since August 19, 2000
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Tibetan Tragedy (1) |
By ANTHONY SPAETH
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Few blessings have been showered on the people of either Tibet for the past 50 years. Within China, Tibetans are jailed for nationalist utterings, forbidden to display photos of the Dalai Lama and faced with the very extinction of their culture. The exiles don't have it easy either: they have waited for four decades for the miracle that would send them home with some guaranteed freedoms. Hope is running out -- and time, too. The Dalai Lama is generally viewed as the only person capable of striking a decent deal for his people with China. Last week he turned 65. Should he die, many Tibetans feel their cause will perish with him. But late last year, an intriguing bridge between the two Tibets was spanned. A 14-year-old monk climbed out of his bedroom window in Tsurphu Monastery, 80 km north of Lhasa, and, by foot and by car, made his way surreptitiously to Nepal and then to Dharamsala. His name is Ugyen Trinley Dorge, but his title is Karmapa, the highest lama in the Kagyupa sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Like the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa is an incarnate: he is the 17th incarnation of a wise soul. Now 15, he is barely out of childhood, although strikingly tall and authoritative in voice. China seems stumped: it officially recognized his authority in the past and has yet to denounce him for his escape. Within Tibet, it remains legal to display the Karmapa's pictures. Since January, they have sold like hotcakes.
Can a 15-year-old boy upset, for better or worse, a standoff that is half a century old? Perhaps so, considering the treatment he is receiving in India. The Dalai Lama's government-in-exile has housed the Karmapa in an empty religious-studies center in Dharamsala, where he lives with a few helpers, a sister who preceded him into exile -- and more than 30 guards. He doesn't get out often, and every trip has to be planned well in advance. His sect has a vibrant monastery nearby and a headquarters in the Indian state of Sikkim, but the boy's public life has been restricted to daily audiences open to the devout and the curious, including many Western tourists. His aides say his day is dull even by the standards of a Buddhist monk and that he is lonelier in exile than he was in China. He has made the passage that is familiar to all of those who have moved between the two Tibets, from the unfree homeland to the limbo of exile. There is no easy solution to the Tibetan impasse. The arguments between the conflicting sides have barely budged in four decades, as if Tibet were some enigmatic Buddhist riddle that must be played out eternally. But times have changed. Just look at the thaws around the region. Beijing now manages a highly autonomous Hong Kong with a surprisingly light hand. Taiwan's new President Chen Shui-bian has invited his communist counterparts across the strait for a summit. North Korea's Kim Jong Il, head of another of the last communist holdouts, turned on the charm last month and suddenly a Korean rapprochement seems possible. Is there hope for Tibet? If Tibetan culture is to survive, time is of the essence. Beijing has flooded Tibet with Chinese settlers -- Tibetans may now be a minority in their major cities -- and cracked down on political activity, religious training and the teaching of the Tibetan language. "Tibetan culture has at least one more generation in it inside Tibet," says Ron Schwartz, a sociology professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and author of a book on the anti-Chinese riots of 1987 and 1988. "Beyond that it would be difficult to say." In other words, a political miracle may be the only hope that there will be a Tibet for anyone to go home to.
In the other Tibet, life in exile is hardly paradise. The religious education in India is fine -- some monks come for training at the Sera Monastic University in the southern part of the country and return afterward to Tibet. But Dharamsala was meant to be a temporary refuge, and the wait has gone on too long. The old now doubt that they will ever achieve their dream of going home, and their progeny show more interest in motorbikes and migration to the West. Tashi Choezum, a 58-year-old refugee in Bylakuppe, a Tibetan settlement in southern India, says she put her nine children through school so "they would fight for Tibet." But most now live abroad -- one more loose thread in a fraying community. The past few weeks have been good for the Dalai Lama and, if you watched TV, splendid for the Tibetan cause. His Holiness had his sixth meeting with Bill Clinton, sandwiched between talks with U.S. congressional leaders and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He spent time impressing backers on the West Coast. Late last week, the World Bank got caught up in the fray. It couldn't decide whether to lend China the funds to pay for the transfer of thousands of farmers onto fertile land in Qinghai province. Tibetan organizations abroad criticized the project as part of Beijing's plan to colonize areas populated by Tibetans. When it looked as if the World Bank might cancel the loan or impose new restrictions, China angrily said it didn't want the money and withdrew its request. To Beijing, however, such conflicts are mostly sideshows. China has possession of Tibet -- with its tourist potential, mineral wealth and position as a buffer against India -- and that, to paraphrase the old bromide, is nine-tenths of the battle. Tibetan groups proclaimed the collapse of the loan as a major victory. But the resettlement is still likely to take place, and without the outside world's financing and supervision. Politically, the communists don't need to dangle in front of Tibetans the "one country, two systems" formula that helped win Britain's agreement to return Hong Kong in 1997. Tibet has been in China's grasp since the People's Liberation Army invaded in 1950. Tibet's two waves of nationalistic uprising -- a major one in 1959, and a pair of riots in Lhasa in the 1980s -- make Beijing nervous, particularly with revered leaders like the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa overseas. |
he world's image
of Tibet -- a land of breathtaking beauty, intriguing spirituality
and intractable political travails -- is really based on two
Tibets. One is a vast landmass under the control, and a very
tight one, of the People's Republic of China. The other is a
widely scattered diaspora of Tibetans who rejected Chinese rule
with their feet. The center of that displaced tribe is the Indian
mountain town of Dharamsala, where a virtual Tibet has arisen.
Maroon-robed monks with shaven heads climb steep lanes for audiences
with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled God-King, who has lived there
since his escape from China in 1959. Prayer flags fly high atop
houses and monasteries: Tibetan tradition says blessings float
down from the flags on the mountain breezes. 
Spiritually the
Karmapa is not the Dalai Lama's successor. (His is a different
sect entirely.) But for Tibetans despondent over the impasse,
the boy represents new hope that the struggle can continue, and
possibly be resolved. Though the Karmapa was once considered
a helpless captive of China, his daring escape made him a hero
overnight. For now, at least, the Dalai Lama insists he's not
a successor. "Not in that way," he told Time. But he
concedes that the Karmapa will be an important leader. "I
have told him -- and I have said this publicly -- that my generation
is growing old, and the time has come to prepare the next generation
of spiritual leaders."
Tibet, particularly
in its cities, is a bubbling mix of modernization, intimidation
and a rapid influx of ugliness. Old neighborhoods are being demolished.
Brothels with Chinese sex workers flourish. Signs posted at monasteries
instruct the clergy to denounce the Dalai Lama. Tibetan study
courses at Lhasa University have been largely dropped -- the
few that remain are for students from abroad. Young Tibetans
are becoming frivolous, parents complain, with the overnight
import of consumerism. Portraits of the Dalai Lama have to be
hidden from neighborhood spies.