The Tibetan
Dilemma
China blames the Dalai Lama, who
fled Tibet in 1959 for much of the unrest in Tibetan inhabited
regions. Among others, he is vilified as a ‘separatist’ and a
‘splittist’. Beijing accuses
him and his so-called 'clique’ for fanning the flames of protest in
the current self immolation cases. In trying to stamp the
unrest, monks
and nuns alike are sent to re-education camps. To marginalize and
isolate the Dalai Lama, it refuses to deal with governments who
invited the Dalai Lama to their countries and even warning others
of a strain in relations.
It has taken upon itself to choose the Panchen Lama, also
putting in place new regulations and laws, accord itself the final
right to approve and recognize all new reincarnated high Lamas and
the next Dalai Lama. These steps are taken presumably to pre-empt
the future selection process for the next Dalai Lama. If
successful, it should help in paving the way to garner more
religious loyalty for
the Motherland and also counter separatist sentiments in
Tibet.
But how on earth religious loyalty
can be gain from the masses when the whole selection process for
reincarnated Lamas including the Dalai Lama are engineered by a
bunch of secular officials is a great mystery only the Communist
mind can understand. It goes without saying that it
does not matter whether such policies are acceptable to the
adherents of the religion or is in line with the religious
traditions and practices. To the Communist, all that is required is
to ramp whatever that is enacted down the throats of the believers
and if they so much as protest or do not accept, just beat the hell
out of them and send them off to re-education camps and that should
do the trick.
In their effort to integrate the Tibetans
into the Motherland, the Chinese government had tried to influence
local cultural practices, erode the usage of the Tibetan as a
language by introduction Chinese and English languages into the
school curriculum even at primary school level. Never mind the
thousands of Buddhist temples and shrines it has since destroyed
from the late 1950.
However, one should also point out that
Beijing have spent billions in development projects in Tibet over
the past several decades and living standards of ethnic Tibetans
have undoubtedly been raised as a result of these developments. It
has also given ethnic minorities the advantage to a place in the
nation universities by giving them preferential treatment through
the lowering of admission criteria. But getting people to trade off
their way of life and beliefs for a higher standard of living with
limiting freedom and expected conformity to an alien system of
government is certainly a no, no, for even the poorest to
accept.
What all these doings and practices have
done is to cause nothing but simmering resentment in the mind of
the Tibetan peoples and without doubt, being passed on to future
generations as well. One wonders when the Communists will wake up
to the reality that some of such policies and practices just do not
work in winning over the heart and mind of anyone on the receiving
end.
On the other hand, what we hear from the
Tibetan government-in-exile and it’s so called ‘clique’ of Human
Rights Watch, Free Tibet movement and other interest groups is the
inevitable condemnation of the Chinese government policies with
words such as ‘repressive’, ‘regulated’, ‘eradicate’, ‘isolate’ and
‘vicious cycle of radicalization’. Other than these words and
telling the Chinese government to do what they considered as
appropriate and necessary; one have yet to see such rhetoric
achieving any substantive good or better rights for ethnic
Tibetans.
We can expect to see all things continuing
to remain the same in Tibet as ever before. Frankly, the fate of
the Tibetan people now and in the near future lies solely in the
hand of the Chinese government. All others that come into the
picture are nothing but just ‘side shows’.
Lobsang Sangay, the prime minister of the
Tibetan government-in-exile commented that one Buddhist lesson he
have learned is that ‘one who is born has to die’. Quote - ‘that
means what you do is what you leave behind. If you live for
yourself, you won't make much difference. I, as a Buddhist, as a
Tibetan, want to live for a cause greater than myself and my
life’.
What is this greater cause he is
referring to, one wonders? But for sure in the Dhammapada verse 6,
it is states that ‘There are those who do not
realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this
settle their quarrels’. If that is exactly what the
Honourable Lobsang Sangay has in mind, than I would say, yea, it is
certainly a great cause.
In the meantime the self-immolations and
violent are likely to continue but hopefully it will not reach the
point where the religious order of monks and nuns will become a
rarity in Tibet. All we can do for now is to give our fellow
Tibetan Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike the moral support,
sympathy, compassion, and that all will be well and get better in
the near future.