Tibet in the West and the West in Tibet
When the wild West was finally pacified on the American frontiers, Americans started taking interest in it. When something similar happens in the animal kingdom, we suddenly become protective about a certain species. Our preoccupation with Tibet, interestingly, bears a close resemblance to the above examples. Last year alone, Tibet was the subject of half-a-dozen scholarly works. Added to that were two spectacular Hollywood films which created more awareness about Tibet in the West than all the recent books on this topic put together. Does this mean Tibet is finally sliding into extinction and hence this nostalgia? And are these books and films testimonies to a perceived threat?By Amalendu Misra
Tibet has always been an object for fervid imagination: the Shangri-La for the authentic explorers. Its physical inaccessibility and cultural isolation when the rest of the world was busy opening up to new ideas satisfied both Tibetans and all those who treasured exoticism. While the connoisseurs relished this exoticism, Tibetans had to pay a price to maintain it. Geography has been as much a blessing as a curse to Tibetan culture and politics. Perched on the trans-Himalayas and the Kunlun range in the north-west, Tibet occupies a natural niche as a 'no man's land'. While this guaranteed Tibetans their preferred cultural and religious isolation, it nevertheless made them victims of political isolation. Their reluctance to or lack of sagacity about interaction with the outside world or development into a viable modern state in the past appears to have robbed them of the chances of becoming a sovereign political entity.A short history
Though ruled by Dalai Lamas from the seventh century onwards, the actual political status of Tibet has always been subject to the political process beyond its frontiers. In its chequered history it has witnessed complete independence, the status of a vassal, and the loss of sovereignty. The political history of modern Tibet starts from eighteenth century when it was taken under control by the Mongol, Lohabsang Khan, while paying tribute to the Ming emperors of China. Partly owing to its inaccessibility and partly owing to negligence, Tibet's political status in fact remained in limbo as Chinese and Mongol leadership rose and fell in the distant outlying territories. Though still regarded as a part of China, Tibet was enjoying an ambiguous sovereign status when the Qing Dynasty came to an end in 1912. According to a leading scholar, the confusion following the fall of the dynasty allowed Tibetans to expel whatever Chinese officials and troops were stationed in Tibet at the time. For the next four decades (until the Communist take-over of China in 1949), Tibet functioned as a de facto independent nation with firm control on its internal and external administration with no interference from any external actor whatsoever. During this phase it vigorously pursued the policy of isolationism.
Realpolitik in the heydays of colonialism also made an unmistakable contribution towards its unapproachability. A case in point is British India's ambiguous stance on Tibet's political status. Precisely because Tibet served as a buffer between expansionist Tsarist Russia in Central Asia and the British Empire in South Asia, both purposefully allowed it its ill-defined sovereignty. The 'Great Game' between Russia and Britain required that neither claimed this buffer territory and both zealously guarded it from external influences. However, the British and Russian abstinence created an inviting vacuum and the closest territory to Tibet, China, which already had an ancient claim over it, made slow and calculated moves to usurp its sovereignty. But the British would neither allow a complete Chinese hold over Tibet, nor recognize complete Tibetan autonomy, which would perhaps have resolved the matter forever. In the Simla Conference of 1914, the British declared Tibet a 'self-governing dominion under Chinese suzerainty', an agreement from which the Chinese afterwards withdrew.
Contemporary ambiguity
More recently, the political history of Tibet has remained a near-perfect repetition of the past, though the players involved in it are different. India and Britain, the two actors once so closely associated with Tibet, have now turned a blind eye to the developments there. In 1950, when Lhasa appealed to the UN for help to halt the marauding Chinese troop advancement on to its eastern frontiers, both London and New Delhi insisted that the matter not to be considered. Then came the Cold War, which effectively sealed Tibet off from the rest of the world. Since 1959, though India has provided a home to the largest number of Tibetans outside Tibet and Dalai Lama's government-in-exile operates from within its territory, New Delhi has been reluctant to discuss Tibet's claims for fears of a Chinese political backlash.
