I do not know if you are like me, but I find it extremely distressing to see how commonly the adjective “desperate” has been used by the media and Tibetans in exile to describe the self-immolation protests that have taken place in Tibet since 2009 — seventeen cases so far as I write this. Phrases such as “truly desperate acts” or “desperate self-immolation” have become part of the usual vocabulary and are repeated automatically, as if writers, government officials and politicians do not find it necessary to analyze for themselves the wider ambitions behind these actions.

Etymologically, the word desperation comes from the Latin desperatus, or “deprived of hopes”, and carries a sense of misery and dejection when it is applied to protest actions. Self-immolation by women and girls in Afghanistan (103 cases reported between March 2009 and March 2010) can probably be referred to as “desperate acts” as those who carry them out prefer to die rather than to live under constant domestic violence and abuse. When questioned about their motives, Afghan women who survived their suicide attempts usually replied that they felt as if they had “no way out”. One of them, when asked whether she had a message for other women, even replied: “Don’t burn yourself. If you want a way out, use a gun: it’s less painful.”

Tibetan self-immolations are entirely different. First, all available evidence indicates that they are motivated by a greater cause, not by depression, social pressure or financial burdens. As Sopa Tulku, a revered high-ranking lama who immolated himself in Golok Darlak on 8 January this year, is reported to have written: “I am not self-immolating for my personal interests or problems, but for the six million Tibetans who have no freedom and for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.” Secondly, if Tibetans are deprived of their freedom, they are not deprived of hope. Starting with Thupten Ngodup, the first Tibetan known to have set himself on fire in April 1998 in New Delhi, those instances of self-immolation about which we have any background information can be said to have been carried out by happy and healthy people, who have no reason to die apart from offering their lives to the struggle against China’s occupation of Tibet. Sopa Tulku, again, was very clear in his political testament about not being desperate: “Tibetans should not loose hope in the future, a day of happiness will surely dawn”. This sense of optimism extends even to relatives; the mother of the 22-year-old Lobsang Jamyang, who immolated himself on 14 January, declared that her family “has no regret for his death” as he had “sacrificed his life for the Tibetan cause.”

The hopes derived from such fearless protests have also had a strong impact on those who are resisting China’s oppression in occupied Tibet. Ngawang Choephel, an ethnomusicologist and filmmaker who spent six years in a Chinese jail on fabricated spying charges, noted recently: “In 1997 [sic], when I was in prison, I heard news of Thupten Ngodup’s self-immolation in India. (…) I was encouraged and energized, like all other political prisoners in Tibet because we felt that something would happen for Tibet.” He further added: “I am sure that most of the Tibetans in Tibet who heard about Thupten Ngodup’s historic sacrifice must have been inspired and moved.”

There is definitely no sense of despair that we know of in any of these acts of protest. Nor any hopelessness. As far as we can tell, these self-immolations are, like every single act of resistance in Tibet, a striking example of confident resiliency, of high hopes and of unflinching determination. These sacrifices carry the dream and the moral strength of an entire nation and cannot be, carelessly or sarcastically, reduced to some tragic but useless individual acts.

This abuse of the word “desperate”, unintentional as it may be for many, is damaging to these valiant actions and this must be pointed out. It is firstly injurious to the person’s memory: it shows a troubling lack of respect for his or her motives, determination and aspirations. By emphasizing some unsubstantiated anguish and despair, a heroic act will be remembered merely as a means of escape or, worse, as a sign of weakness and cowardice. In the collective psyche, this could have detrimental consequences. The Chinese regime understands very well the need to demean the memory of those who have committed self-immolation and was, for example, quick to accuse, albeit without success, Sopa Tulku of suicide because of a secret love affair. But it is also harmful to the promise these self-immolations can represent for a renewed struggle against China’s occupation: by branding them desperate and viewing them as hopeless protests, we risk nipping in the bud any hope of a potential revolution. And here we are touching a much more sensitive issue, at least as far as the Tibetan leadership in Dharamshala is concerned.

When committing self-immolation, these people certainly had several objectives in mind. They probably did not think of just carrying out a one-shot dramatic action, but considered their sacrifices as sparks that would set off a larger resistance movement. It is usually explained that their aim was just to draw the world’s attention to Chinese repression in Tibet, but this is not entirely true. Many Tibetans, in Tibet and in exile, have indeed become disheartened about meaningful political engagement on their behalf by foreign countries. Besides, not a single reference was made by the self-immolators to the United Nations or to any foreign government in their messages. The wider goal of these self-immolations, probably not consciously planned but definitely anticipated, was to serve as a wake-up call for Tibetans to unite and stand up against the Chinese occupation. There is little doubt about this. These acts of defiance have indeed inspired courage in those with the will to resist, and their authors must have carefully considered the obvious eventuality of such a chain reaction. The pro-independence protests that broke out in the Golok region following Sopa Tulku’s self-immolation, or in Ngaba county following that of Lobsang Jamyang, clearly demonstrate how theses actions acted as catalysts — even if the second protest seems to have been triggered by the inhumane beating of Lobsang Jamyang, still in flames, by the police forces.

It would be very surprising if Tibetans who set themselves on fire, especially nuns and monks trained in the field of causality, were not conscious of the fact that their actions can have tremendous consequences and can capture the discontent and frustration of their compatriots. They may (or may not) have heard of Mohamed Bouazizi, the man whose self-immolation sparked last year’s Tunisian revolution and inspired the wider Arab Spring, but they definitely realize the immense potential of unrest triggered by their actions. Looking at the disproportionate number of Chinese paramilitary troops, police forces and SWAT teams deployed in the restive areas in Tibet, it leaves no room for doubt that Beijing realizes the explosive nature of these protests and is taking the threats posed by them very seriously. Why, then, does Dharamshala not take advantage of the situation?

The Tibetan Government-in-Exile, obstinate and a prisoner of its own Middle Way Approach, has actually every reason to minimize the scope of these self-immolations. First, these confrontational actions go against the official policy of appeasement which, high-ranking officials are convinced, is the only key to resolving the conflict. But more importantly, demands for independence by some of the self-immolators, and references to Tibet as a “nation” (rgyal-khab) by others, clearly show the meager support for “genuine autonomy”.

It should come therefore as no surprise that the Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay refers to these acts of self-immolation in The Washington Post as “desperate acts” or declares in a recent interview that “monks are self-immolating out of helplessness”. Nor should it comes as a surprise when, reading the names of all those who set themselves on fire in Tibet, the same prime minister, in front of nearly 200,000 Tibetans who had gathered in Bodh Gaya for the Kalachakra teachings, somehow omitted the name of 20-year-old Tapey, the first person who committed self-immolation in Tibet in February 2009.

But despite Dharamshala’s reluctance to acknowledge the true ambitions of self-immolators and the foreign media’s refusal to portray the Tibetan struggle for what it is, something urgently needs to be undertaken to ensure that these actions do not happen indefinitely. Putting an end to self-immolations — and making certain they serve a real purpose — will, however, not be achieved simply by lifting the sieges of monasteries and withdrawing paramilitary forces from restive areas. Tanks and machine guns are merely a visible symptom of China’s ruthless domination. No matter how much relief Chinese “restraint” (the word used by the US Government’s Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues) would provide to local residents, it would represent no more than a short-term fix. One day or another, protests will break out again, most probably on a more radical scale and involving greater casualties.

Renewed resistance, on the other hand, organized and more confrontational, would most probably drive dedicated people inside Tibet to undertake actions that do not forcibly involve setting oneself on fire. Since 2008, Tibetans in Tibet have clearly demonstrated their determination and courage. The resistance movement against China’s occupation has been continuously growing in that four-year span and has reached a stage unknown since the 1950s. Intellectuals and artists who had previously avoided taking a stand are now firmly on board, calls for independence and the use of the Tibetan national flag have become more frequent than ever, and acts of non-cooperation, embodied in the very inspiring Lhakar movement, are increasingly carried out throughout Tibet. All over the country a new sense of national identity is growing, new forms of resistance are being invented; all over the country discontent is boiling. Such a conjuncture occurs only rarely.

In such circumstances, it is not hard to imagine that an official appeal by Dharamshala to unite and engage in major non-violent actions would have a tremendous effect in Tibet. Calling for a country-wide non-cooperation movement, for example, would undoubtedly be hailed and, as much as conditions allow, embraced by the majority of Tibetans living under Chinese domination. Such a step would also, it is worth noting, confer solid legitimacy on the new leadership in exile whose election was enthusiastically followed in Tibet and in whom Tibetans in Tibet have still high hopes. However, once again I have to express my doubts about the Tibetan Government-in-Exile’s willingness to lead the struggle. The Middle Way Approach is not only a claim for autonomy, it has also proven to be a call for non-action and surrender, and it has never served to provide direction to Tibetans in Tibet (apart, maybe, from advocating collaboration with the Chinese occupiers). Based on the prime minister’s statements and on his fear of ruthless sanctions from China, Dharamshala will definitely not encourage political protests in Tibet anytime soon.

But I am convinced of one thing: without taking Tibetan resistance to a new level, there is little chance that self-immolations and similar extreme actions will stop. Going back to the prior status quo is not an option and Tibetans are now approaching a point where there is no turning back. The “Tsampa Revolution”, as coined by Jigme Ugen, is on the move. To quote lyrics by the British singer Peter Gabriel, written after the death of Steven Biko in a South African jail: “You can blow out a candle, but you cannot blow out a fire; once the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher.”

These self-immolators are true freedom fighters, who use the ultimate form of non-violent action — the most painful one — to free their country from oppression. The minimum we ought to do is to view their sacrifices for what they are, not for what our myopic approach wishes them to be. These men and women are not desperate victims of China’s totalitarianism. They are not people who gave in to Chinese might because they were “deprived of hope”. They are sacrificing themselves for the benefit of their countrymen and women, and for the restoration of a nation’s pride, because they know their actions can make a difference. Because they are carrying the hope that Tibet will be free some day. They are the beacons of a renewed struggle against China’s tyranny and an inspiration for millions of Tibetans to unite and fight for their independence. May the sacrifices of these Tibetan self-immolators mark the beginning of Communist China’s downfall.

(This obituary was written by Dr Pemba’s niece. A slightly shorter version appeared in The Times (London) on Thursday 12 January 2012. All Tibetans in the Kalimpong/Darjeeling area remember Dr. Pemba la with great respect and affection for his humanitarian service to our exile community and for his kindness and unfailing sense of fun. For a traumatized and disoriented refugee community, just having a role model like Dr. Pemba la, who

Dr. Tsewang Yishey Pemba was the first Tibetan to receive British medical qualifications and the first Tibetan to obtain a fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was founder of the first hospital in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan where he served as consultant physician to the Bhutanese Royal Family.

He was born in 1932 in Gyantse, the son of Pemba Tsering, a clerk at the British Trade Agency, who shortly after his son’s birth was promoted to Yatung township in the Chumbi Valley, wedged between Sikkim and Bhutan. Here, the young Pemba wandered the forests, scrambled about the Alpine-like valley and was brought up in the all-pervading religious daily life of Tibet. He was to recall, however: “We were not sweet cherubic Tibetan creatures, we would play ‘war’, and ‘captives’ would be whipped, sometimes so unpalatably that they would bawl enough to frighten a yak.”

When his father was posted to Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, he was cared for by his mother and grandmother, the latter having a great influence on him. “Granny came from Kham in the east and was famed her illicit, potent arrack which she distilled like some benign witch from Macbeth.” After a year, he, his mother and infant sister travelled to Lhasa, riding on ponies on a journey which he later likened to “something from the times of Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales.”

En-route, they crossed the 16,600-foot Kharu-La pass and crossed the Tsangpo River in coracles. In Lhasa they resided at the British legation in the Dekyi-Linka – ‘The Park of Happiness’.

On the 6th of October 1939, he witnessed the arrival of the new Dalai Lama, then a child, into Lhasa and sometimes, from his schoolyard, he would watch His Holiness carried by in his palanquin, within colourful, long, spectacular parades. On one occasion, he was blessed by His Holiness in his summer palace, the Norbhu-Linka – ‘The Jewel Park.’

