Tibetan Blunder
Dharamsala, India
Photographs by Rakesh Sahai
I am the sage of Tibet …
I have no preference for any country.
– Milarepa
In the spring of 1998, a 60-year-old Tibetan man named Thupten Ngodup doused his clothing with kerosene, lit a match and set himself on fire while participating in a fast-unto-death demonstration in New Delhi to call on the United Nations to debate Tibetan independence. “Long live the Dalai Lama,” he screamed, his body a mass of flames. “Free Tibet!”
Thupten’s tragic end may have been averted had New Delhi police not broken up the rally and prompted his self-sacrifice. (Since then, Indian cops carry wet blankets while policing Tibetan protest.) The activist died shortly afterwards, earning himself the distinction of being the only Tibetan to burn himself to death to protest Chinese rule over his homeland.
The Dalai Lama called Thupten’s gesture an act of “violence” that reflected the “frustration and urgency building up among many Tibetans.” The Nobel laureate, who was 63 years old at the time, then put forward a candid, if surprising, admission. “I’ve made every effort for the past 20 years for the self-rule of Tibetans,” he told his people. “But I’ve failed … I am confused … I have no alternative solution.”
Whenever Tibetan protests are underway — as they are these days — speculation mounts that China just might succumb to international pressure and perhaps relinquish its 58-year-old control over Tibet or at least give it autonomy in all areas of its administration except defence and foreign affairs. The furious rioting in Lhasa this past March, which resulted in the killings of several Han Chinese, has altered the China-Tibet calculus like never before. The Chinese leadership, eager to showcase China’s mighty economic achievements and avoid embarrassment or humiliation in the run up to the Beijing Olympics this August, has initiated talks with two representatives of the Dalai Lama.
Whether the negotiations will be “serious,” the Dalai Lama has responded, remains conspicuously uncertain. The fact that the talks were held in southern China and not in Tibet may offer a clue.
A free Tibet remains a fantasy. And the reason is not so much that Tibetan protests haven’t been forceful enough but because the Dalai Lama’s government in exile is weak, ineffectual and hopelessly adrift. This may come as a surprise to those who believe, as too many romantics do, that the god-king of Tibetan Buddhism wields some sort of esoteric “soft power” that will someday make China give in.
The truth is that the Dalai Lama has failed miserably to find a way forward from the impasse that he himself created when he unilaterally declared in 1988 that he favored partial autonomy for Tibet rather then outright independence. The Dalai Lama appears to have taken this decision as long ago as the early 1970s but it wasn’t until 1988 that he became the world’s first leading spokesman against Tibetan independence. And so it is that any hope of a free Tibet recedes with every passing Chinese New Year.
Among Tibetan exiles there has long been a vocal minority prepared to take up the gun and fight for outright independence. The Dalai Lama has tried to distance himself from such hard-liners — at least publicly. Two generations of moderate Tibetans have put their faith in the Dalai Lama’s unwavering credo of non-violence — but still have no real hope of seeing their motherland free.
Imagine for a minute that a handful of monks — and nuns — in flowing saffron robes commit mass self-immolations in Lhasa. (Suicide maybe taboo in Christianity but the practice was condoned by the Buddha under certain circumstances and many Buddhists consider it a legitimate response to persecution.) Or imagine this scenario: Tibetan suicide-bombers unleash death and destruction in China. Either event would likely result in a ruthless Chinese crackdown. And if Beijing doesn’t already have a revolution on its hands, it will be confronted with one, perhaps even something rivaling Tiananmen.
It is such fears that bring me to Dharamsala, a small hill resort perched on the western foothills of the Himalayan range that separates the Indian subcontinent from the high plateau of Tibet. The place has somewhat wistfully come to be known as “Little Lhasa,” for it is here that the Dalai Lama resides along with some 10,000 Tibetans, plus his government-in-exile. My aim is to find out if hardline exiles have been pushed toward militancy and how serious is the rift between them and the Dalai Lama’s moderate leadership.
GUNS AND ROSES
The headquarters of the Tibetan Youth Congress is located in a modest two-story wooden edifice on a road sloping uphill from the town square. The largest and most respected political organization in the exile community, it was the TYC that organized the 67-day hunger strike that culminated in Thupten’s suicide almost exactly a decade ago — and fired the first salvo against the Dalai Lama’s administration just after Thupten torched himself.
The TYC is intensely anti-Chinese but it isn’t anti-Beijing sentiment that drives it on a day-to-day basis. Rather, it is discontent with the Tibetan leadership. The youth organization was founded in 1970 by four young, English public school-educated Tibetans who were deeply disappointed with the Dalai Lama’s government because, among other reasons, it consisted largely of a bureaucratic clique of elites from Tibet that was not only intellectually impoverished but also too timid to pursue the aim of outright Tibetan independence.
By starting a non-governmental and democratically elected organization, the TYC’s founders hoped to intensify the political debate about Tibet’s freedom. And though the young men didn’t realize it at the time, they had created a kind of political opposition — the first in Tibetan history — that today has 65 chapters around the world.
