Via Hidden Harmonies: a study by Goldstein, Beall, Jiao and Tsering; and another study by the Tibetan government-in-exile.
I do somewhat take issue with the title of the blog post; here is one Westerner who very much does care what the Tibetans who actually live in Tibet think. I also very much care about other things as well, such as the sovereignty and political sustainability of a multi-ethnic nation which much recalls yesteryear’s Yugoslavia before it splintered apart. Or such as whether or not the most vulnerable people of that nation have food, shelter and the legal rights to organise which belong to them as labourers. I care about many issues regarding the human welfare of China’s still-struggling interior. But the point is well-made. One has to wonder what, in a country where opinion polls are rare enough even amongst the majority population, the Tibetans actually care about, actually aspire to and actually want for themselves.
Interestingly enough, the proportion of Tibetans who do not desire Tibetan independence is roughly equivalent to the proportion of Northern Irish who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom (that is to say, a decisive majority), and the proportion of Tibetans who have respect for the Dalai Lama is a plurality, rather than a majority. A fascinating study indeed; it is striking to me how little the people who actually live in the region have a say in the political tug-of-war over their history and their culture between the TGIE and the Chinese government. Though the hunch of Mr Melektaus may be justified that if, in some alternate universe, an election were to be held tomorrow, it might well be the case that the Tibetan people would opt for a continuation of PRC rule.
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The present Dalai Lama was born hundreds of miles outside Tibet. The Tibetans themselves migrated to what is now Tibet from further east in China, but huge numbers of them never did and never have done. The Dalai Lama comes from one such family.
ReplyDeleteBefore 1959, Tibet was not an independent state ruled benignly by the Dalai Lama and given over almost entirely to the pursuit of spirituality. Tibet was certainly ruled by the Dalai Lama, by the lamas generally, and by the feudal landlord class from which the lamas were drawn. “Dalai” is a family name; only a member of the House of Dalai can become the Dalai Lama.
Well over 90 per cent of the population was made up of serfs, the background from which the present rulers of Tibet are drawn. That system was unique in China, and existed only because successive Emperors of China had granted the Tibetan ruling clique exactly the “autonomy” for which it still campaigns from “exile”. Life expectancy in Tibet was half what it is today.
There has never been an independent state of Tibet. Likewise, the presence of large numbers of Han (ethnic Chinese in the ordinary sense) and other Chinese ethnic groups in Tibet is nothing remotely new. The one-child policy does not apply in Tibet, so the Han majority there is the ethnic Tibetans’ own fault, if they even see it as a problem.
It is totally false baldly to describe the Dalai Lama as “their spiritual leader”. Relatively few would view him as such. In particular, Google “Dorje Shugden” for, to put at its mildest, some balance to the media portrayal of the present Dalai Lama, who, moreover, has never condemned either the invasion of Afghanistan or the invasion of Iraq.
That failure should come as no surprise to anyone who examines Buddhism, not only in Tibet, but also in Sri Lanka, Burma, Mongolia, Japan, Thailand and elsewhere. The relevant texts show that violence in general and war in particular are fundamental to Buddhism, admittedly a difficult thing to define, in the way that they are to Islam and at least arguably to Judaism, but simply are not, as a first principle, to Christianity.
Thanks for the comment, David!
ReplyDeleteThe Tibetan society prior to 1959 was indeed pretty grim, to put it mildly. Michael Parenti and the aforementioned Melvyn Goldstein have both done studies on the laws that applied in pre-reform Tibet, and it is quite sickening what tortures the Tibetan nobility and monastic classes would inflict upon the other 85-90% of the population when they stepped out of line.
But even after reading about the Dorje Shugden controversy from your blog, I'm still having trouble understanding it. It seems such an abstruse debate over a minor deity in a broad pantheon. I still don't understand precisely why the Dalai Lama believes the worship of this deity to be so dangerous, or why he undertook this vicious purge (for so it can only be called) of lamas within the Tibetan exile community over the issue.