One day in 1939, he was surprised to see a group of strange looking horsemen ride into the British legation at the Dekyi Linka where his family resided, “who had blond hair, blue eyes and dirty unkempt beards”. They were the scientists of the ‘Ernst Schaefer Tibet Expedition’ from Germany. A very sacred ceremony took place and all Europeans were requested not to photograph a certain image of a deity. “The Germans had not listened and were surrounded by a crowd who smashed their cameras. They were lucky to get away.” In October that year he witnessed the great excitement of the arrival of the new child Dalai Lama into Lhasa and later was once blessed by His Holiness.

In Lhasa he trod the holy circular “Lingkor Walk” where he saw certain highly polished rocks reputed to cure joint pains and years later, as a qualified doctor, he wrote, “certainly a place for harassed orthopaedic surgeons to send patients.”

He was the first Tibetan to obtain British medical qualifications

Tibetan schools just taught basics and wealthier Tibetans realised the need for better education for the country to modernise, so Pemba was sent to school in India, aged 9. He left behind the medieval Tibet of old: “Within a few years the Chinese Communists would change everything.” He was enrolled in Victoria School, near Darjeeling, where he excelled under Oxbridge teachers.

Not fluent in English, with no idea about cutlery, eating salad for the first time – which he compared to yak dung – and under strict routine, he was at first miserable. “I felt like a heavyweight boxer suddenly thrown on to the stage to perform Swan Lake.” He returned to Yatung in the first year’s holidays and fell seriously ill, being expected not to survive what was probably meningitis.

In 1949 he decided to study medicine in London. Living there, he discovered, needed much less mother wit than life in a Tibetan village; it was less strained than fighting high-altitude nature just to survive. He noted the trickiest thing to master was riding escalators.

He, like many Tibetans had wanted modernisation which arrived when the Chinese annexed Tibet in 1950. At first, they had little adverse effect on traditions but Karl Marx, he saw, had made his influence felt even in his remote boyhood home; something he wryly noted as a student when passing the British Museum, in which Marx had spent so much time.

Return to Tibet after his graduation in 1955 was impossible because of the Chinese occupation and the deaths of his parents in 1954 in a catastrophic flood disaster in Gyantse, the town of his birth. Instead, Jigme Dorji, later the Prime Minister of Bhutan, appointed him as medical officer to the kingdom. He moved to Paro, a town with little connection to the world outside its valley, where he took charge of turning an almost empty building erected in traditional Bhutanese style with a staff of two schoolboys into a hospital. Pemba wrote: “Bhutan was medieval, standing precariously on the edge of the abyss of modernity. Yet surprisingly, years later, when studying surgery, what helped most were the things I learnt in three years there.”

In 1959 he was appointed to the Dooars and Darjeeling Medical Association Hospital. The increasingly volatile situation in Tibet, culminating in March that year with the revolt against Chinese occupation, caused the Dalai Lama to flee into exile in India. After a massacre, thousands of refugees also escaped, many to Darjeeling. With the influx of so many into the small town, conditions became difficult and Pemba volunteered to help the sick. He counted many prominent Tibetan refugees as his patients and became well known in the region.

Pemba volunteered to work at the Tibetan Refugee School and Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre. For his medical work he became a well-known figure throughout the Himalayas and amongst many high-ranking Tibetan lamas he treated the 16th Karmapa, Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche and Dudjom Rimpoche.

In 1965 he undertook further medical training in London to be a surgeon, gaining the Hallett Prize in 1966 for coming first in the primary examinations of the Royal College of Surgeons and obtained a fellowship in 1967. Returning to India, Pemba worked in Darjeeling and moved back to Bhutan in the mid 1980s as superintendent of the National Referral Hospital, remaining until 1992. Here he was an appointed United Nations Certifying doctor; sat on the committee devising the Bhutanese National Formulary and, in 1989, was a member of Bhutan’s delegation to the World Health Organisation in Geneva. During this time, Pemba served as consulting physician to the Bhutanese Royal Family. Retiring in 1992, he continued in private practice and from 2000 to 2005, made several visits to New York as a lecturer.

In 2007, Pemba finally returned to Tibet, describing his trip as, “a dream-like ethereal visit to my Tibet, capturing old memories, renewing ties and seeing a totally changed country.”

In his book Young Days in Tibet (1957), he observed the sometimes brutal justice system with its cruel punishments and debunked a lot of Western misconceptions. “The old remote, unchanging, isolated Tibet, supposedly strange and mysterious, asleep amidst the bustle of the 20th century was a false impression lavishly gilded by a legion of writers who created a paradise for armchair adventurers.” He recalled the filth of Lhasa’s streets and the frankness of the people, “speaking about bodily functions in a Rabelaisian manner – tellers of smutty jokes being held in as much awe as a Western master of after-dinner speeches.” Yet looked at coldly, he could not avoid admitting that Tibet “had the ingredients of romance and mystery in her unique system of incarnate lamas, feudal pomp and pageantry, monasteries and hermits, altitude and dirt, tough happy-go-lucky people and countryside untouched by the forces of modern life.” In 1966 he wrote Idols on the Path, an autobiographical novel, regarded as the first fictional book in English by a Tibetan, in which he painted a picture of Tibet before and after Chinese Communist occupation.

He correctly prophesied that should the Chinese ever attack Tibetan Buddhist faith they would encounter resistance and hatred. He followed this in 1966 with “Idols on the Path”, an a novel of vivid contrasts which encompasses a century of barbarous injustice that Tibet has suffered (twice invaded – in 1904 by the British and in 1950 by the Chinese), with a passionate, evocative, autobiographical slant.

Beyond the medical profession, Pemba followed the arts and writing; his final manuscript remains unpublished. In a written contribution to his peers for a reunion in 2010 at University College Hospital, London, which he could not attend, he wrote of his latter daily routine, “I try to be Aware: to Contemplate: to Understand. Minding this Supreme Triad enjoined by our venerable Tibetan sages. All other activities of this life, they preach, are mere ‘chasing of shadows’. Meanwhile I sit quietly, watching the sun set over the Himalayan peaks. T.S. Eliot’s words disturb me:
‘With the voices singing in our ears saying That this was all folly’.”

He is survived by his wife, Tsering Sangmo, four children. A fifth child predeceased him in 2009.

Tsewang Yishey Pemba, surgeon, was born on June 5, 1932. He died on November 26, 2011.

Woeser has been writing with great urgency about the issue on Facebook, on Twitter, and on her blog. In many ways she has been single-handedly fighting to have people understand the larger significance of the self-immolations. When one Chinese friend opined to her that “Tibetans who commit self-immolation are fairly lacking in sense… the authorities couldn’t care less about their cries [so] every life lost is to be deplored,” she immediately wrote “No one regrets the loss of life in self-immolation more than Tibetans,” but expressed strong resentment of the judgmental sense of superiority inherent in what she was being told. Her interlocutor was quick to add that “Woeser’s heart is gentle and merciful,” but Woeser insisted on sticking to the subject:

Whatever my heart is like, that’s not at issue… Your comments here are seemingly reasonable. What I resent is [the] feeling of some sort of superiority and infallibility… How can you know that Tibetans who commit self-immolation have no wisdom, no sense? [This is] something similar to what one gets from the authorities… I’ll thank you not to stand on some high stage and evaluate things without understanding the situation in Tibetan areas.

It is obvious to anyone following her writings that the studied refusal to name or count Tapey, whether by Lobsang Sangay or exile media organs has struck Woeser as wrong on the most basic level. This omission has surfaced in interviews with Lobsang Sangay on the Voice of Tibet and Radio Free Asia, and elsewhere, as in the most recent report on self-immolations carried on Phayul.

Most stunningly, reading the names of those inside Tibet who committed self-immolation Lobsang Sangay left Tapey unmentioned as he stood before the Dalai Lama at the Kalacakra Empowerment in Bodh Gaya, listing only those who had sacrificed themselves in 2011. This was difficult to take:

At this relatively important gathering, the Kalon Tripa again did not mention the first instance of self-immolation in 2009; the list he read did not include the first Tibetan inside Tibet to commit self-immolation: Tapey. I need to ask our Kalon Tripa: at bottom, what is this all about?

Is it that the Kalon Tripa doesn’t know? Last November, reporting on the situation inside Tibet during an official tour of Europe, he was short by one person in his figures for the number of Tibetans inside Tibet who committed self-immolation. At the time I called attention to this on my blog and on Facebook: The first incident of self-immolation inside Tibet took place on February 27, 2009; and the first Tibetan inside Tibet to commit self-immolation was the 20-year-old monk Tapey, from Kirti Monastery in Amdo Ngaba. Please! Don’t treat the sacrifice he made so neglectfully! When he committed self-immolation he was viciously shot by Communist soldiers and police. Up to now his whereabouts are unknown; whether he’s alive or dead is unknown. Please! Don’t forget Tapey!

Is the cleavage between Tibetans in exile and those inside Tibet partly to blame for the different perceptions of Tapey’s place in lists of those who have committed self-immolation ? Many exiles will certainly say there is no cleavage; their leadership may perhaps say so more adamantly. But the differences between exile society and that of communities inside Tibet have long been a subject of discussion and conversation on the part of Tibetans and non-Tibetans. New arrivals from Tibet have even voiced complaints about the way they tend to be regarded by more established exiles.

In this instance, just reading Woeser’s writings on the subject, one can’t help but sense how viscerally the cavalier exclusion of Tapey from the lists of those who have sacrificed themselves is felt by her and, no doubt, by many other Tibetans (a number of whom have made this clear on her Twitter page). For them there is no earthly reason for excluding Tapey—certainly not an insistence on a “start date” of March 2011, in order to be eligible for acknowledgement by the exile authorities. When Lobsang Sangay excluded Tapey from the list of those whose names were read before the Dalai Lama it seemed like more than negligence. Indeed, whatever the actual reason for the omission, it was felt as an insult. There are very urgent reasons for Woeser’s insistence on remembering Tapey whenever those who committed self-immolation are mentioned. It’s not simply that he was the first Tibetan inside Tibet to commit self-immolation, it’s what Woeser said about him, quoted above: “Up to now his whereabouts are unknown; whether he’s alive or dead is unknown. Please! Don’t forget Tapey!”

Woeser is not insisting on simple numerical accuracy. She is, in a sense, pleading for a life. Shot, wounded, carried away, whereabouts unknown… Woeser’s pleas for Tapey’s memory seem like nothing so much as a way of crying out “No, we do not—and will not—leave wounded comrades behind.” Is it because the sense of solidarity among Tibetans inside the PRC differs so drastically from that in exile society, where so many Tibetans now have no direct experience of Tibet, that Woeser’s sentiments seem to make no dent among exile authorities?

The idea that there is a growing understanding of the Tibetan situation among Chinese people living in the PRC has been a cliché for the last decade among certain Tibetan exiles, rooted in part in the reality of the appeal that Tibetan Buddhism has had for a noticeable segment of the Chinese population. But it is difficult to view the state of affairs as optimistically as people in Dharamsala do. For one thing, the number of Chinese who are interested in Tibetan Buddhism is still very, very small within the context of the overall Chinese population. In effect their views don’t make a dent in the more general attitudes about Tibet on the part of most other Chinese. The majority of the population thinks and cares very little, if anything, about Tibet. In normal circumstances the issue does not engage most Chinese. One can certainly not compare the place of the Tibet issue in China to, say, the issue of the Iraq war in U.S. society. People who do think about Tibet in China tend to view it in two general ways: they exoticize it, much in the way Westerners have done, making Tibet a land of (depoliticized) esoteric mystery and peace; or else they view Tibet as a backward land that was liberated from a barbaric feudal regime. This latter view has become visible in times of unrest in Tibet, as in 2008, when more than a few Chinese evinced a resentment of Tibetans, whom they saw at that time as ungrateful for China’s gift of liberation from feudal serfdom. The overwhelming majority of Chinese, however, do not spend time reflecting on the Tibet issue.

