Ｂｅｈｉｎｄ ｔｈｅ Ｄａｌａｉ Ｌａｍａ’ｓ Ｈｏｌｙ Ｃｌｏａｋ（Ⅱ）

Editors Note:

Dalai Lama has been changed so popular these years that it seems he becomes a logo to some extent. But who is the Dalai Lama? Most of people are puzzled. Not long before I read a couple of papers and enjoyed them very much. Maybe our readers are willing to share them and interested them. Here are excerpts from them.

The one is from N. Ram(Narasimhan Ram),the Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, Frontline, Business Line, and The Sportstar. Mr. N. Ram has been in journalism from 1966; reporting, editing, editorial writing, investigative journalism and magazine journalism. He is one of Indias leading journalists. In 1990, he was award Asian Investigative Tournalist of the Yeae conferred by the Press Foundation of Asia at the Asia Assembly, Manila, for “the courage and diligence which inspired him and his newspaper to continue searching for the truth in the now famous Bofors Case, the disciplined application of his journalistic idealism and the impact of his revelations on the Indian political scene”; In 2003, he got Alumni Award 2003 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Association and so on. He has been to Tibet Autonomous Region two or three times and witnessed its situations. He wrote many papers after his trip in TAR. On Volume 17 - Issue 18, Sep. 02 - 15, 2000 of Frontline, he published a paper titled TIBET - A REALITY CHECK.

“The sky is turquoise, the sun is golden,

The Dalai Lama is away from the Potala,

Making trouble in the west.

Yet Tibets on the move.”

FOR an Indian in Tibet who has no sympathy whatsoever for the Dalai Lamas separatist, revanchist and backward-looking agenda, this passable adaptation of an old Tibetan song seems to fit contemporary realities. A careful reading of the facts of the case reveals that this ideological and political agenda, pursued essentially through external agency, is three projects rolled into one - splitting Tibet from China, carving out a ‘Greater Tibet through ethnic cleansing, and restoring a motheaten theocracy , the ancient regime with some modest, if not quite cosmetic, ‘democratic changes. Each one of these projects can be seen to represent a pipe-dream, especially if one remembers that - unlike in the case of Kashmir - there is not a single country and government in the world that disputes the status of Tibet, that does not recognise Tibet as part of China, that is willing to accord any kind of legal recognition to the Dalai Lamas ‘government-in-exile based in Dharmasala.

Yet there can be little question that there is a Tibet question, that it has a problematical international as well as Sino-Indian dimension, that it continues to cause concern to the political leadership and people of China, and that it serves to confuse and divide public opinion abroad and, to an extent, at home. This is essentially a function of the coming together of a host of objective and subjective factors. These are the Dalai Lamas religious charisma combined with the iconic international status of Tibetan Buddhism; his long-lastingness and tenacity; the ideological-political interests and purposes he has served over four decades and more; his considerable wealth and global investments and resources mobilised from the Tibetan diaspora in various countries; the grievous cultural and human damage done, in Tibet as much as in the rest of China, during the decade of the ‘Cultural Revolution (1966-76); the nature of the ‘independentTibet movement that has rallied around the person and office of the Dalai Lama; the links and synergies ‘His Holiness has managed to establish with Hollywood, the media, legislators, and other influential constituencies in the West; the plausible, yet demonstrably tendentious and false, propaganda material generated by this anti-China and anti-Communist campaign in the post-Cold War era; and (from an Indian standpoint, not the least troubling aspect) the Dalai Lamas continuing Indian base of operations.

Historically, from the second half of the thirteenth century when China came under the Mongol Yuan dynasty founded by Kublai Khan, Tibet has experienced the merging of religious and temporal power in a peculiar type of theocracy. With the ascendancy of the Gelug, or Yellow, sect of Tibetan Buddhism, the honorific ‘Dalai (meaning ‘Ocean), conferred on the leader of the sect by the ruler of a Mongol tribe, appears during the Ming dynasty in the sixteenth century. Historical records show that the institution of the Dalai Lama as an ‘incarnate politico- religious supremo-recognised and indeed empowered by the Chinese Central Government - dates back to the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Great Fifth received a formal title and a golden seal of authority from the Qing Emperor whom he visited in Beijing. From that time, there have been Dalai Lamas powerful and inept, ascetic as well as pleasure- seeking, learned as well as shallow, masterful as well as manipulated, long-lived but also cut off in youth (possibly poisoned) in several cases.