Another important actor, the United States, has maintained the same ambiguity towards Tibetan autonomy. Interestingly, this policy decision predates the Sino-American impasse of the Cold War years. In 1943, when the Roosevelt administration approached the Dalai Lama to explore the possibility of building airfields in Tibet, it regarded the latter not as the sovereign ruler but as the leader of an ethno-religious community. In the 1950s, the CIA half-enthusiastically assisted the Tibetan nationalists against the Communists but soon gave up the cause. Thirty long years would pass before Tibet would again be mentioned in Washington.
From relative obscurity, Tibet was brought back to the board as a foreign policy agenda in the 1990s. In his first term in office, President Clinton declared protecting Tibet's distinctive religious and cultural heritage to be a precondition to China's most favoured nation (MFN) status. But shortly after, there was a radical shift in Clinton's stance. In 1994, he discounted the use of economic sanctions for the furtherance of political change in China. What is even more startling, the same year the State Department report on Tibet clearly stated that Washington recognized Beijing's sovereignty over Tibet. Though the public opinion in America is strongly pro-Tibetan, the official response is only lukewarm.
The United States has always regarded China as a major power and respected its sensitivity. If in the Cold War years Washington was forced to stay out of Chinese affairs, the Sino-American détente and the end of Cold War has required that the former respect China's internal affairs. So, in relative terms, China as a whole matters more to Washington than Tibet. Now where do Tibetans turn to for a patient, neutral, and sympathetic audience?
Tibet in films and books
The two films on Tibet: Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet acquaint us with a misty and haunting landscape which no longer exists. Tibet's mediaeval, old-world splendour was lost forever following the Chinese takeover of Lhasa in 1959. The Cultural Revolution of Mao, whose dictum was, 'A good comrade is one who is more eager to go where the difficulties are greatest' sent the most obdurate fanatics to this remote land to make sure that Tibet's architectural, cultural, ethnic, and political heritage was diluted once and for all. While the revolutionary Red Guards busied themselves demolishing centuries-old monasteries and civic buildings to make way for soulless concrete edifices and military barracks, the Han moved in to occupy Tibet's wind-swept valleys. On the cultural front, the compulsory education in Chinese in occupied Tibet has gradually distanced Tibetan youth from their people's earlier insular identity.
Beijing has also driven a wedge in spiritual matters. The Communist government propped up the Panchen Lama (the second most revered spiritual leader after the Dalai Lama), for years, until his death, to legitimize and give the blessing to their occupation of Tibetan territory. Last year Beijing announced that a six-year old boy had been chosen as the reincarnated Panchen Lama much to the anguish of the Tibetan government-in-exile, which has selected another young boy from the exile community for the said position. Clearly, the Tibet question is becoming ever more complex.
In the West, we have occupied ourselves mostly with a monochromatic image of Tibet. Our fixation with the exotic that Tibet represented or represents has caused to digress from some crucial inquiries. These are: (a) What actually was the political situation in Tibet beyond Lhasa prior to the Chinese occupation? (b) Do all Tibetans (including the ones in exile) view modernization with distrust? If so, would they prefer to put the clock back if and when the Chinese depart from their territory? (c) Is there a consensus among Tibetans about returning to the feudal theocratic order that pre-Chinese occupied Tibet represented? Our response to Tibet is usually a product of our encounter with the exile community and the occasional adventurer escaping Chinese authority to the West. Also, when we talk of Tibet we talk about Lhasa. What do the Tibetans living in Lhasa and in the rest of the territory think about the inquiries stated above?
A problem rarely pondered is that there exists a Tibet, or there existed a Tibet, that was effectively cut off from the mainstream Tibetan culture. Old Tibet represented two classes: the minority, a cultured, aristocratic, feudal, and religio-political elite living in Lhasa and other temple-cities, and the majority, an agricultural and pastoral community which lived in its harsh and remote valleys and mountains where exoticism was confined mainly to physical remoteness. And has anybody ever cared for this majority community's advancement without subscribing to Chinese-sponsored leftist ideologies?