Of course there are some Chinese who go beyond the firewall and are aware of repression in Tibet and even of the large loss of life in Tibet in the first several decades of rule by the PRC. But they are an extremely small minority.

The pinning of hopes on an awareness of the Tibet situation on the part of Chinese who are interested in Tibetan Buddhism is somewhat similar to a related phenomenon from earlier years: the view that Tibetan Buddhism was growing in the West and becoming a major cultural factor there, winning supporters and sympathizers for the Tibet issue as it grew. That idea, of course, gave way to the reality that Western tastes for Tibetan Buddhism were ultimately a minority phenomenon and that mass conversion in the West was not going to happen. And actually, many of the Westerners practicing Tibetan Buddhism eschewed political engagement as somehow wrong.

This was my comment for the RFA piece but I should also add that Woeser, whose commentaries on Tibetan matters are required reading, recently put up a new post about the massive brawl that erupted between Chinese and Tibetan students at the Railway Engineering School in Chengdu on December 14 and necessitated the dispatch of riot police to quell the fighting. That post is actually quite germane to the subject at hand. Woeser recalls clashes between students of different nationalities at the Southwest Nationalities College during her student days, but nothing approaching the scale of this clash at the Railway Engineering School. Ironically, she notes that its roots can be found in some of the steps adopted after 2008 to speed the assimilation of Tibetan students. Preferential policies put in place at the time included flexibility in adjusting academic credit for Tibetan students and a three year tuition waiver for them. The result was a simmering sense of resentment that boiled over on December 14 amidst cries from Chinese students to “Beat a Tibetan, Get Extra Credit!”

Growing sympathy for Tibetans among the general Chinese population? Ahem…

Last week I posted an article over at Tibetan Political Review about the Global Buddhist Congregation that was held in New Delhi at the end of November. Since some Rangzen Alliance readers may not have seen it I am reposting it here.

The Global Buddhist Congregation (GBC) that convened in New Delhi from November 27-30 made a bit of news when China reacted harshly to the Dalai Lama’s role in the gathering. Throughout several weeks of buildup to the event (which was designed to bring together Buddhists from all over the world and culminate in the establishment of a new international Buddhist organization) there was no secret that the Dalai Lama was to be the featured guest and that high-ranking Indian figures—Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s name was mentioned—would likely also attend. China’s protest, however, only came when the GBC was just about to start.

While attendees included Indian MP Karan Singh, the anticipated attendance of other important political figures did not materialize. Still, China lodged complaints; these were met with a refusal on the part of the Indian government to intervene or to scrub the gathering altogether. Indeed, in spite of obvious governmental approval and assistance in different ways (e.g., seeing that visas were obtained by participants who came from over 40 countries, including the PRC) the Indian side maintained that the GBC was simply a religious gathering organized by the Asoka Mission, a non-governmental Buddhist organization. Nevertheless, while the GBC went on as planned, the latest round of Sino-Indian border talks, slated for the same period, was postponed as a result of China’s anger over the gathering

It would be easy to see China’s fit of pique as just another manifestation of politically scripted irritation at any government that allows or is party to activities that involve the Dalai Lama or that give him public visibility. In this instance, however, certain elements add to the more obvious factors that provoked Chinese objections. While the Dalai Lama was actually present for the gathering only on its final day, when he attended an interfaith function at Gandhi Smriti in the morning and delivered the gathering’s valedictory address before hundreds of participants at its final session in the afternoon, his presence hovered over the meeting from the very start. Over the course of the four days on which the GBC was held, several sangharaja, along with Buddhist sangha members from a multitude of countries and a variety of Buddhist traditions, were often unstinting in extolling the Dalai Lama. The unavoidable impression was that he now stands as the most visible living symbol of Buddhism in the world today. His spiritual preeminence was cited time and again over the course of the GBC, and not only by followers of Tibetan Buddhism. Many of those who follow the numerous other Buddhist traditions represented at the meeting acknowledged the Dalai Lama’s overarching spiritual position with language that, in one instance, described him as a lineage holder for all Buddhist schools. Obviously the Dalai Lama’s declared withdrawal from Tibetan exile politics has not negated the international prominence he enjoys, a prominence which cannot be depoliticized by a simple act of will. (So too, his withdrawal from politics is tempered by the fact that he retains control of the dialogue process, such as it is, between Tibetan exiles and China, a fact highlighted a few weeks before the meeting when his primary representative in those talks, Lodi Gyari, let it be known that he does not serve the elected Tibetan leadership. While that is another story, Gyari himself was a very visible presence, flitting around at the GBC during its four days.)

The acclaim accorded the Dalai Lama by Buddhists from around the world added a certain significance to the meeting that China may find difficult to ignore and which makes its objections to the Dalai Lama’s participation in the GBC more complex than the sort of objections it visits on governments that choose to receive the Dalai Lama in an official manner. Indeed, its objections to the Dalai Lama’s presence are fundamentally different: after all, the Dalai Lama does reside in India. That aside, however, given persistent Chinese anxieties over the possibility of being surrounded by hostile powers intent on restraining “the peaceful rise of China,” it is hard to avoid the likelihood that a gathering of Buddhists from neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, etc., all acknowledging—regardless of sect or school—the Dalai Lama’s leading spiritual position among them, will be seen as a provocation or even a threat aimed at Buddhists (and not just Tibetan Buddhists) within China.

This is somewhat ironic, a triumph of form over content perhaps. For the fact is many, if not most, of the talks presented at the GBC were fairly anodyne representations of Buddhism of the sort that one could imagine being given as dharma talks to curious dilettantes with time on their hands on several continents. Lacking much complexity, there was much exposition on themes of realizing universal peace and love through Buddhist practice. In spite of this, however, and in spite of assertions that the GBC was wholly a religious gathering, the meeting may well be perceived by China as constituting an encircling move all by itself, one that presents an internal threat to the loyalties that Buddhists within China are obliged to hold to the state. (Of course, in real terms that threat doesn’t exist in Tibet, where such loyalties on the part of the sangha are feeble at best.)

What then might China do about this? Well, I make no claim to prescience (hence my hedging “may well be perceived”), but it seems naïve to think, given China’s periodic xenophobic anxieties, that the gathering is not seen in Beijing as a hostile act that needs to be countered. The idea of Buddhists in neighboring countries publicly elevating the Dalai Lama to a position of ever higher spiritual or moral authority is difficult to ignore. Even more troubling, one supposes, is the final act of the GBC, the resolution to establish an International Buddhist Confederation based in India. But what can China do? One is inclined to think the obvious step would be for the PRC to fall back on its own “World Buddhist Forum,” which has met twice in China, in 2006 and 2009. But given the wide-reaching display of respect for the Dalai Lama from so many serious sangha members from around the world assembled in New Delhi, one may rightly ask who would attend such a gathering now. One could only assume attendees from outside China would have to be a rather craven lot, given the repressive image that China has when it comes to Buddhism in Tibet. Indeed, a Chinese counter to the Delhi gathering at this point would likely, from a public relations standpoint, have all of the aesthetic grace and authority of the Confucius Peace Prize, an award concocted as a response to the Nobel Peace Prize given to Liu Xiaobo in 2010. Almost immediately after its creation the Confucius Prize came to be regarded as international joke.

But the necessity of countering the display of veneration accorded the Dalai Lama also reveals how China has, in a sense, created its own conundrum. What counterweight does China have to the Dalai Lama? Well, there is one person, someone who has essentially been groomed for the role. But using him opens up a can of worms that one can hardly imagine China would like to see opened, for this person is none other than the Chinese Panchen Lama, so-called because he was chosen under coercion and foisted upon Tibetan Buddhists in opposition to the child recognized by the Dalai Lama as the incarnation of the 10^th Panchen Lama. The problem for China is that their Panchen Lama is not accepted—to say the least—by the large majority of Tibetans who do indeed consider him China’s (not Tibet’s) Panchen Lama. The irony of an officially atheistic state discovering and certifying incarnate lamas has been noted many times but the absurdity of the situation has not lessened. And a state bureaucracy that did not pay heed to popular rejection of a Panchen Lama that it foisted on Tibet over 16 years ago is, in a word, stuck. The situation is so abnormal that the Panchen Lama is not allowed to reside in Tibet, both to keep him tethered to the government and to avoid the unpleasantness that his presence among his ostensible followers might set off.

China has tried to prepare its Panchen Lama for an international role. Indeed, he was reportedly one of the candidates for the 2011 Confucius Peace Prize that ultimately was awarded to Vladimir Putin (see the comments re. “international joke,” above). He has been given English lessons and indeed was able to address the second meeting of China’s World Buddhist Forum in that language in 2009. The most obvious indication of his being groomed for a role as an international guru of some sort is the fact that his name and image have been attached to a book that would not be out of place on the shelves of many bookstores selling tomes of “spiritual advice.” In 2008 Beijing published Teachings of the 11^th Panchen Lama: Peace and Social Harmony, which included chapters entitled “Panchen Lama on Creating a New Society,” “Panchen Lama on Social Harmony,” “Panchen Lama on Peace,” “Panchen Lama on Finding Shambala,” “Panchen Lama on Unlimited Love,” etc., etc.

While those familiar with China’s insistence on “social harmony” trumping concerns about things such as human rights should not be surprised to see quotations from the Chinese Panchen Lama on that topic, or on “creating a new society,” his quotations on other topics, such as “peace,” “Shambala,” or “unlimited love,” could have easily fit in at the New Delhi meeting. As already noted, the GBC had more than a few banal, sermon-like talks on such predictable topics. Clearly Teachings of the 11^th Panchen Lama: Peace and Social Harmony was meant to be one element in an attempt to transform the Chinese Panchen Lama into an international spiritual figure. But now that the very moment has arrived in which China needs just such a figure, his problematic nature is obvious: the Chinese Panchen Lama, someone who was supposed to be the answer to a problem, is a problem in and of himself, residing in Beijing in a state of alienation from the general Tibetan populace. Put bluntly, he is a walking announcement of the lack of religious freedom in Tibet, a living and breathing advertisement for religious repression in the PRC.

Clearly, if the Chinese Panchen Lama is unusable in the situation created by the convening of the GBC and the establishment of an International Buddhist Confederation it is more than a minor embarrassment for China. He has been groomed for just such a task. But simply bringing up his name will bring to mind the Panchen Lama chosen by the Dalai Lama and held incommunicado since 1995. Indeed, from the time China forced its choice for Panchen Lama on an unaccepting Tibetan population it has been boxing itself in, tying the perception of its policy on religion to a rejected figure. It is a problem that China has wholly created for itself.

Dai Qingli, an official of the Chinese Embassy in Britain brilliantly demonstrated that quality in a letter to the Guardian (25 Nov. 2011) titled “Tibetan Deaths violate Buddhism”. Dai wrote, “The self-immolations of Tibetan monks and nuns were truly tragic. They were also a fatal violation of the spirit of peace and tolerance that defines Tibetan Buddhism. And, as such, these acts have met anger and disapproval from the local people and the religious community.”

Bhuchung K.Tsering of the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) expressed himself in a similar manner in his article “This Chinese is Right About Tibetan Self-Immolation!”

“Yesterday, i.e. December 1, 2011, I was reading an article in People’s Daily by “renowned Tibetologist” Li Decheng concerning self-immolations by Tibetans in Tibet in which he says these actions are against “core Buddhist code of ethics.” He further says, “In Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, scripture has never encouraged killings and suicide, nor has Buddhist dogma incited others to carry out killings or commit suicide.” I have no hesitation in saying I agree with him here.’

Bhuchung went on to request the Chinese that they should pay attention to the self-immolations “as it is an important social issue for China and its future.” Bhuchung also attempts to explain why Tibetans were – and I use his exact word – “indulging” in this behavior. Bhuchung and his colleagues at ICT might not approve of the self-immolations but they should realize that the monks and nuns were hardly “indulging” themselves in any way.

The Dalai Lama chose his words more carefully. In his statement to UPI on Nov 21 he said he didn’t encourage self-immolation by monks and nuns protesting China’s control over Tibet and questioned the usefulness of the acts as a protest tool. He did acknowledge that the monks and nuns had courage, but he gave the impression that it wasn’t a Buddhist thing to do.

