Tibet is, in the West, a story of a small, occupied country. It's a story we understand perfectly -- a weak nation taken over and occupied by a more powerful one. This is, in a way, the American theme, the theme of 1776, when we threw off our own band of occupiers. The narrative has been repeated so many times in so many guises -- from our own misguided take-overs of places like Cuba, to our fight to free France and Poland in World War II -- that any American can understand Tibet in a phrase.
When I went to Lhasa in 2009 to research my book on the Dalai Lama's escape to freedom, I expected to be meet patriots almost exclusively. But I was wrong. The story of modern Tibet is in many ways the story not of nationalism but of Buddhism.
Tibet was for centuries the spiritual locus of the faith. It was a country with a self-professed sacred mission, to keep the flame of the dharma protected against all threats, foreign and domestic. That mission permeated the countryside and the streets of the capitol, Lhasa. It animated Tibetans' lives in a way that is almost incomprehensible to us today.
Then in 1950, Mao invaded across the Ghost River. The Chinese had a long and special relationship with Tibet going back centuries, and they saw Tibet as a breakaway province that had been cut off from the motherland by foreign intriguers. The Tibetans, of course, saw things differently.
At first Mao's occupation was mostly peaceful. The Chinese even did some good, dismantling the more abusive features of a semi-feudal system that kept some poor Tibetans in a condition close to bondage. They also spent money like mad -- the symbol of the early years of the Chinese presence was not the hammer and sickle, not Communism, but the silver coin. The combination worked for a few years.
Crucially, the nominal leader of Tibet, the naive and isolated Dalai Lama, then only 15, believed Mao's promises that he would keep the native features of Tibetan culture while grafting them onto an enlightened socialism. But soon Mao began to show his true hand. Public humiliations began, followed by land seizures and horrible atrocities -- a wave of terror spread over Tibet from the east.
In Tibet this campaign had a special feature. It wasn't only the rich landowners who were targeted viciously, it was the monks and the abbots of the great Tibetan monasteries.
In the March of 1959 -- in spring, the season that has brought so many revolutions -- the Tibetans rose up, believing the Chinese were about to kidnap or kill the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama fled on foot and on horseback across the Himalayas towards India and freedom, in a 17-day-escape that made headlines everywhere and turned him into a global personality. Behind him, his people died by the thousands in a bloody, lopsided battle.
What struck me in interviewing survivors of the uprising was its religious undercurrent: If His Holiness had been a secular leader only, most likely Tibetans wouldn't have raised a finger to protect him. Many of them distrusted the aristocrats and bureaucrats who ran the government -- they were seen (correctly) as corrupt allies of the Chinese. It was what the Dalai Lama meant to them as people of faith that caused ordinary Tibetans to risk their lives.
Teenagers who had never been particularly patriotic ran to the Norbulingka, His Holiness's summer palace, to act as human barriers. Older men opened their shirts as they stood in front of the palace gates, daring the Chinese soldiers to gun them down. Monks in the colleges grabbed rifles, dooming themselves to a reincarnation as a lesser being for violating the Buddhist maxim against violence.
None of these people had taken up arms in 1950 when the Chinese invaded their borders. Nationalism didn't rouse a majority of them to fight. The notion of Tibet was too diffuse. Many Tibetans in 1950 didn't even speak the same language; each region had its own dialect that made it impossible to communicate with someone from another province. The only thing that united the far-flung populations was their love of tsampa, the roasted barley that is a staple across the country. And the figure of the Dalai Lama.
I spoke to monks who now live in tiny rooms in the hills of Dharamsala, India, and many told me the same thing: In fighting the Chinese in Lhasa, they believed they were protecting His Holiness as he fled toward freedom. They believed if he was captured, the dharma would be irreparably harmed. Death was a small price to pay if they stop that from happening.
And in talking about the fighting and the horrors they'd seen in the uprising and the often lethal trail to India (80,000 Tibetans escaped in the days and weeks after the rebellion), these men and women rarely mentioned themselves. They didn't dwell on what 1959 had cost them personally. Some seemed puzzled when I asked that typical American question: When you saw an abbott shot down, or your sister killed, what were you feeling? They were confused, and asked me to repeat myself.
These Tibetans had so given themselves over to their beliefs that they quite literally couldn't comprehend what I was saying. I found that quite moving. How many of us could contemplate disaster with such selflessness?
Tibet is a small nation that was occupied by a rising power. Historically, that's a common tragedy. But the Tibetans' grace in enduring it is peculiar to themselves.
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That is a pretty timid description of the conditions in Tibet under the feudal system. That system was as oppressive and brutal as any - including the Chinese takeover and even though pictures and reports of those days exist, they are never shown by Western media (one exception in - of all places - was a one time German television report a few years ago). Gauging of eyes, putting people in leg irons, virtual slavery - that was the daily expreience of ordinary Tibetans - in those days.
That does not excuse the destruction of much of Tibetan culture, especially by the Red Guards - but then, this went on all over China and was not unique to Tibet.
While today the Dalai Lama rightfully is much revered, he came from a most oppressive feudal system.
again, like you said, it doesn't justify the killing of over 1.5 million people or the destruction of 6,000 monasteries, and the current horrific conditions that they live under today.
Being brought up as a Christian and since childhood never "got" the holy trinity (Santa never should have been a co-conspirator), converted to Judaism, Catholicism and finally Buddhism. The only one that made total sense and gave me an acceptance of human beings was Buddhism. If you don't love/understand yourself, you are not going to love/understand others.