The major irritant between the TYC and the Dalai Lama’s administration goes back to 1988, when His Holiness unexpectedly reversed his 29-year-old stand on Tibetan independence by declaring he would settle for autonomy. The TYC, which insists on full self-determination, charges that the Dalai Lama made the switch without consulting the Parliament-in-exile. Further, because the Dharamsala government is neither recognized by any country nor represented at the U.N., the Dalai Lama’s regime could not ascertain the crucial wishes of Tibetans back home.
Within its policy guidelines, the TYC can choose both violent and nonviolent programs. In public, the TYC offers the highest respect to the Dalai Lama, who fled his homeland with a thousand followers in 1959 after the Chinese brutally suppressed a CIA-aided uprising against nine years of Maoist rule in Tibet. Like all Tibetans, the TYC reverently refers to the Dalai Lama as “His Holiness,” and routinely tells journalists that it is out of consideration for him that it has abstained from choosing the violent path.
In saying this, the TYC is less than truthful. It is no secret that the TYC laid the groundwork for a militant movement, even if it hasn’t directly engaged in one. For several years until the early 1980s, it organized military training for young exiles in jungles surrounding Tibetan settlements in India. The TYC also expanded its ties with resistance groups in Tibet — which it continues to do today. At one time there were even reports, though exaggerated, of plans to target Chinese embassies and personnel overseas. But in the end, the militant thinking of most Tibetans has always been moderated by their unqualified devotion to the institution of the Dalai Lama.
The relationship between the Dalai Lama and his people is part of a great Tibetan paradox: Privately, many Tibetans favour a more open system in which the political role of their supreme leader is drastically reduced — or entirely eliminated. Publicly, however, they are wont to solicit his support for just about every decision outside their homes — never mind the distressing fact that it’s he who has driven a stake in the heart of Tibetan freedom. Phurbu Tsering, a middle-aged employee of the government-in-exile, explains how this practice affects Tibetans. “His Holiness is the only uniting factor that gives the public some hope,” he says. “But if you leave everything to him you naturally don’t grab at opportunities.”
STUBBORN AS YAKS
“People always wonder how the hell Tibetans are going to have an effect on China — what’s the point? But they mustn’t forget Tibetans are very stubborn people. Our national animal is the yak and we pride ourselves on being unyielding.”
I am listening to Jamyang Norbu, a playwright and novelist who came to India as a young child and has long had an Indian passport. (”Mera Bharat Mahan,” he tells me only half-jokingly, quoting the Indian government’s ubiquitous advertisement that translates from the Hindi language as “My India is Great.”) Jamyang is a former director of the Amnye Machen Institute, an independent research and publication center whose stated aim is to address certain “imbalances and limitations in the intellectual, social and cultural life of Tibetan people.” But like virtually every other Tibetan exile organization, it also maintains links with resistance groups in Lhasa.
We are sitting on a breezy verandah at the institute. Jamyang is dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt with sleeves rolled up to reveal bulging biceps. A Che Guevara mustache and dark glasses accentuate his rugged, handsome face, making him look more like a guerrilla in his Sunday best than the intellectual he is reputed to be.
Nonetheless, I am genuinely surprised when Jamyang tells me he was the first TYC member to join the Chushi Gangdruk, a CIA-trained resistance group that for two decades until the early 1970s waged a forlorn guerrilla war against the People’s Liberation Army from the Nepal province of Mustang. “Right now a lot of militant Tibetans are keeping quiet,” he says, outlining three reasons: a lack of opportunities to mount guerrilla operations in Tibet; the Dalai Lama’s insistence on non-violence; and “Westerners who put pressure on Tibetans not to oppose the Dalai Lama.”
Jamyang extends his right arm forward and flexes a pear-shaped tricep. “I’ve given lectures in which Westerners heckle me.” His voice is deep but soft: “‘How dare you criticize the Dalai Lama,’ they say.” Jamyang tells audiences that “not all Tibetans are the Dalai Lama and that I’ve met lamas who tell their followers that killing one Chinese is the karmic equivalent of building a thousand stupas.” Occasionally, ethnic Chinese in the West who hear Jamyang lecture tell him to relax. Tibetans are Chinese, they tell him. For Jamyang, this is enough to provoke a fight. “Look at my face!” he angrily responds. “Do I look Chinese?”
I am surprised that a community widely perceived to be spiritual and “passive” could foster such impassioned people. An exclusive emphasis on non-violence, coupled with the Dalai Lama’s renunciation of complete freedom for Tibet, Jamyang continues, are undermining the unity of exiles.
“There’s no proof of a direct correlation,” he continues, “but when autonomy was suggested, divorce rates went up and children’s school grades came down. People are resigning themselves to their fate — they are giving up.” Indeed, the most potent proof of that is the admission by many young exiles that they may not return to Tibet if it achieves autonomy — or even “rangzen,” Tibetan for independence — because of the difficulties in beginning a new life there.