So is self-immolation against Buddhist teachings or not?

In 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk set fire to himself at a busy Saigon intersection. The famous Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by Malcolm Browne of the burning monk sitting serenely in the lotus position surrounded by flames, became a worldwide sensation and contributed to fall of the Diem regime. At the time Beijing openly praised the action of the Vietnamese monk and distributed millions of copies of the photo (pirated of course) throughout Asia and Africa as evidence of “US imperialism”. Other Vietnamese monks and a nun subsequently set fire to themselves to protest the war.

Self-immolation appear to be an unusual though accepted Buddhist traditio in China and parts of South East Asia. There are numerous cases in Chinese history, especially during the Qing period, of such acts being performed as political protest (see Burning for the Buddha: Self-immolation in Chinese Buddhism by James A. Benn). In 1948 in the city of Harbin a monk seated himself in the lotus position on a pile of sawdust and soybean oil and set fire to himself in protest against the treatment of Buddhism by Mao Zedong’s Communists.

The main inspiration for the practice appears to be based on a teaching in The Lotus Sutra (Tib. dam chos pad-ma dkar po’i mdo). One chapter of this sutra recounts the life story of the Bodhisattva Medicine King who demonstrated his insight into the selfless nature of his body by ritualistically setting his body aflame, spreading the “Light of the Dharma” for twelve hundred years.

But I think that the spiritual motivation for the sacrifice of our young monks and nuns in Tibet might have come from another direction. Forty-five kilometers south-east of Katmandu is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites for Tibetans visiting Nepal. The hill of Namo Buddha (or Tagmo Lujin in Tibetan) is – the Golden Light Sutra (phags pa gser ‘od dam pa’i mdo) tells us – the very place where the Buddha (in a previous incarnation) gave up his body to feed a starving tigress and her four cubs. This is a popular Jataka story with all Tibetans and is often brought up in conversations whenever an example of self-sacrifice or selfless conduct is required. There are other such Jataka or Avadana stories of the Buddha giving up his life for others, a well known one from the mahakapi jataka being the tale of the Great Monkey King who died saving the lives of his “80,000” monkey subjects.

The courageous action of the thirteen self-immolators in Tibet must be seen in this specific doctrinal light. I emphatically disagree with the opinion some people are circulating that the monks and nuns burnt themselves in despair because they were not allowed to practice their religion. If that were the main concern of these monks and nuns then the logical course of action for them to take would have been to escape to India, as many others had done so before. Kirti monastery, where most of the young self-immolators had studied, even has a large branch at Dharamshala where they would have been welcome.

Hence we must see the self-immolations in Tibet as action taken for the welfare of others, for the freedom of the Tibetan people and the independence of Tibet (as some of the self-immolators expressly stated). Even the call by most of the self-immolators for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet must be interpreted as a call for the restoration of an independent Tibet, as the Dalai Lama is regarded as the legitimate sovereign ruler of independent Tibet, and should not merely be interpreted as a plea for the return of a personal spiritual leader, as those attempting to de-politicize the events have been claiming.

The deed of the thirteen self-immolators is not only Buddhist in an unquestionably absolute sense, but furthermore comes from within a heroic and action-oriented tradition of Buddhism. Some scholars have viewed this approach as truer to the original teachings of the historical Buddha, in contrast to the quietist, passive, even escapist perception of Buddhism which has gained more widespread acceptance, especially in the West.

The historical Buddha was a member of the warrior class, a Kshatriya. Though he accepted all classes and castes into the sangha he was given to addressing his followers thus “We are Kshatriya, all”. He did this, of course, not to highlight his own caste, but probably to lay emphasis on the qualities of commitment and courage that he required of his disciples. The sutra’s tell us that Siddhartha was a tall man of powerful build, trained in the martial arts, in which he excelled, even defeating other Shakya warriors to prove his worth for the hand of the princess Yashodhara. The warrior’s fearlessness and commitment were evident in his first attempt to achieve enlightenment, and which is powerfully represented in the Gandhara image of the Buddha, after six years of extreme self-mortification had seen his body reduced to skin and bone.

Even after he realized that his first attempt was a failure his warrior’s commitment and courage were never in doubt. The Buddha’s next method, the “Middle Way” was not an excuse for inaction, weakness or impotence. When Siddhartha finally sat under the Bodhi tree he fixed his resolve on the goal of enlightenment with an unshakable resolution. A beautiful and dramatic verse is attributed to him by some early compilers of the sutras. “Let blood dry up, let flesh wither away, but I shall not stir from this spot till Enlightenment be attained.”

A few of the titles by which Siddhartha was known after his enlightenment appear to acknowledge this heroic quality, as in “jina” or “conqueror” and “mahavira” or “great hero (also the title of the founder of Jainism).

The Bodhisattva as hero is delineated clearly in a passage from the Prajnaparimita Sutra where he is said to fearlessly lead all sentient beings out of the deep forests of samsara, fighting of attacks from “inimical forces”. At the end of this passage he asks his disciple Subhuti “If, then, more and more hostile and inimical forces should rise up against him in that forest, would this heroic man decide to abandon his family and take himself alone out of that terrible and frightening forest?” and Subhuti of course replies, “No, O Lord”.

The historical Buddha himself, when stalked by the bandit and murderer Angulimala, chose not to flee or leave the problems to others. Instead he confronted and subdued the killer through what has traditionally been regarded as magical power. No matter how swiftly Angulimala ran after the casually strolling Buddha, he could not catch up with him. About a hundred years earlier the Greek philosopher Zeno posited such a situation in his “time paradox” of Achilles never being able to catch up with a tortoise. These day physicists might explain it as a “Quantum Zeno effect”, the name which E.C.G. Sudarshan and B. Misra coined to describe “the suppression of unitary time evolution caused by quantum decoherence…”

Then there is the story of how in a previous life the Buddha killed a mass-murderer on a ship to save the lives of the other travelers on board. The context in which Buddha told this avadana story to his disciples is interesting and relevant to the overall point I am trying to make. One day a disciple noticed that the Buddha had received a wound on his feet. The disciple asked how this could happen to some one who had attained nirvana. The Buddha then told his disciples the above story. The lesson being that no one can wholly escape the consequence of a violent deed even if its performance is necessary and righteous. But there is another logical corollary to the story, that if the Buddha had chosen, for reasons of cowardice or ethical fastidiousness, not to kill the murderer and not to save those many lives, he would have committed a more far more immoral and evil act.

It is this essentially non-violent yet nuanced and dynamic interpretation of Buddhist action that is completely absent from the passive, comfortable, sanitized, hands-off, and inherently self-serving interpretation of the Dharma dominating much of the contemporary Buddhist world.

A noticeable aspect of this “New Age” Buddhism is its preoccupation with money, celebrity and a kind of low-maintenance intellectualism disseminated in a plethora of unreadable self-help books with catchy Zen style titles (Watching the Watcher, Silent Mind Holy Mind, Living Through Dying and so on). Something like this is, I suppose, prevalent in institutionalized religions worldwide, and is probably a waste of time to work yourself up about it. But I think Tibetans would wholeheartedly join me in condemning Buddhist teachers charging extortionate ticket prices for their sermons, and Dharma centers discouraging, sometimes forbidding, their members from participating in political action, even for the cause of Tibetan freedom and human rights.

And how can you argue with them when even the former prime-minister of the exile government, a Tibetan lama and learned geshe has not only not participated in any Free Tibet demonstrations but has even ordered Tibetans not to demonstrate against Chinese leaders visiting the West. Yet Samdhong Rinpoche was seen on European TV, in 2006, as one of the leaders of a major demonstration against the Swiss company SYNGENTA in India, a leading agri-business company that Indian environmentalists opposed. So perhaps the spiritual lesson here is that political activism is permissible so long as it is fashionable, profitable and does not upset Beijing. The Dalai Lama has publicly joined the opposition to the proposed oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas. I am enough of an environmentalist not to take issue with the Dalai Lama’s initiative, but I wish His Holiness had been as opposed to the Beijing Olympics or China’s “population-transfer” railway line to Tibet.

Yet the most cynical thing I have seen recently, especially in relation to the self-immolations, is a fund raising letter sent out by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), asking people to donate money to it because “…13 Tibetans have set fire to themselves,” This from the organization that opposes the Tibetan independence struggle, and whose senior official wrote in enthusiastic support of China’s condemnation of self-immolation as being against Buddhism.

These days whenever the Dalai Lama is received by any world leader or celebrity with a modicum of civility, Tibetans understandably become enormously pleased and gratified. In our somewhat desperate situation all publicity is regarded as good publicity. We close our eyes to the fact that the leader in question might not actually support our cause or that he or she might be – to use the jargon of the intelligence trade – “an agent of influence” pressuring the Dalai Lama to make one more concession for the “spiritual welfare” of the Chinese Empire and greater profits for international trade.

One world leader who has always received the Dalai Lama with true friendship and who was also resolutely opposed to the Communist Chinese occupation of Tibet, died two days ago. Vaclav Václav’s opposition to Beijing’s tyranny was not confined to the issue of Tibet. When Liu Xiaobo was arrested, Havel (though gravely ill) and other Czech dissidents, attempted to deliver a letter to the Chinese Embassy in January 2010 (before Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize) but found the doors closed and no one to receive it. The BBC reported that “It was an absurd scene that could have come out of one of the plays he wrote in the 1960s, poking fun at the Soviet-backed authorities who ruled his country at the time.”

For Havel was first and foremost a writer and thinker, and not a career politician. In fact under the Communists he spent four and a half years in prison for opposing Czechoslovakia’s Communist government before emerging as a leader of the Velvet Revolution that swept it aside in 1989.

This post is not intended as an eulogy or a discussion of Havel’s literary work, but rather to introduce an important, even game-changing, legacy that he left us Tibetans and other freedom fighters struggling against the oppression and violence of “post-totalitarianism”. This is a term Havel used in his long essay The Power of the Powerless which is in fact a strategic discussion on how to effectively challenge repressive regimes and systems in the post-Stalinist (and Maoist) world.

I cobbled together a simple précis of Havel’s thesis in my post “Seeking the Power of the Powerless” which I wrote after Aung San Suu Kyi was released last year. I would request readers to read (or re-read) the post, and if possible follow it up with a study of Havel’s actual essay. I think it might provide a broader theoretical perspective to our understanding of what is happening inside Tibet, and perhaps help shape the strategy we must adopt to bring about the Rangzen revolution.

Academic scholarship may not generally lend itself to moving or inspirational writing, but there are exceptions. Edward Gibbon’s, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is probably the greatest work of history written in the English language (Hugh Trevor-Roper) and a literary masterpiece praised for its narrative clarity, biting irony and elegant prose. It was a book that woke people up to a whole new way of viewing antiquity, especially in relation to the development of religious institutions – the Christian church in particular. It was also the defining work of history that came out of the European Enlightenment.

Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa’s Advanced Political History of Tibet deals with events, places and personalities that have, of course, less resonance or significance to the rest of the world, especially at the moment when China is being hailed internationally as the next global superpower, and the issue of Tibet has been relegated to a kind of oblivion, more distant and inconsequential (it sometimes appears) than a chariot race at the Hippodrome in ancient Constantinople.

But within it’s own more modest niche of intellectual relevance, Shakabpa’s history should be seen as an inspirational work, one that opened the eyes of Tibetans to their historical past, the memory of which had been systematically and near-effectively erased by Communist propaganda and mind-control (xinao, literally “brainwashing”).

History in totalitarian Tibet

Under Chinese totalitarian control, Tibetans had been subjected to an overpowering indoctrination campaign to make them believe they possessed no history of their own other than a sporadic narrative of slavery[1] and barbarism from which they had been “liberated” by the PLA in 1950. In addition to this and other forms of daily political and psychological indoctrination, the entire population, for roughly over two decades (from 1959 to the early 1980s) endured (at one time or the other) starvation, forced labor, torture, executions and a succession of mass campaigns that reached a crescendo with the savagery and destruction of the Cultural Revolution. By the time Mao died the Tibetan people had been culturally, intellectually and spiritually reduced to a near catatonic state.

