Tibetans and their supporters worldwide have taken to the streets in record numbers lately to protest human rights abuses in China and the 58-year-old Chinese occupation of Tibet. Over the years, a lot of things have stood between Beijing’s dictatorial rule and Tibet’s freedom — but you’d never guess the most formidable barrier: The Dalai Lama himself.
Belief Above All
Long before Europe’s enlightenment and centuries before Gautama Buddha renounced his princely life and set out to solve the riddle of human suffering, a band of ascetics in India offered hope and redemption to the masses. The best of them have always been highly reclusive and their contribution to mystical practices have, in the words of British missionary John Copley Winslow, brought to “a West grown dry and thirsty in the deserts of barren materialism the refreshing streams of a living faith in God and in the supremacy of spiritual values.” Ajay Singh spent a month in the Himalayas trying to meet ascetics rumoured to be 200 years old and capable of levitating.
China Syndrome
Tibet has been a thorn in China’s side ever since Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army invaded the Roof of the World in 1950. The recent unrest in Lhasa resulted in a Chinese crackdown that has effectively transformed the Beijing Olympics into what some are calling the “Human Rights Games.” In a wide-ranging interview with AsiaScoop Editor Ajay Singh, veteran Sinologist Richard Baum, a professor of political science at UCLA, dissects China’s Tibet challenge and other major problems that plague the nation. Baum’s latest book, China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom, will be published in early 2009.
Oh, Calcutta!
Call it by its well-known colonial name or the postcolonial P.C. “Kolkata,” the place that Mother Teresa did most to popularize is a City of Joy and cultural powerhouse like no other. AsiaScoop Contributing Photographer Dev Nayak offers an eclectic glimpse of India’s most marvelous metropolis.