In The Struggle for Modern Tibet, the memoir of Tashi Tsering, a commoner who escaped poverty and isolation through sheer good fortune, there are some answers to these questions. A victim of both Chinese and Tibetan distrust, Tsering introduces the West to the other side of Tibetan society. The glimpses of old Tibetan culture we get in his memoir contains all that is vile in any feudal society. Its exoticism is punctured by sodomy, bureaucratic rivalry and corruption, wealth accumulation and not infrequent violence. The last feature well documented by Heinrich Harrer in his Seven Years in Tibet (1953). In Tsering's memoir, we also encounter the impossibility of upward mobility for a commoner in the hierarchical order. The system ensured that its members were confined to the existing order. Hence the lowest in the order, the corpse disposer to the highest, the nobility, operated within the set confines for generations.
One good thing about Chinese intervention was the dispensing of social justice. A fact confirmed in two recent works. While Tsering marvels at Chinese dedication to the common good in the form of opening of schools and hospitals for the Tibetan community, Dawa Norbu, a Tibet scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, actually mentions the Chinese attempt to redistribute the land following their occupation. Also, Chinese methods of modernizing Tibet overnight, though crude and perilous for the Tibetans, have nevertheless had some positive aspects which very few scholars admit or would even entertain. In more recent times, Beijing has been active in implementing a rapid economic development strategy in Tibet, which they feel would integrate it into the rest of China and create a new breed of Tibetans who would be influenced more by market economics than monastic ideals.
The discontent and the panacea
The basis of Tibet's complete autonomy is largely the result of a short-lived independence which Tibetans enjoyed between 1912-51. Though the West is critical of Chinese control of Tibet, it is not prepared to go along with Tibetans demands for independent self rule. Nor does the West distance itself fully from Tibetan affairs, which would be possible if it were to treat Tibet as an internal Chinese matter, which would justify its abstinence. On second thoughts, the West cannot disassociate itself fully from Tibet, if it is guided by an imaginary vision (real or unreal) that Tibet is indeed like an endangered specis.
A possible compromise on this deadlock, though it seems remote, is not impossible. The West's involvement in this is absolutely essential. First, it has to make the Tibetans understand the futility of their demands for complete independence. Second, it should approach Beijing and educate the Chinese about the costs of a prolonged violent ethnic conflict in Tibet. Tibetans in the occupied territory have shown little regard for Dalai Lama's pleas for on non-violence in recent times. The regular ethnic clashes between Tibetans and Han, expressed in sporadic bomb blasts in Lhasa and frequent riots, validates the fears that a large-scale conflict is imminent in future. In such an eventuality, the West would definitely take sides with Tibetans on ethical and moral grounds. This would not be good either for the Chinese or for the Tibetans. Even worse, the outcome would never be conclusive. To avoid this the belligerent parties must engage in dialogue.
Beijing treats Tibet as an autonomous region and though limited has lately been protective about some of its cultural and religious heritage. Asking Beijing to follow a transparent policy on Tibet and allow it a Hong Kong-like status (one state, two governments), would not appear excessive. But someone has to take this message to the Tibetans and to Beijing. Otherwise the exoticism of Tibet will linger on only in Hollywood films.
References
Annaud, Jean Jacques, (Directed) Seven Years in Tibet (A film on Heinrich Harrer's memoirs )
Goldstein, Melvyn, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet and The Dalai Lama, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997
Goldstein, Melvyn, William Sibenschuh and Tashi Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering, M. E. Sharpe, New York, 1997
Kuleshov, Nikolai S., Russia's Tibet File: The Unknown Pages in the History of Tibet's Independence, LWTA, Dharamsala, 1996
McKay, Alex, Tibet and the British Raj: The Frontier Cadre 1904-1907, Curzon Press, London, 1997
Misra, Amalendu, 'China's Policy on Tibet Comes Under Fire', The Pioneer, New Delhi, July, 3. 1993
Misra, Amalendu, 'The Tussle for Tibet', The Pioneer, New Delhi, August 16, 1993
Norbu, Dawa, Tibet: The Road Ahead, Harper Collins, New Delhi, 1997
Scorsese, Martin, (Directed), Kundun (A film)
:Dr Amalendu Misra ((A.Misra@politics-as.hull.ac.uk)is attached to the Department of Politics and Asian Studies, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, Great Britain. Fax.: + 44 1482-466208