A trickle of rumors and disconnected stories, vague and sporadic at best, somehow made its way out of Tibet, even during the height of the Cultural Revolution. But with the slight opening up of the country in the late seventies and early eighties the exile-capital of Dharamshala finally began to get hard information on what had really happened inside Tibet. It was also around then that people in Tibet were finally allowed to communicate with relatives and friends abroad.

An official[2] in the exile government received a message from a cousin who was a senior Communist cadre in Sichuan province. This cadre had attended a special high-level meeting where Shakabpa’s “false” history of Tibet had been discussed. He heard that the “Dalai counterrevolutionary faction” (talé lokchoe shoga) in India had published a very dangerous and subversive book. He asked his relative in India to secretly send him a copy of the book through a trusted courier.

This and other similar incidents made the government-in-exile realize that people inside Tibet wanted to read Shakabpa’s history. At the time the book was printed by the Tibet Cultural Printing Press in Dharamshala. It was cheap but the quality of the printing and paper was woefully substandard. It was also inconvenient for any sort of covert distribution as the book consisted of two thick volumes. But many copies were somehow secretly smuggled into Tibet. I was told that it was later reprinted in Japan in a compact one-volume edition, exclusively for distribution within Tibet. A special thin lightweight paper was used and the font and page size considerably reduced.

In subsequent years, in discussions with other “new arrivals” from Tibet, who had read the book, I received the definite impression that Shakabpa’s history had been not just informative or intellectually enlightening, but possibly even therapeutic in a psychological sense. One person from Lhasa described how he had felt after reading Shakabpa’s history: “nye saypa nang-shing jhe song”, or “it was like being awakened from sleep”. A well-known Tibetan scholar and incarnate lama, Rakra Thupten Chodhar, in a verse of praise for Shakabpa’s history, wrote “You who have taken up and sung this unblemished song of our history/ Have awakened many beings from enduring sleep.”

In his 1973 memoir, Awakenings, the neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the story of the victims of the 1920’s sleeping-sickness (encephalitis lethargica) epidemic, which caused them to remain in a bizarre and deep catatonic states for entire lifetimes. Sacks, who worked in a long-term care facility for these patients used the new drug L Dopa which managed to wake them up, almost miraculously, from decades of “sleep.” In a sense, Shakabpa’s book became the cultural and intellectual L Dopa for Tibetans who had manage to survive Communist Chinese rule but had been intellectually traumatized by the experience.

In the years that followed, Tibetans inside Tibetan once again began to produce works on their history, literature, culture and much else. What was impressive was not only the generally high-standard of these works but also the prolificacy, the sheer quantity of books, journals and articles that came out from Tibet, despite the repressive political atmosphere and state censorship, which though not as totalitarian as before, is still a permanent (though mutating) feature of the Tibetan intellectual landscape. Perhaps it would not be incorrect to say that Shakabpa’s history was probably one of the seminal intellectual inspirations, or at least a vital factor that contributed to the unleashing of this enormous intellectual and cultural energy in Tibet.

The advanced political history

The publication of the English translation of Shakabpa’s two-volume Advanced Political History of Tibet, (which first appeared in Tibetan in 1976), has been eagerly awaited by all students of Tibetan history, especially those like myself who, regrettably, find it easier to read English than Tibetan. Of course, we have had the English language one volume, Tibet: A Political History published by Yale University Press, since1967. It was, without doubt, the most comprehensive one volume history of Tibet we had till then.

Nonetheless, since the Advanced History was published over nine years after the ‘67 Yale history, the author had sufficient time not only to revise, correct and update his initial treatise but also enlarge on it considerably. The structures of the two works are fairly similar, but the Advanced History has a great deal more detail and information. The unhurried pace of the writing of the Advanced History allows Shakabpa to expound on his various source materials, even digressing now and then to make comparisons between some of them on certain dates or facts, which contributes to the readers understanding of the breadth and diversity of Tibetan historical writing.

The first chapter on the “Origins, Culture and Traditions of Tibet”, at more than a hundred dense pages, is by itself a substantial text-book on Tibetan civilization, providing an astonishing wealth of information that even present-day specialists on some these subjects might find useful. Of the many sections (and sub sections) in this chapter alone – all compulsive reading – my favorite is the section “Lhasa the Capital”, where Shakabpa lays out detailed accounts of all the major temples, monasteries, mosques, church (the former), stupas, public buildings, courthouses, monuments, cairns, markets, roads, alleys, bridges, dams, canals, springs, and even the history of the famous giant prayer flag poles (dharchen), which were well-known landmarks in the Lhasa of yesteryear, like the famous Cornhill maypole in London destroyed by Oliver Cromwell.

As only a Tibetan would, Shakabpa describes the various prominent features of the Lhasa landscape essentially by their preternatural resemblance to each of the eight auspicious symbols of Buddhism (tashi-ta-gye), which for all Tibetan, especially the devout pilgrims, are important components of their sacred (geo-mystical) vision of that holy city. In describing “Lhasa’s residents, of high, low, or middle station, (who) were completely carefree”, he does not forget to include the ubiquitous beggars, and recounts how they would spend their mornings begging for food, after which they would sing songs in the street and get drunk by the evening, which he regards as “a marvelous thing.” I have recounted this at some length to give the reader a feel for Shakabpa’s encyclopedic knowledge of Tibet, his traditional, non-western outlook, and the touch of humor and humaneness, present throughout the book.

English translation

The full title of the English translation is One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet, by Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa and translated and annotated by Derek. F. Maher. Published by Brill Tibetan Studies Library, Leiden in 2010, the book has been ably translated by Maher who is the Associate Professor and Director of the Religious Studies Program, at East Carolina University.

There are some minor errors in the translation: “mepo dhampa” Gandhi should not have been translated as “grandfather” Gandhi. The Tibetan term is generally used to mean “founding father” or “father of the nation.” This sentence “The governor of Sikkim, Sir Charles Bell, came to Lhasa to deliver a letter on behalf of the Indian Ambassador” should be “The Political Officer of Sikkim, Sir Charles Bell, came to Lhasa to deliver a letter on behalf of the Viceroy of India.” The phrase “Annual taxes which Castle and estates had to pay…,” should have used the word “district” or “district headquarters” instead of “castle.” The Tibetan world “dzong” can mean castle, but not in this instance. “…The phrase “British government owner of India” should be “government of British India”. Also “makchi” is commander-in-chief not “minister of defense”.

Maher has problems with some of the contractions that Shakabpa uses which is sometimes difficult even for native Tibetan speakers, if they are unacquainted with the source terms. For instance Maher translates “dochi” as Do governor. This is actually the contraction for “do-may chikyap,” or “ the Governor-General of Eastern Tibet”. In the same way Maher’s “do region” should have been translated as Eastern Tibet or Kham. Shakabpa’s contraction of Chakpori is rendered by Maher as “Jakri” mountain, and Ramoche tsuglakhang as “Rache” tsuglakhang, which might be a problem for the non-Tibetan reader.

The English spelling of people and place-names are unnecessarily confusing. Maher should perhaps have stuck to the system used in the Yale history, where Tibetan names were written in the basic phonetic system that earlier scholars on Tibet as Charles Bell, Hugh Richardson and others had used. The Yale history also provides a very useful transliteration of Tibetan names (Wylie system) in the index, which nails down the Tibetan spelling. Maher could have followed this system and used the actual Tibetan script in the index, which is possible these days.

Hence in Maher’s translation the 13^th Dalai Lama’s prime minister, Shatra Paljor Dorje, is written as Shedra or Shedrawa Peljor Dorje. The famous merchant Pangdatsang is rendered variously as Pomda, Pomdabu and Bomdawu. The Dalai Lama’s nephew Drumpa is given as Bhumpa, the resistance leader Andrug Gompo Tashi is written as Amdruk Gompa Tashi, and the Quoshot Mongol ruler of Tibet, Lhasang (or Lhazang) Khan is written as Lozang Khan.

The suffix “wa” or “pa” that often occurs at the end of a name just means “of” or “from” and perhaps should not be included in the translated English text, as they could confuse. The exception being names where such suffixes have become intrinsic through usage. I have put the suffixes in parenthesis to highlight the problem: Shedra(wa) Peljor Dorje, Ngapo(pa) Ngawang Jikme, Namse’ Ling(pa),Tsarong(pa), Gapzhi(wa), Tretong(pa), and the mouthful Troggawo(wa). But this is offered as a suggestion for the reader’s comprehension, and not as a correction.

While on the name of Tretong or rather Tethong, I think it is incumbent on Western (and Chinese) academics not to supplant the specific English spelling that Tibetans themselves have used (since the beginning of the last century) for their names, especially surnames: Tethong, Tsarong, Shatra, Surkhang, Pangdatsang and so on. Melvyn Goldstein in his The Demise of the Lamaist State also transgresses with Norbhu for Norbu, Cawtang for Chogten, Canglocen for Changlochen, Tricang for Trijang, Jayan for Jamyang and Trentong for Tethong.

Maher strays from the norm in spelling certain place-names: Pakri for Phari, Zhikatse’ for Shigatse, Du..ne’ for Thuna, “Trashi” lhunpo for Tashilhunpo, and Gulok for Golok. Tibetan pronunciation of Chinese and Indian place names should not have been carried over to the translation, as “Lendru” for Lanzhou (or Lanchow), “Drungchin” for Chongqing (or Chungking) and “Drintu” for Chengdu. Kurseong, in Darjeeling district is given as “Kharshang”, though Maher correctly renders Shakabpa’s contraction “Ka-Bug” as Kalimpong. There is also some confusion with the names of British officials. Shakabpa’s Mr. Pal and Mr. War are probably A.W. Paul and J.C. White.

Maher cannot avoid the problem that even Tibetans have with the lack of spacing between printed words, which sometimes causes people to read suffixes for prefixes (and vice versa) among other things. Maher’s Elha Gyari should be E’ Lhagyari, Tögar Pön Gapzhi should be Tö Garpon Gapzhi, Gartong Tsen should be Gar Tongtsen and Lhato Tori Nyentsen should be Lha-totori-Nyentsen.

The historian’s purpose

Shakabpa, in the introduction to this book, is clear about his purpose in writing his history. He did not see it just as a “neutral” academic work but as a means of making the world understand the true independent status of Tibet. I may be challenged on this, but I am convinced that this patriotic declaration of intent gives Shakabpa’s work its intellectual clarity and strength. Whether you agree or disagree with him on this one or other statement or opinion, it is clear that Shakabpa has no hidden agenda, nor that he is laying claims to the kind of rarified objectivity that quite a few academics in Tibetan studies insist on making about their work, which I feel only serves to demonstrates the accuracy of Lun Xun’s observation that “whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk.”

Shakabpa in his introduction clearly tells us that the inspiration to write his history was a patriotic one. In January 1946 he traveled to India and Nepal with his family on a pilgrimage, at the cusp of the freedom struggle, the year before India became independent. Shakabpa was in Bombay at the time when the Congress organized a mammoth political rally at the Gateway of India where Nehru, Patel, Sarojini Naidu and other nationalist leaders addressed the enormous gathering. Shakabpa was profoundly moved by the experience, and by the passion and dedication of the Indian people. It was then that the idea of writing a political history of Tibet first began to take shape.

He had earlier, in 1931 as a junior official in Lhasa, been summoned by his uncle the senior minister Trimon, who presented him with a pristine khadag and a large collection of documents relating to the 1914 Simla conference, which Trimon had attended as assistant to the Prime Minister Shatra. After a long conversation Trimon told his young nephew that he should study these important documents and consider writing a political history of Tibet. Shakabpa mentions that he enjoyed reading biographies, histories and the Gesar epic, but he did not take his uncle’s request seriously at the time. His later Indian experience finally focused his mind on the idea of writing a political history of Tibet.

