company leader killed in an accidental mine blast while on duty.

Just three years ago, when Modi was pursuing a detente with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his government had asked Tibetans in India not to hold a rally to mark the 60th anniversary of the uprising.

Chinese troops seized Tibet in 1950 in what Beijing calls a “peaceful liberation”, and the Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959, following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.