An increasing number of Tibetans also are questioning the authority of the Dalai Lama, who has said since the mid-1990s that his health may not allow him to play a prominent political role much longer. It is in such a scenario that radicals like Jamyang see a window of opportunity to help revive Tibet’s militant struggle.
In a recent article on a Tibetan website, Jamyang derided the Dalai Lama’s exiled government for trying to dampen the fierce human rights protests that recently erupted not just in large parts of Tibet but the Chinese provinces of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai. Dharamsala wants to limit the campaign to “candle-light vigils, circulating petitions, wearing black arm-bands and so on, actions which they hope Beijing would not consider provocative, and which would eventually tire and bore all the protesters and activists and get them to go home,” he wrote.
The article, pertinently titled “Don’t Stop the Revolution!” pointed out something curiously absent from media reports: That Dharamshala has gone so far as to instruct NGOs and Tibetan support groups to stop using the term “FREE TIBET.” Evidently, it is the Dalai Lama’s hope that if the crisis abates, he and his bureaucrats could try to negotiate with Beijing. “In spite of all that has happened in Tibet our leaders completely fail to see that this will never happen,” wrote Jamyang, echoing his community’s utter frustration and disillusionment with the Dalai Lama’s leadership.
DESPAIR IN EXILE
Lhasang Tsering, an artist, bookseller, former TYC president and ex-principal of Dharmsala’s Tibetan Children’s Village school, will never forget his first encounter with a Tibetan minister three decades ago. He was in the 8th grade at the time and the Dalai Lama’s education minister was visiting his school. Lhasang asked him if he had thoughts on what the first generation of exiled Tibetans should do in life. “Whatever you want,” Lhasang recalls the minister saying. “He pointed toward the girls in the class and giggled, ‘you can become actresses.’” Lhasang was shocked. “What kind of leadership was this?” he cries. “At least we should have been given some direction!”
The situation isn’t much better today. Of the thousands of Tibetans who graduate from college every year, the overwhelming majority end up running petty businesses or joining the ranks of India’s unemployed. Not a few gravitate to drugs. The real tragedy, however, is not their ignoble fate but the fact that many of them could have gotten decent jobs if only they were better informed — by the Dalai Lama’s regime. An Indian law allows Tibetans who arrived in India before 1962, as well as those subsequently born in the country, to work in any government job save a handful involving high security. “But nobody seems to know about this ordinance,” says Lhasang wearily. “The government-in-exile needs to dig it up and remind Tibetans, but for some reason it doesn’t.”
Lhasang’s bitter experience with the Dharamsala administration has turned him into one of its most outspoken critics. “There is a growing sense of dismay and frustration,” he tells me. “Dismay at the lack of any meaningful progress on the freedom question, and frustration — especially among the youth — at the lack of direction for the independence movement.” The leadership, he adds with disgust, is “uncertain, fumbling — it has no goal.”
I mention something the Dalai Lama told me that afternoon. “We’re the most successful refugee community in the world,” he said, referring to the famed industriousness and relative prosperity of the exiles, as well as his government’s efforts to preserve Tibetan culture. “Our government is very proud of saying this, but after all these years it has yet to reassess its priorities,” Lhasang says gravely. “So far we have stuck together because of the hope of going back to a free Tibet. Once that hope dies, the disintegration begins.” For many Tibetans, it already has.
About the Author
Ajay Singh is a writer, former tea planter and chicken farmer who began his career in journalism at the New Delhi bureau of the Asian Wall Street Journal in 1988. Since then, he has worked as a reporter for the Associated Press, Time Inc.’s Hong Kong-based newsweekly Asiaweek, and India’s leading newsweekly India Today. Singh is also the author of “Give ’Em Hell, Hari,” a postcolonial East-West comedy that was Waterstone Book of the Month in Britain in March 1996 and on the bestseller lists in Hong Kong, Ireland and Scotland.
Tags: Beijing, Buddhism, Dalai Lama, Dharamsala, Free Tibet, Lhasa, Olympics, Rangzen
One Comment
Only a non-Tibetan could present such a honest, at times critical and brutally honest review of the Tibetan situation, within and outside Tibet. Your article struck a chord. Many Tibetans know what you have written is true, though we may openly admit it. Hope is what currently sustains this community in exile.
The disintegration and fragmentation of identity has already begun. And I worry it will get worse with time.
“The real tragedy, however, is not their ignoble fate but the fact that many of them could have gotten decent jobs if only they were better informed — by the Dalai Lama’s regime” - This is one of my concerns too. Not just Tibetans but even Indians need to be educated about Tibetans and their right to work in India. I personally know of a case where 3 young educated Tibetans were denied jobs by a top IT major because they were Tibetan. The tragedy is that these young lads did not have Indian passports inspite of having been born and brought up in India.
If only the Dalai Lama would say “Free Tibet”. I assure you that nothing would vitalize the Tibetan Movement and spirit as much as HHDL’s support.