This is perhaps a convenient point to provide the reader a brief account of Shakabpa’s official career. He became a tsepon or Finance Secretary, in 1939, and also headed the national mint at Drapchi. In 1947 he headed the Tibet Trade Mission that visited India, China, USA and Britain which had a “two-pronged aim to develop trade relations with the West as well as propagate (the fact of) Tibet’s independence.”[3] He met and spoke with such world leaders as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of State General George Marshal, Prime Minister Clement Attlee, and also Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In September 1950, Shakabpa was sent by the Tibetan government to open negotiations with China, to forestall the imminent invasion of Tibet by Communist China. But his efforts were to no avail and a month later on 6th October 1950 the PLA attacked the small Tibetan force at Chamdo. Shakabpa remained in India after the invasion and began to write his political history.

In Kalimpong he also joined forces with Gyalo Thondup and another official and launched the “Tibetan Welfare Organization” to carry on the freedom struggle from outside. This clandestine organization managed to provide support to resistance groups within Tibet, and also made the first connection with the CIA. After the 1959 Uprising, Shakabpa and Gyalo Thondup travelled to New York to present Tibet’s case before the General Assembly of the United Nations. Through the sponsorship of Ireland and Malaya, and the support of the United States and other nations, three resolutions on Tibet were eventually passed. In 1963 Shakabpa resigned from official duties to complete his history. He died on February 23, 1989.

Rinchen Sadutsang, Shakabpa and Gyalo Thondup in New York

“Nationalist” historian?

Because of Shakabpa’s “patriotic declaration of intent” that I mentioned earlier, and the deep love for Tibet that manifestly pervades his work, I have on occasion heard Shakabpa being referred to as a “nationalist historian”, with the unstated pejorative that accompanies the label. Besides the fact that patriotism is here being confused with nationalism, I think that such a viewpoint demonstrates a lack of understanding of the political mentality of people who lived in a pre-modern society. Orwell wrote that “… the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written is peculiar to our own age” by which Orwell meant the age of modern nationalism – of Hitler, Stalin, even Mao – and by extension the present era of Chinese neo-nationalism: from the official minzuzhuyi to the fenqing phenomenon.

Shakabpa comes from an age far earlier than the period of the Great War that Orwell was discussing in that passage, not in time of course, but in the pre-industrial and medieval nature of traditional Tibetan society and government. Because Shakabpa is such a capable historian and moreover as his book first came out in English, many readers unconsciously assume that he was someone with a modern or Western education. And this where I find reading Shakabpa such a fascinating experience.

His patriotism is of an old fashioned kind, lacking the self-righteous vitriol of the modern nationalist. He is incapable of the kind of calculated dishonesty and aggressive, even abusive language that pervades present-day Chinese writing on Tibetan history. Shakabpa is so old world that when discussing the emperors of China, the leaders of the PRC, or even the much hated Manchu ambans, he provides proper titles and does not allow himself any passing barb or ideological labeling, so ubiquitous in “nationalist” historiography in general, and which at times, even slips through in Western academic writings on Tibet.

Shakabpa, like many other Lhasa aristocrats, seemed to have been involved in the factional politics of his time. In the forties he belonged to the group supporting the Taktra regency and was opposed to the former regent, Reting. Yet in his history he is conscientiously fair to both sides, as Hugh Richardson notes: “Tsipon Shakabpa, although to some extent parti pris as an important official and as a kinsman of the Changkyim bKa’-lon bla-ma whom the ex-regent had brusquely dismissed from office in 1940, provides well-informed and balanced information.”[4]

Later in Kalimpong, Shakabpa allied himself with the Dalai Lama’s brother Gyalo Thondup and they were sometimes in disagreement, if not competition, with the exiled Prime Minister Lukhangwa. Yet Shakabpa not only describes, at great length, the many occasions that Lukhangwa courageously stood up to the Communists in Lhasa but also his later work in Kalimpong in attempting to unify Tibetan refugees and exiles, and petitioning the government of India to allow the Dalai Lama sanctuary in India. I mention this since I had earlier written critically of the exile leadership (including Shakabpa and Gyalo Thodup) for its shabby treatment of Lukhangwa, especially during the period before his death.[5]

Corrections and revisions are part of any scholar’s intellectual regimen, though perhaps not to the point where one feels obliged to highlight earlier mistakes. But Shakabpa is painfully honest. One example, in the Advanced History Shakabpa “confesses” to an error in his previous work. “I wrote that Regent Demo was susceptible to occasional mental disorders. That statement was mistaken. The person referred to as the ‘crazy Demo’ seems to have lived from 1825 until 1860. He did not serve as the regent.”[6]

The native historians we have had in the 20^th century from Africa, India, the Middle East and even China, were (or are) all scholars educated in a modern if not Western milieu. Probably the only non-Western contemporary historian we have who was completely educated and formed in his own traditional society is Shakabpa. In this he is a rara avis, a curiosity, a genuine throwback to a pre-nationalistic age, where for all its many drawbacks, the idea “that history could be written truthfully…” as Orwell points out in his essay “Looking Back at the Spanish War”, … had not been entirely abandoned.

Tibetan historical tradition

The fact of Shakabpa being a traditional historian is important for Tibetans to appreciate. It goes to demonstrate that, accomplished as Shakabpa was as a historian, he did not emerge from an intellectual vacuum. That, despite propaganda to the contrary, Tibet had a long and sophisticated tradition of history writing, on which, in large measure, Tsepon Shakabpa built his great work.

The late scholar on Tibet and Bhutan, Michael Aris of Oxford had this to say of the Tibetan historical tradition “… it is clear that, by comparison with many other peoples of the east or west, they (Tibetans) maintain a high level of historical consciousness and a deep sense of the vitality of the living past”.[7] He also points out the intellectual rigor of that tradition “For instance when writing his monumental history of Amdo, The Ocean Annals, (dhepter gyamtso) completed in 1865, the author Dra-gon Konchog,[8] provides a list of no less than six hundred or so sources he had consulted for this work.”

To get a feel for this enormous “ocean” (gyamtso) of indigenous historical writing one should browse through Tibetan Histories[9], by Dan Martin, a former student of Taktser Rimpoche and an accomplished Tibet scholar. This bibliography provide valuable information on over seven hundred Tibetan-language historical works. The listing does not include biographies, and old Tibetan works of historical nature and documentary sources generally referred to as the Dunhuang documents. This book is out of print but you can access it on Google books. The author has also worked on updating and correcting his opus, even adding another couple of hundred entries. Dan Martin also provides a useful breakdown of the various genres in Tibetan historical writing, which readers will find enlightening. Also invaluable in this regard is “Tibetan Historiography” by Leonard W.J. Van der Kuijp in the collection, Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, a recommended vade mecum for all Tibetan scholars, historians, poets and writers.

One of the reasons that led to Gibbon being called “the first modern historian of ancient Rome” was his unprecedented and extensive use of primary sources, among other things. Shakabpa’s work is invaluable to us because of the enormous archival sources he had access to (and which he fully utilized in his tome) and which probably no Tibetan historian till then, and certainly no Western scholar had had the opportunity to use. The most important of these are, of course, the various official archives in Lhasa and other centers and monasteries, now inaccessible to exile Tibetan and international scholars, but which in recent years have been partially and intermittently opened to a select few Chinese and Tibetan academics. Shakabpa also gained access to other sources such as the royal archives in Bhutan, Kathmandu and Sikkim, the Bihar Research Society Library in Patna, the National Archives in New Delhi, and other libraries and archives in London, New York, Washington D.C., and Paris.

Though a traditional scholar Shakabpa was able to personally meet and draw upon the knowledge of international experts as Peter Aufschnieter, the anthropologist Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, Hugh Richardson, R.A Stein, Guiseppe Tucci, Rahul Sankrityayan, Turrell Wylie and Luciano Petech. He also seems to have met such present-day scholars as Mathew Kapstein and David Jackson (both of whom pleasantly surprised him by speaking to him in Tibetan) and others.

Of course Shakabpa’s access to the important Tibetan personalities in modern Tibetan history was, enviably, in a class of its own. But he was even able to consult and discuss his work with a large number of great Tibetan scholars and historians. First of all there was his uncle the minister Trimon who was a participant in the Simla conference, as well as the 13^th Dalai Lama’s physician Ngoshi Jampa Thubwang who accompanied His Holiness to Darjeeing. Later there were other eminent scholars as Trijang Rimpoche, Khunu Tenzin Gyaltsen Rimpoche, Dhingo Khentse Rimpoche, Dudjom Rimpoche, Banyak Athing, and many others that Shakabpa unfailingly acknowledges and thanks throughout his book.

Besides the affinity to Gibbon in his pioneering use of primary sources, Shakabpa’s history might be lauded for its literary merits. I am not qualified to make this evaluation but many Tibetan intellectuals whose judgment I respect, and indeed his own translator, were struck by how “The book is quite beautifully written, with rich poetic expression, extensive vocabulary, and often clever and amusing adages and similes. The Tibetan text makes very wide use of quotations, and so as the narrative moves through the centuries, it employs many distinct styles of Tibetan.”

The Shakabpa lectures

Of course, as much as I do not read Tibetan well enough to appreciate Shakabpa’s qualities as a writer, there are many young Tibetans who would find it daunting, for one reason or the other to plough through the massive Advanced History, even in its English translation. For them and for all the older Tibetans who may be literate in their own language but find it difficult to read scholarly tomes, I can provide a solution that is not only convenient and enjoyable, but eminently traditional as well.

In 1985 Shakabpa gave a lengthy series of lectures at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA) at Dharamshala. For about two months, from March 22 to May 18 he lectured daily, probably from nine to three (four?) pm, five days a week. It wasn’t really a lecture series in the Western academic sense but more of an expository teaching, of the kind that Tibetan lamas give to their follower, where using a Buddhist work, say Nagarjuna’s Commentary on Bodhicitta (jangchup semdrel), the lama will read passages from the text and then launch into lengthy explanations.

I don’t know of any lama who has done this for approximately 250 near-continuous hours as Shakabpa did in Dharamshala. He read passages from his Advanced History and then analyzed and expounded on the events and personalities at length, and explained his source materials. He also went into lengthy discussions on controversies and even associated gossip and rumors, which he could not have included in his book. Unlike religious teachings, Shakabpa also took questions, first thing in the morning, on what he had discussed the previous day. It was all wonderfully fascinating stuff. And the very fortunate thing is that the LTWA made high quality audio recordings of this work, now available on DVD/CD.

I have downloaded the digital files on my IPod and listen to them when I’m at the gym or I am driving, especially long distances. I would strongly advise all Tibetans to buy the CD’s from Dharamshala. I know many Tibetans in Europe and America have parents who feel bored, lost and isolated living in the West. Even if, let us say, your pala or amala may not be intellectually inclined, just hearing Shakabpa’s voice, his impeccable Tibetan and his Lhasa dialect, should give them much joy. He is not a dry-as-dust pedant, but someone with a great sense of fun, and a fund of amazing stories and anecdotes about their homeland, many of which they’ve probably never heard before. At one point Shakabpa even sings the old accountant’s song – for he had started his official career in the financial department. His voice quavers slightly, but considering his then 78 years, he manages surprisingly well. A notebook and pencil are essential for profitable listening. Just the incidental information he unconsciously drops throughout the lectures adds up to a treasure trove (ter-dzoe). Did you know bananas grew in Tibet and were called “hangla”?

A critical disagreement

I find it difficult to find fault with an author who has given me so much knowledge and even pleasure. Once upon a time I might have frowned on Shakabpa’s inclusion of dragons and snow-lions in his list of Tibetan fauna, but these days I am just delighted at the impressive textual references he unearths to support such improbabilities; one of them even being a pecha published by my grandfather, a biography of the 6^th Dalai Lama, in which there is mention of one of his entourage seeing such a fabulous beast.

But if I have to take issue with Shakabpa on one thing, it is on his view that the “patron-priest” (cho-yon) relationship was a mutually beneficial alliance that a free and independent Tibet maintained with the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and later the Manchu Qing Dynasty. And that only during the latter period of the Manchu Empire and under the Nationalist government “a perverse understanding of the preceptor-patron relationship between China and Tibet developed,” and Tibet’s independent status was violated.

