Tibet’s Future

Jump to Comments

I saw a moving documentary on the plight of the people of Tibet recently. I am utterly convinced that there are few things about the Chinese occupation of Tibet that seem legal or beneficial to the people of Tibet. Socialist China’s policies on religion do not favour the Tibetian way of life. Tibet, for long, has been in a strategic location in Asia that serves as the launching pad for geographic control over all of Asia, and along with Iran, represents a very central strategic location in Asia. The Chinese have recognized for long that the timid Tibetians have been a part of their country. However, there were always enough differences in the policies followed by the Chinese and the Tibetians, that they should remain distinct administrations. Chinese governments over the past few decades have brought about an untold amount of pain to Tibetians as they have been cleansed ethnically from the region, leading to mass migrations to Dharmasala in northern India, afraid of being treated with very low regard by the Chinese. While the Chinese claim that there have been Tibetian military separatists they have dealt with, the notion of Tibetian separatists being a real threat to the massive Chinese military presence is itself befuddling, owing to the small strength in numbers of the former. In addition to economic changes in the region, the Chinese have triggered massive cultural change, and effectively stamped out the culture of the people of Tibet, relegating what was once a benevolent and peace loving civilization to a race of beggars and angry youth.

I am deeply angered and disappointed by the Chinese attitude towards Tibet, especially because of the alleged human rights violations heaped against the Chinese (which they have denied repeatedly). Accusations by Tibetian women of electric cattle prods used to torture them and sexually harass them are just the beginning. Scores of Tibetian civilians have been shot and killed by belligerent Chinese army personnel. Many women and young Tibetian girls have now been forced into prostitution, and the grand Potala palace monastery, once the seat of the high priests of the Tibetians and the God King, the Dalai Lama, has been turned into a museum by the Chinese invasion. Tibetians who lived and worked in the monastery now have to buy tickets to enter the monastery, as if they were mere visitors.

The Chinese have also irrevocably interfered in the religious structure and hierarchy of the timid Tibetians. Having introduced their own Panchen Lama, who is vital in determining the future Dalai Lama, they have coloured these traditions with their socialist and communist polity. But all this was not done by the Chinese state actors against resistance. Though the sufferings of the Tibetians have been palpable, hardly any diplomatic and military resistance has existed to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The Chinese began their “peaceful” occupation in 1949, and by 1951, Mao Zedong had declared that Tibet was an integral part of China and the presence of the Chinese soldiers in Tibet seemed like a peaceful coexistence of a newfound socialist culture based on equitable values and a Buddhist culture based on parallel, if not similar, ideals. This false-coloured compassion for the Tibetians was soon revealed to be quite plainly, treachery, on the part of the Chinese communists. On many future occasions, everyday Tibetian life was censured in most of its aspects by the Chinese government, on the pretext that these Buddhist religious ideals were against the socialist government’s policies.

What has been singularly disadvantageous to the cause of most Tibetians is the fact that their country has been generally very isolated and inward-looking, insular, and has not maintained diplomatic relations with most Western nations. It was in Germant in 1889 that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a New Age thinker and theosophist, spoke about her spiritual experiences during her travels in Tibet and the Buddhist book of Dzyan (Dhyan) that propelled Tibet into the centre of Western spiritual philosophy in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Fascination for the country grew after the World Wars, when many westerners had the chance to travel to these distant lands and experience them, although, in the race for material progress, the significant philosophical and spiritual body of work of the Tibetians is often forgotten. Had ideals of peaceful coexistence taken root in post-war societies in the 1920s and the 1950s, such bodies of work may have been looked at more favourably. The current Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1989, but this is little consolation to the many millions killed in Tibet. The award did, however, bring to the forefront of world affairs, a leader who was widely ignored, who, in the last decade has become a sort of rock-star of peace. His genial personality and the depth he exhibits in interviews and discussions I have seen of him so far, convince me that he is no ordinary person. I wonder, though, if there will be another Dalai Lama. I wonder if there will be anyone who can carry on the legacy of Tibet that was altogether ruined in the second half of the last century.

Once, a couple of millenia ago, Buddhism was India’s most widespread religion as also Central Asia’s. Centuries later, cultural and political changes resulted in massive conversions of Buddhists to Hindu and Jain faiths, while by the 6th Century, regions such as Tibet had many practitioners of the religion. Buddhism here came to be developed as a science of the inner space,  a method of overcoming the problems of hate, dichotomies of thought, self-contradictory behaviour, obsessions with material pleasure, etc., by meditating on these matters and developing methods of giving up violence for peaceful means of solving problems. While generations of Tibetians have been fed such ideas, generations of people around the world have been fighting for power, lusting for lands and wealth. These generations of people in China, India and the western world have invariably been concerned with accomplishments outside of the mind, while it is quite possible, that the biggest battlefield of the future is the mind.

As religious fundamentalism, exploitation and environmental degradation run rife, it is hard to overestimate the importance of these benevolent scientists of the mind, whose generations of peace and prosperity have been disrupted by opportunist Chinese socialist policies, in their quest for a few decades of glory. While it is true that much of Tibet’s culture has been eroded, here’s hoping that their culture still has a future – that their traditions continue to exist amidst the chaotic and complex cultures of India, which has always absorbed cultures in the past, assimilated them and helped them realize their place in the cultural and intellectual spheres that India has always been dominant in.

Tibet will perhaps never be free, until China becomes democratic, which doesn’t look to be in the near future, nor even probable in the distant future. By then, it is possible that the present generations of Tibetians have been made into average Chinese, into a people with little knowledge of their glorious history. However, here’s hoping that a small number of inspired monks survive into the 21st Century and maintain their unique way of life, which may provide us further insights into the inner world of our mind that has been their domain for many generations.

6 Comments

Filed under General

Tags: Buddhism, China, Culture, History, india, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion, Socialism, Tibet, War