I don't think any other belief allows for people to be accepted and embraced as a fellow inhabitant on this planet like Buddhism does.
Chinas behavior is like pirranha (?) in a feeding frenzie, not unlike everwhere else.....we all have such a long way to go.
Anyway, I appreciate what you are trying to say, though, in that Buddhism is the only logical, not faith-based way of living in the religious word there is.
That's my 2 cents.
Metta.
Post-imperial China was an utter mess. It had lost its north-eastern provinces (Manchuria) to the Japanese; Tibet was on its own; Mongolia and Sinkiang sought independence thanks to Soviet backing; warlords ruled the south and the west; the Communists and the Nationalists fought back and forth over what's left of the country in the east.
The semi-unified China that emerged in 1949 under Communist rule was considerably smaller than the one claimed by the Imperial Court before 1910 (or for that matter by Chiang's KMT government), and faced constant military threat from without for decades thereafter. The actions undertaken by the Chinese in Tibet must be viewed in that context to be understood.
It's all about surviving in a hostile environment, and showing your adversaries and your own people that the era of territorial concessions is over. Ideology was not a significant factor. Whoever was victorious in the Chinese Civil War would've done the exact same thing.
Because it was based on military force ("protection"), just like the dubious claims of Britain on Hong Kong.
"Are they more dubious than any other country's border claims from the same period?"
Of course not, most nations in the 1800s based their borders on principles which nations today would reject. This is why Britain and France no longer occupy most of Africa.
"Or are you proposing that Marxists 'in theory' should reject the notion of preserving inherited borders altogether ?"
Yes, they should reject that notion. Marx was an internationalist and didn't believe in protecting the sovereignty of one "special" people (ie, the Han Chinese) at the expense of a different people (ie, the Tibetans), and the "working class" is a notion which transcends national boundaries. The point is that Mao's party didn't want to just build a "People's Republic", they wanted to build a "Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese Republic".
"The semi-unifi ed China that emerged in 1949 under Communist rule was considerab ly smaller .... The actions undertaken by the Chinese in Tibet must be viewed in that context to be understood ."
True, but they faced that threat in the North with the USSR and on the Korean Peninsula with the USA, not along their border with India. And the Dalai Lama showed a clear intent on being a part of China, just an autonomous part; the Chinese should have respected Tiben wishes.
CIA trained some Tibetan terrorists at Camp Hale here in the U.S. and conducted covert operations along Tibet's border. CIA also trianed Muslim terrorists e.g. Osama bin Laden.
A somewhat more apt comparison would be that of Hawaiian annexation. Hawaii became a state (i.e., fully annexed) right around the same time Tibet was being annexed into China proper. Someone might argue that Hawaii's annexation was democratic. But ask yourself this: If Han Chinese settlers had overthrown the native Tibetan government, then "voted" to make Tibet a province of China, would that have made the take-over of Tibet any more palatable to the natives, or to you?
The Chinese have their own justifications for what they did, which the author airily dismisses, but his hollier-than-thou attitude is severely misguided.
China is as likely to give up its de facto and DE JURE sovereignty in Tibet in response to pompous moralizing lectures from Western activists as the kettle is likely to be shamed into attempting to bleach itself white by a nagging pot.
If we really want to show the Chinese (and all other 'settler' nations) how to right past wrongs, let's restore native rule and 'repatriate' the descendants of all immigrants, not just in Hawaii, but on the entire continent.
"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
Any wonder that 13,000 of these 'savages' chose to side with the Redcoats in that war?
In the long run, long after the two-faced ideological machine that is capitalism/capitalism has run out of steam through lack of raw materials, an ultimate Ponzi-scheme gone awry, they will still have their beliefs to guide them through to the true end of history.
The 'West' must take care that it does not use up the little spiritual capital which it still possesses in some mistaken belief that it is somehow rational where traditional belief systems are based on irrationality. They should visit Aquinas for help on that topic. It is, anyway, a topic for elsewhere.
That's what I did mean. It seems that one cannot edit after posting on this site. I'm a new boy here.
Thank you,
A Professional Editor
The Western Holy Trinity with the endemic "Others" is the dichotomy that Buddhists don't grasp.
A remarkable faith of acceptance, live and let live with a strong personal creed of right thinking, right speech and right actions rather than the cumbersome 10 Commandments that even the Cults of Jesus Inc fail to follow. Bearing false witness and all that rot.
When you are the "other" the world becomes a remarkable place.
It's also odd to see the author seeing Tibet being compared to the US when Tibet's situation is
a lot closer to the native americans who were slaughtered by the settlers in order to form the great America today. America's general reaction towards Taiwan is telling in that Taiwan was also invaded by the KMT, who were also Han Chinese but were against Mao after WWII. Though some 40 thousand indigenous people were killed by the KMT the US has no problems whatsoever in supporting the KMT in order to contain a communist China. The truth is that if China were not a communist country the US would of happily went along with China going into Tibet as a sign of declining communism.
The Soviets paid the price in lives during the War and demanded and took the lion's share of the territory. They were the one's who won the War.
This comment in no way seeks to detract from or belittle those brave Americans who fought and gave their lives to free much of Western Europe including France. Its intention is merely to correct erroneous information and impressions. False memory syndrome ultimately does justice to no one.
Eventually Poland did win some form of freedom and self-government by its own efforts in 1989, sometime after WWII, I'm sure you will agree.