Of course, Shakabpa was unbending in his insistence on the issue of Tibetan independence, which is directly at odds with present day advocates of cho-yon who only require Tibet to be an “autonomous entity” within the PRC. Nonetheless, what Shakabpa fails to grasp is that such a relation between a militarily and economically powerful empire and a weaker dependent state, even if the latter received some form of spiritual consideration, even respect, is essentially a relationship between unequal partners, hence a relationship between an overlord power and a protectorate or a colony.

Of course, there were instances in the relationship, as between the Ming court and the 5^th Karmapa, when Chinese sovereignty over Tibet was non-existent, as the authoritative scholar on Sino-Tibetan relations, Elliot Sperling, pointed out to me. We also have the historical case that official exile publications often cite, where the Shunzhi emperor received the 5^th Dalai as an equal sovereign. But such instances were the exception. The overriding reason why such a pernicious relationship as the patron-priest institution was accepted on the Tibetan side, besides the fact of China’s military dominance, was the economic and political advantages it conferred on the Tibetan clergy.

But Shakabpa as a traditional scholar, steeped in his Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, regarded the relationship as a unique one without parallel in Western history, and that “…(the) Westerners’ manner of approaching political affairs cannot explain this situation.” Shakabpa may be excused for this conviction as even a European writing on Tibetan history as Michael Van Walt claims that Tibet’s Cho-Yon relationship with the Yuan and Qing was sui generis, or without origins in any other system. Van Walt cites Shakabpa, but perhaps a reading of European history would have been in order.

Theodor Mommsen in discussing the Roman province of Judaea noted that the region “… had long before the Roman period developed under the government of the Selucids the so-called Mosaic theocracy, a clerical corporation with the high priest at its head, which, acquiescing in foreign rule and renouncing the formation of a state guarded the distinctiveness of its adherents, and dominated them under the aegis of the protecting power.”[10] Then we have the long conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, and every other possible variation on the patron-priest relationship being played out in European politics, up to the time of Mussolini and the Lateran Treaties (1929) when the sovereignty, power and position of the Holy See was finally settled, ending the “Roman Question.”

Criticism, “struggle” & politics

The most hostile and extensive body of critical writing on Shakabpa’s history has come largely from inside the PRC. In exile society there was, for a time, much show of appreciation for the man and his work but little intellectual discussion. In the last couple of decades, he has been studiously ignored. The Tibetan world these days is one filled with awards and honors, but I don’t think Shakabpa ever received anything, official or otherwise. Hence this review essay is my one-man Festschrift for Tibet’s greatest modern historian. Perhaps I should use the term Gedenkschrift, since this is more in the way of a memorial than a celebration.

Such a memorial, recalling his unequaled contribution to Tibetan historiography is necessary since he was attacked, posthumously, a few years ago, with a degree of viciousness and dishonesty that even his Communist Chinese critics could not quite achieve. A former member of the exile-parliament and scholar from Amdo, Hortsang Jigme, accused Shakabpa, in print[11], of basing his entire history on writings and manuscripts stolen from the great Amdo scholar and poet, Gendun Chophel (GC). He claims that the aristocrat Kapshopa had acquired drafts of GC’s historical texts and had divided up these copies of GC’s writings with Shakabpa who used them in his Political History. Hortsang Jigme does not provide anything in the way of credible evidence to back up his claims. One “proof” he offers is that that the full title of GC’s work is The White Annals: A History of Greater Tibet as Concerns its Political Traditions, but that strangely enough Shakabpa’s work “…has the title Tibet: A Political History, on the cover of his book”. The irrefutable connection between the two books presumably being the two words “political” and “history”. Hortsang Jigme sarcastically remarks “…isn’t this a sign of knowing how to steal, but not knowing how to cover it up.” The overall language and reasoning of Hortsang Jigme’s diatribe serves only to remind us of the nastiness, the dishonesty and the mind-numbing inanity of Cultural Revolution rhetoric, that even after four decades still unfortunately lingers on in Tibetan political and intellectual discourse.

Simpleminded Tibetans believe that GC had built an airplane out of leather and wood and even flown it over the Jangthang. Within this corpus of fantastic tales about GC, is one that he had written a political history of Tibet that absolutely and incontrovertibly proved Tibet’s independence and which on production before the UN would have compelled China to leave Tibet. Tragically this history was lost or stolen. Even some educated Tibetans buy into this story, or at least a part of it. Samten Norboo who translated the White Annals into English mentions in his introduction that “According to the testimony of Professor Ngawang Jinpa of St.Joseph’s College, Darjeeling, this large compilation had been completed and the manuscript in the custody of Mr. Ma-nang A-po, an associate of the author. Unfortunately we have lost track of the manuscript, following the demise of Mr.A-po.”[12]

Probably the most authoritative account of GC’s life during this tragic period is the one written by Sherab Gyatso, who was his student, close friend and constant companion, especially during the last years of his life.[13] (Note: this is not the geshe Sherab Gyatso who was GC’s dialectics teacher at Drepung) “This biography has been cited by Western and Tibetan scholars who have written about GC’s life and works.”[14] Sherab Gyatso mentions that GC’s aristocratic patron and close friend Horkhang, put together and copied such works as the White Annals from GC’s notes and jottings. During his imprisonment GC sent a message to Horkhang telling him to stop his copying and write at the end of the history, “The unfinished composition of the Tibetan history is concluded for the time being.”[15] No further reference is to made to the history by Sherab Gyatso. There are only two other biographical accounts of GC by people who actually knew him personally and were around him during this period. One is by his student and patron Horkhang (who published The White Annals), and the other Rakra Thupten Chodar, an incarnate lama who studied under him. Both biographies make no mention of GC’s manuscript being stolen, much less by Shakabpa.

Sherab Gyatso only mentions Shakabpa once and that in a very positive light “One day I received a letter from prison. GC had written, ‘I have heard that Shakabpa is well acquainted with Tagdra (the regent). See if you can ask for my release through him.’ I visited Shakabpa, who said, ‘The case has been sent to Neushar Thuptan Tharpa, the official of the Foreign Affairs office. Now it won’t take long.’ Just as he said GC got out of prison after about seven or eight days.”[16]

Sherab Gyatso mentions what happened after his friend’s release “At about this time, the cabinet of the Tibetan Government gave GC a coupon to get three khal of grain and a little money for tea and butter per month.”[17].

Professor Donald Lopez who has authored two books on GC’s writings does not mention any official conspiracy to steal GC’s manuscript or to prevent him from writing his history. Lopez states that after GC was released from prison “The government eventually provided him with rooms behind the Jokhang, above the Ministry of Agriculture, along with a stipend of money and grain, with the instruction that he resume work on The White Annals. He did not do so. Anecdotes from this period deal for the most part with his heavy drinking…”[18]

But the most convincing argument against GC’s work being stolen by Shakabpa is that whatever historical material GC had, and whatever he had written, was exclusively about the early imperial age. Shakabpa on the other hand only devotes one chapter to this period. In this chapter his sources are the standard Tibetan histories, and Western and Chinese sources. On a number of occasions he quotes from Gedun Chophel’s White Annals, and respectfully refers to the author as “khewang” or “great scholar”. The bulk of Shakabpa’s history, is based on archival material, which he had access to as an official, and which Gedun Chophel as a “mendicant” poet and scholar from distant Amdo, absolutely did not.

Why didn’t the government-in-exile speak out against this attack on its official history and official historian? In 1988, Shakabpa, in the most respectful way possible, expressed his disagreement with the Strasburg Statement. I was told he was in tears when he heard that the Dalai Lama had surrendered the cause of an independent Tibet. That same year he and another scholar, Yonten Gyatso, co-authored a small booklet that they printed and secretly distributed throughout Tibet, “urging the Tibetan people to continue their struggle for independence”.[19] In the atmosphere of sycophancy and intrigue in Dharamshala, such an initiative could have been deliberately misconstrued as “opposing the Dalai Lama” (Gyalwa Rimpoche la ngogoe), and it is possible that the attack on Shakabpa had official approval, if not encouragement. Another Tibetan who opposed the Strasburg Statement (namely myself) was also attacked by Hortsang Jigme, this time in a pamphlet in 2003.[20] This publication even featured an official introduction by the kashag secretariat, seal and all.

Re-awakening Tibetan history

Hence Shakabpa’s history can be read not merely as a record of the past but as a powerful revolutionary document, that even now, twenty-two years after the author’s death, is deeply disturbing to Beijing, and which frustrates and confounds those Tibetans attempting a final handover of Tibetan sovereignty to China.

One reason why so many in exile seem so unconcerned, so blasé about giving up the struggle for independence stems, in large part, from their appalling ignorance of Tibet’s history. It is not just that history was and is so badly taught in Tibetan schools, but also arises from the near absence (these days) of history being valued as an intellectual or literary activity. If you go to the website of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, our premier academic institution, you will find it divided into ten departments, including even a Science department – but no History.

It is this ignorance of, even contempt for, history which I feel is the source of those bizarre statements emanating from the likes of our former prime-minister Samdong Rimpoche, as that “the Tibetan issue is the internal affair of China”, and from the Dalai Lama that Tibet had to be a part of China because it was a “landlocked country.” In the past the Gelukpa church regarded history as an unnecessary distraction, and discouraged monks and geshes from reading historical works. When His Holiness visited Paris in 1988 (9?) he was received by such eminent French Tibetologists as R.A. Stein, Madame Macdonald and others at the Institut National des Langues et Cultures Orientales (INALCO), one of France’s grands établissements. They showed him the research they had been conducting on ancient Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang, a specialty field of French scholars in the world of Tibetan Studies. His Holiness, I believe, told them that it would be more useful if they studied Buddhist texts.

I began this long essay by describing how Shakabpa’s history seemed to have helped awaken all those people in Tibet who had been reduced to a “catatonic”, or to put it in Buddhist terms a near “yidak” or “preta”, condition under Communist indoctrination and oppression. But it has become evident that since 1987, 1989, 2008, and now this year, the people in Tibet are all wide-awake. Their courage, commitment and sacrifices have more than demonstrated this to the whole world.

This time around it is those of us in exile (especially the leadership) who need to be awakened from our current sleep-walk along a very treacherous path. But, of course, there is no need to look far for a bracing wake-me-up and a fresh set of directions. In the last line of the author’s preface, Shakabpa tells us exactly what he wants his history to accomplish: “It is my fondest wish that this book will be like a compass that indicates the path to recovering our independence.”

(This essay was written during my residency at the International Writer’s Program at the University of Iowa. I would like to thank the Writer’s Program and the Shelly & Donald Rubin Foundation, for their support. Professor Elliot Sperling took time off from his busy schedule to go through my work and offer valuable criticism and suggestions.)

* * *

Notes

[1] Chinese Communist propaganda has, on little evidence, insisted on describing traditional Tibetan society as a “slave society.” Marxist theory of historical materialism identifies five successive stages of human history, the second stage being “slave society”. Since pre-revolutionary China was, according to official Communist doctrine, on the more advanced third stage of “feudalism”, Tibet could be depicted as being an entire historical stage behind China – even feudal China.

[2] I received this information in a telephone conversation with Dzachutsang Sonam Topgyal, a former prime-minister of the exile government, who was the secretary of the Department of Information of the exile government, when Tibet first began to open up in the mid eighties.

[3] Karma Gyatsho, “Tsepon Wangchuk Deden shakabpa (1908-89): A Brief Biography”, Tibet Journal, Vol XVI No.2 Summer 1991, Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, Dharamshala.

[4] H.E Richardson “The Ra-sgreng Conspiracy of 1947”, in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson. Proceedings of the International Seminar on Tibetan Studies Oxford 1979. Editors Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, Aris & Philips Ltd. Warminister England, 1980.

[5] Jamyang Norbu, “Moulting of the Peking Duck”, Tibetan Review, April 1979.

[6] Shakabpa, One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet, Brill Tibetan Studies Library, Leiden, 2010. p. 565

[7] Dan Martin (with Yael Bentor), Tibetan Histories: A Bibliography of Tibetan-Language Historical Works, Serindia, London, 1997.