The fourteenth Dalai Lama, like his predecessor who was caught up in powerful currents of history involving British imperialism, a China undergoing big socio-political change, the ambitions of Tsarist Russia, an India moving towards freedom, and conflictual processes within Tibet itself, is one of the longest lasting in the series. As the pre-eminent Tibetan Buddhist leader, ‘His Holiness has a hold among the faithful and a wider influence that must not be underestimated. But, as the Chinese official view makes clear, given the protracted experience of dealing with him, he cannot be treated merely, or even primarily, as a religious leader. He is a consummate politician leading a movement that seeks to take ‘Greater Tibet away from China - an anti-communist and separatist political figure masquerading as a compassionate man of religion and ‘art of happiness guru.

“The Dalai Lama has several balls in the air at the same time,” a retired senior Indian diplomat who admires him observed to me recently. Thus, ‘His Holiness has been able to maintain in a recent interview to Time magazine (issue of July 17, 2000): “Lets follow the middle path. We dont want complete independence. Beijing can manage the economy and foreign policy, but genuine Tibetan self-rule is the best way to preserve our culture. ” The Dalai Lama has claimed he has been consistent in his post-1959 stand. But that has not prevented him from running a ‘government-in-exile, or accommodating an ‘independent Tibet movement, or sponsoring a great deal of hostile propaganda material, or soliciting and accepting any kind of external help to destabilise Chinas sovereignty or control over Tibet.

As early as September 1959, the Dalai Lama, acting against Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrus specific advice, sought, unsuccessfully, to get the United Nations to intervene in Tibet. Over the past 25 years, following a decision taken by his ‘government- in-exile in Dharmasala, he has travelled extensively abroad to rally support for the internationalisation of the Tibet question and made various ‘realistic proposals for its ‘satisfactory and just solution. These have included a ‘Five Point Peace Plan unfurled in a September 1987 address to members of the U.S. Congress; the elaboration of these five points in the so-called Strasbourg Proposal, presented in June 1988 in an address to members of the European Parliament; the withdrawal, in March 1991, of his personal commitment to the ideas expressed in the Strasbourg Proposal on the basis of the allegation that the Chinese leadership had a “closed and negative” attitude to the problem; and an abrasive and propagandistic open letter written to Deng Xiaoping in September 1992. In all his major public pronouncements, the Dalai Lama has taken the stand that Tibet has beenan independent nation from ancient times, that it has been a strategi ‘buffer state in the heart of Asia guaranteeing the region s stability, that it has never ‘conceded its ‘sovereignty to China or any other foreign power, that Chinas control over Tibet is in the nature of ‘occupation by a ‘colonial power, and tha ‘the Tibetan people have never accepted the loss of ‘our national sovereignty. He has also repeatedly spoken of ‘six million Tibetans and put forward the demand for the re-constitution of a ‘Greater Tibet known as ‘Cholka-Sum and comprising the areas of ‘U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo.

At the same time, the Dalai Lama has made himself out to be a moderate and realist committed to the Buddhist ‘middle path and to non-violence despite contra-acting tendencies among Tibetans. Thus, he has claimed on various occasions that he is not seeking total independence from China; that he is not seeking any active political role for himself in ‘future Tibet; that he is willing to negotiate a future for Tibet as “a self-governing democratic political entity founded on law by agreement of the people for the common good and the protection of themselves and their environment, in association with the Peoples Republic of China”; and that he might settle for full-fledged or high-grade autonomy, with the Chinas Central Government having charge of me rely defence and foreign affairs.

During a period of economic reform, opening up to the outside world and the pursuit of socio-political stability, Chinas renewed interest in arriving at an amicable settlement with the Dalai Lama and creating reasonable conditionsions for him to return was framed by two major policy statements by top leaders. In December 1978, Deng Xiaoping announced in a media interview that “the Dalai Lama may return, but only as a Chinese citizen” and that “we have but one demand - patriotism. And we say that anyone is welcome, whether he embraces patriotism early or late.” In May 1991, Prime Minister Li Peng clarified, also in a media interview, that “we have only one fundamental principle, namely, Tibet is an inalienable part of China. On this fundamental issue, there is no room for haggling... All matters except ‘Tibetan independence can be discussed.” But after several rounds of informal talks and contacts with the Dalai Lamas emissaries and fact-finding delegations between 1979 and 1992 and after watching the Dalai Lamas performance on the international stage, the Chinese Government came to a sort of tentative conclusion by the time it held the Third National Conference on Work in Tibet in 1994. This conclusion was that the ‘Dalai clique was demonstrably insincere, that it was working overtime to separate Tibet from China and destabilize the situation in the autonomous region in concert with ‘Chinas international enemies, and that its actual demands were tantamount to independence, ‘semi-independence or ‘independence in disguise.

What is clear to any objective observer is the following. In his political role, the Dalai Lama has performed like a confidence trickster whose utterances and actions spring from a p r a c t i s e d r e p e r t o i r e o f misrepresentations, half-truths, and demonstrable falsehoods about the facts of the case.