H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama holds hands with Lobsang Sangay (L) the present Prime Minister of the CTA, and ex-Prime Minister Samdhong Rinpoche.
In the collective imagination of the West, Tibet is a lost Eden, a promised land which geopolitical fantasy has transformed into the embodiment of the eternal struggle between good and evil as it strains under the Chinese yoke.
But while China’s occupation of the country since 1950 has been punctuated by acts of repression and brutality, pre-occupation Tibet was certainly no Shangri-La, wrote philosopher Slavoj Zizek in a 2008 article in monthly news magazine “Le Monde diplomatique”.[1] Indeed it is widely documented that prior to Chinese occupation, the country was a feudal basket case where corruption was rife, peasants were effectively slaves and only the highest-placed monks and most powerful warlords could ever aspire to any sort of political or economic power.
While numerous human rights organisations have been quick to condemn heavy-handed Chinese rule in Tibet, they have been slower to look at accusations of discrimination and ill-treatment within the Buddhist communities which have developed around the diaspora of exiled Tibetans in India and elsewhere.
Indeed, observers have been strangely silent concerning an increasingly acrimonious dispute among Buddhists about a devotional practice which dates back over three centuries but has only relatively recently become the focus of controversy. Those on one side claim their rights to religious freedom and other more earthly liberties are being trampled, while those on the other accuse their opponents – devotees of the Buddhist deity Dorje Shugden – of being sectarian demon worshippers.
At the origin of the controversy lie a number of declarations from the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, to the effect that devotion to Dorje Shugden encourages division among Buddhists and endangers “the cause of Tibet”. Some Shugden devotees have claimed that these declarations amount to a de facto ban on their practice which has led to many practitioners being denied access to health care, education and travel and being shunned and even threatened and attacked within their communities.
Pro-Shugden efforts to draw attention to their plight, most notably via an appeal to humanitarian group Amnesty International in the 1990s and a complaint brought before the High Court in Delhi, India more than a decade later, have been unsuccessful, however.
In 1998, Amnesty declined to undertake an in-depth investigation into abuses alleged to have occurred in Tibetan settlements in India, noting that: “None of the material AI has received contains evidence of abuses which fall within AI's mandate for action -- such as grave violations of fundamental human rights including torture, the death penalty, extra-judicial executions, arbitrary detention or imprisonment, or unfair trials.” [2]
Shugden detractors jumped on Amnesty’s refusal to investigate further, saying it vindicated their claims that reports of ostracism within the Tibetan Buddhist community had no factual basis. But what the Amnesty letter actually said is that the allegations by Shugden practitioners – namely that their freedom of worship was under attack – lay outside of Amnesty’s approved ambit.
“While recognizing that spiritual debate can be contentious, Amnesty International cannot become involved in debate on spiritual issues,” the humanitarian group said.[3]
Even so, and despite the passage of almost 20 years since this communication – during which period animosity has festered on both sides – Shugden opponents continue to refer to the Amnesty letter as conclusive proof that Shugden devotees do not face discrimination of any kind within the broader Buddhist community. The Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala officially cites the letter as a proof of no wrongdoing in a special section of its website dedicated to the issue[4], warning in the same occasion against Dorje Shugden practitioners and listing the identity of Tibetan practitioners who protested. [5]
In 2010, a complaint to the High Court in Delhi, India by the Dorje Shugden Devotees Charitable and Religious Society against the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala and the 14th Dalai Lama, respectively, was rejected with similar arguments as Amnesty International: on the grounds that it “pertains to matters of religion with which the Union of India is not concerned.” The Delhi court also said it could not address certain aspects of the complaint since they came under the jurisdiction of the courts in Himachal Pradesh, where Dharamsala is located.[6]
Referring to the above cited cases, Buddhist academic Robert Thurman, Chairman of the Tibet House, father of Kill Bill actress Uma Thurman, and called " The Dalai Lama’s man in America" by the NY Times Magazine[7], wrote in 2014 that both Amnesty and the Delhi High Court have rejected what he calls the “false claims” of Dorje Shugden supporters that they have been denied certain human rights.[8]
The pro-Shugden website Gilded Cage sees things differently: “Actually they said there was insufficient evidence at that time, which is not surprising in a climate where anyone speaking out against the Dalai Lama would be shunned and possibly suffer physical harm. Amnesty International was also unable to comment on issues which do not fall within their narrow remit of torture and imprisonment.”[9] The Shugden allegations would effectively lie outside this remit since the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala does not have a dedicated police force or lock people in prisons.
What does seem clear is that both sides of the divide are lax in documenting their allegations, giving little clarity to their arguments. For example, U.S. businessman Len Foley, who acted as a spokesman for the now disbanded International Shugden Community, said those who practiced open devotion to the deity cannot hold office in the exiled government and cannot get approval from the government to travel. "They're in fear of their lives," Foley was quoted as saying in an October 2014 article.[10] “We’re here speaking on their behalf."
Foley does not offer any explanation of why these people should be in fear of their lives, nor any evidence that this is the case, a lapse some readers were quick to pounce on. For example, the German anti-Shugden blogger “Tenpel” – also known as Tenzin Peljor, a Media Contact of the Tibetan Government in Exile for Shugden affairs[11] - says these allegations are exaggerated and misleading. “Shugden people get access to health centres, medical treatment, schools, they have their own monasteries, land, they get travel documents etc.”
Even so, Tenzin Peljor may have unwittingly offered a less publicised insight into what is happening behind the scenes when he admitted in the same breath that “there were a few cases where over-zealous Tibetans denied some of those basic rights but there is not any policy by the Tibetan Government in Exile or the Dalai Lama to do so.”
This looks like the sort of doublespeak which Machiavelli’s Prince himself might have uttered.
The “over-zealous Tibetans” denying basic rights to others may be a reference to a directive issued by the Department of Health at the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA, the Tibetan government in exile) telling its employees to give up their Dorje Shugden practices or resign from their jobs; or to one from the CTA’s Department of Religion and Culture, demanding the eradication of Dorje Shugden monks in certain monasteries; or the one barring the issue of travel documents for Dorje Shugden practitioners; or the resolution pertaining to the expulsion of Dorje Shugden practitioners from a monastic university; or that which declares Dorje Shugden practitioners to be ‘criminals in history’; or many other registration forms explicitly excluding Dorje Shugden practitioners from administrative processes and cultural events... [12]
Moreover, were the Dalai Lama to openly call for the ostracism of Dorje Shugden practitioners, it might be seen as an open violation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and could potentially alienate a number of supporters; whereas criticism of the practice, seen as an effective edict by his followers, would have practically the same effect, but without the bad publicity.
Tsem Tulku Rinpoche, the Malaysian based spiritual advisor to the Kechara Buddhist Temple and a Shugden practitioner and advocate, expressed his worries about the development of the situation for Shugden practitioners in a way aligned with Western values: "You shouldn’t show prejudice to anyone because of their colour, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, handicaps, age, beliefs or religious choice. If I choose to worship Dorje Shugden, you have no right to speak against my belief or condemn me. If you do condemn me, you leave the door wide open for anyone who is different to be condemned."
H.E. the 25th Tsem Tulku Rinpoche in Wisdom Hall, Kechara Forest Retreat, that houses the world’s largest Dorje Shugden statue.
[3] ibid
[5] ibid