[8] Brag-dgon Dkon-mchog-bstan-pa-rab-rgyas (b. 1800/ 1-1866), Deb-ther Rgya-mtsho (A mdo Chos-‘byung, Yul Mdo-smad-kyi Ljongs-su thub-bstan Rin-po-che Ji-ltar Dar-ba’I tshul Gsal-bar brjod-pa deb-ther Rgya-tsho). Published with Added English title: The Ocean Annals of Amdo, ed. By Lokesh Chandra (new Delhi 1975), in 3 volumes.

[9] Dan Martin. Ibid.

[10] Theodor Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire. First published 1885, republished 1909, Barnes & Noble, USA, Page 161.

[11] Hortsang Jigme, Drang den gyis lus pae slong mo wa. (The Beggar Beguiled by Truth), Chapter 16. “A Brief Inquiry Into the Question of Who Wrote Tibet: A Political History.”

[12] Samten Norboo, The White Annals (translation) LTWA Dharamshala, 1978. p 11.

[13] Irmgard Mengele, dGe-‘dun-chos-‘phel: A Biography of the 20^th Century Tibetan Scholar, Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, Dharamshala, 1999. This work is based on the biography of Gedun Chophel written by Sherab Gyatso in 1972 and published in the Biographical Dictionary of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, Dharamshala, 1973 .

[14] Mengele, p. 17

[15] Mengele p. 74

[16] Mengele. p. 68

[17] Mengele. p.72

[18] Donald S. Lopez Jr. The Madman’s Middle Way. University of Chicago Press, 2006. P45.

[19] Tsipon Shakabpa, & Yonten Gyatso, The Nectar of the Immortal Gods Inducing Recollection in the Bretheren Living at Home in the the Three Provinces of Tibet and Living in Exile. Published by the authors and distributed secretly in Tibet. 1988.

[20] Hortsang Jigme, Jam dbyangs nor bu rjes ‘brang dang bcas pa’i grib ma dgrar lang la brtags pa’i tshoms, Dharamshala, 2003.

Photo: © Elise Stukenberg

Interview with Gen Lhasang Tsering, former president of Tibetan Youth Congress, and Rangzen activist on self-immolations of Tibetans in Tibet.
(Translated from Tibetan by Sonam Gyatso)

Tibet Times: What do you think are the main hopes and aspirations of the brave Tibetans who set themselves on fire inside Tibet?

Lhasang Tsering: Human beings, when faced with desperate situations, either kill others or kill themselves. Those Tibetans who set themselves to fire raised slogans calling for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet; some raised slogans about freedom in Tibet and there were also some who raised slogans for Tibet’s independence. In all, it is clear that Tibetans inside Tibet are not happy. These desperate actions makes it clear Tibetans are suffering under the brutal Chinese occupation and their intense desire for freedom is also clear. We, the Tibetans living in exile, must respect their aspirations. Particularly, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile must recognize this. Our government must respect the brave Tibetans who sacrificed their precious lives for the cause of Tibet.

Tibet Times: What would be the short-term and the ultimate impact on the Tibetan cause of these self-immolations? What is your personal view?

Lhasang Tsering: It is a huge loss for the family members and relatives of the brave Tibetan monks and nuns who set themselves on fire. They are no longer alive. However; it depends on us whether their actions will have a positive or negative result for Tibet and the Tibetan people. For example, if you hit others with just a single finger, rather than hurting others, you would be hurting yourself. However; if you hit with a firm, clenched fist with all five fingers joined in unison; it will hurt your opponent. I heard that some members’ in our community are debating whether these self-immolations are acts of violence. I feel really depressed and sad to hear such debates. People who circumambulate Tsuklagkhang and other holy sites kill insects by trampling on them. Can you refer to this as an act of violence? Their motive is spiritual accomplishment. It cannot be violence to sacrifice one’s life for the sake of protecting one’s country and one’s nation and to preserve our religion and culture. The real act of violence is being inflicted by the Chinese who oppress our people and create these desperate situations. Shirking from the responsibility to serve the Tibetan cause and failing to stand up to oppression and injustice is an act of violence and deceit.

Tibet Times: How do you define the present status of the Tibetan struggle for independence?

Lhasang Tsering: Considering the courage and dedication of Tibetans inside Tibet, the status of our struggle for independence is highly commendable and hopeful. However, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile has rendered our struggle directionless. Whether it is an individual or of a community; or even a nation; one must fulfill three conditions for a movement to succeed. Firstly; the aim of the struggle should be clear. Secondly; one must have the necessary confidence to achieve that goal. Thirdly; one must actively work to achieve that goal. Apart from merely stating that it is for the mutual benefit of Tibetans and Chinese, our present Middle Way Policy does not have clear aims and objectives. We do not have confidence because we fear that China is mighty and powerful. Apart from issuing statements or making speeches about our cause; in reality; in exile we do not have enough people who sincerely care about the Tibetan cause and no one actually leading an active struggle.

Tibet Times: Are you satisfied with official campaigns initiated by Kashag and the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile to highlight the critical situation inside Tibet?

Lhasang Tsering: As I said earlier; besides merely refusing to listen to the voice of the general Tibetan people; the Kashag is doing nothing to resolve the issue of Tibet. Therefore; it is not a question of whether it satisfies me or not. I am left in dejection and hopelessness. The government is an organization to lead people. What the Tibetan Government needs to do is to lead the struggle for freedom. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile, based in Dharamshala, has forgotten our freedom struggle and yet it seems that it perceives itself as running a real government. This is not right. The roof above our heads and the soil under our feet do not belong to us. They all belong to others. Even the general public knows that a ‘mutually beneficial’ solution for resolving the Tibet-China issue is not practical and achievable. Even if it may be achievable, we must know that we don’t have time to wait for long. Thousands of Chinese are migrating into Tibet even at this very moment when I am being interviewed here. Yes; Time is running out on us.

Tibet Times: What responsibilities and what kind of movements we Tibetans in exile must initiate considering the critical situation inside Tibet? Could you please share your thoughts?

Lhasang Tsering: In exile, non-governmental organizations and ordinary Tibetans are making every possible effort towards our freedom struggle. However, these will not bring real, meaningful result, as they cannot influence the international community. We need a clear plan and a leader who can lead us and unite us all. Without such leadership, it would be like laying thousands of bricks in the wilderness. Such bricks scattered on the desert surface will not result in a house. There are many people who appreciate His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s decision to devolve his political power to an elected leader; but I absolutely do not consider it a positive step. For example; if there is a shepherd who, in the name of taking his sheep to a greener pastureland, herds them here and there, and finally leave the sheep in the middle of a vast desert telling them ‘now the authority is in your hands’, is the shepherd fulfilling his duty? Of course; democracy is important, but it is an internal matter of a free country. Is it worthwhile to argue about the shape and size of the house and the colour of the walls before you have the land to build the house? In my view democracy can wait; but not the struggle for freedom.

Tibet Times: All the people who immolated themselves are monks and nuns and we often say that our struggle is for the cause of Tibetan religion and culture, so what in your view are the responsibilities of the Tibetan reincarnated lamas belonging to different religious sects in exile?

Lhasang Tsering: I cannot speak about the views of Tibetans inside Tibet, but Tibetans in exile must have various opinions with regard to this matter. Some people are not able to express their views because of their faith and devotion. Personally, I think that I have put my best possible effort in leading movements and nurturing leaders for the cause of Tibet while I was working with Tibetan Youth Congress. What I want to say is that if [in our community] there are people who think there is a spiritual practice that is more precious and sacred than serving the happiness and wellbeing of one’s country and its people; then I request you not to live in the Tibetan community. Please do not take benefits from our community. I cannot accept a spiritual practitioner who seeks to achieve individual enlightenment and who works only for the personal benefit or for the next life without shouldering responsibility for Tibet and the Tibetan people. We Tibetans do not need such spiritual practitioners at this moment.

Tibet Times: After His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s devolution of political power to an elected leader, do you think we can see some change in our movement and the nature of our struggle?

Lhasang Tsering: His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been the Spiritual and Political head of Tibet for centuries. I cannot say for sure there could be a change in a day or two, or within the next few generations to come. On paper, it can be written that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has devolved his political authority to an elected leader. However; in the hearts and minds of Tibetan people it is only His Holiness the Dalai Lama who will remain as the Spiritual and Secular head of Tibet. When my body and mind separates from each other and when my flesh and blood spills out, even at that moment, my consciousness will regard His Holiness the Dalai Lama as my sole leader. [At this moment, Lhasang la took a pause and shed tears]. Once again I request His Holiness the Dalai Lama to reconsider his decision of devolving political authority when our freedom struggle needs him most because our nation is on the brink of death. The Tibetan people can change their clothes but how can we change our hearts?

Tibet Times: Do you see some hope that the Tibetan struggle [for autonomy] will gradually move on to struggle for Rangzen?

Lhasang Tsering: I am not a person who relies on empty hopes. If you ask me do I think should the struggle move on to Rangzen; in reality, I would say definitely I do. I was the one who openly expressed that it would be an impractical [solution] when His Holiness the Dalai Lama proposed the Middle Way Approach on 15 June 1987. At that time, there were Tibetans who even threatened to kill me. My children also faced problems in their school because of my position. I still keep the same political stand. I haven’t made the slightest change to it. I believe in truth and justice. I am not a person who only thinks about personal benefits. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile took a wrong position right from the beginning. There is no benefit in changing the driver if one is travelling on the wrong road. No matter how many times you change drivers, if your vehicle is going on the wrong road there is no change. First and foremost the Tibetan Government in Exile must change its course.

Tibet Times: What is your view on people who believe that we cannot have dialogues with the Chinese Government or receive international support if the Tibetans opt for Rangzen?

Lhasang Tsering: This is absolutely rubbish. They are ignorant about world politics. The policy of a state or nation is driven by its national interest. There is not a single nation in the world that frames their foreign policy by renouncing its own national interest for the sake of other nations. Between 1959 and 1965, the United Nations passed resolutions recognising Tibet’s right to self-determination. This happened when we were advocating Tibet’s independence. However; because of the spread of Communism in USSR and other countries, US and other western allies gave more focus on how to defeat Communism. As a result, Tibetan issue lost limelight then. After renouncing Rangzen as our official policy, we have not had a single nation that came up and extended meaningful support. Presently, as China is becoming more powerful, it naturally affects the interest of many other countries. For their own interests, not out of concern for Tibet, I am sure we will receive support from these countries if we take some clear actions. Isn’t it foolish to complain that one cannot get a sponsor for one’s child without first enrolling the child in school?

Tibet Times: Lhasang la, what is your expectation [from] and appeal to the Tibetans inside Tibet, especially Tibetans who set themselves on fire?

Lhasang Tsering: First of all, I would like to bend my knees to the ground in prostration before those valiant self-immolating sons and daughters of Tibet. At this present critical moment, we must prepare ourselves for a determined action. Even an old man like me has made preparations since long time back. I registered [the ownership of] my small bookshop and bank account in my wife’s name. We Tibetans must share our happiness and suffering together. Whether the loss of these lives benefits our cause or not will depend on the Tibetan Government-in-Exile and the officials working in the exile Tibetan community. I request our government to come up with a well-planned strategy and to take concrete step for our struggle for freedom if we really think Tibet’s situation is critical and feel solidarity with those brave Tibetans who have already given up their lives by setting themselves ablaze. It is not of much use for ordinary Tibetans to go and protest in front of the Chinese embassy if our government is not willing to lead us from the front. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile must lead the protests and demonstrations for our freedom!

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N.B. This is a translation of the interview in Tibetan published in the Bod kyi Dus Bab, issue 537/Volume 16/Series-32, 20/11/2011. For discrepancies, please consider the Tibetan version as authoritative and final. The interview is translated by Sonam Gyatso, a researcher at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

Another timely rap, at this critical juncture of our lives, this song should uplift all of us especially our brothers and sisters in Tibet to fight, stand up as one, and fight for one common cause… Bhod gyalo!

This is what I had to say three weeks ago, and since then, it has been viewed for 29,779 times… and is still going strong… The message is immensely powerful and just last weekend had our Sunday school kids sing to its tune