Truth: The Strength of Our Struggle
(Tibetan Review | June 2004)
My old-man friend refuses to believe that the 'Inji' soldiers could
inflict such violence on Iraqi prisoners, simply because as a refugee he
has been sponsored all his life by an Inji, and he knows hundreds of other
Tibetans, old people, monks, and babies living in the kindness of foreign
aid. Recently, Dharamsala saw posters splashed across the streets with
images of a Chinese soldier dragging a Tibet freedom fighter juxtaposed
with pictures of US & UK soldiers torturing a naked Iraqi prisoner laid
out on the same page, the title read in Tibetan, "Torture has no different
face".
Thanks to all the kind-hearted Injis, the image of the American and the
British soldiers in the eyes of the Tibetans tarnished, but a little.
There were Tibetans who said that they would rather live a life in the US
prison than continue the 'drag' life in India. The recent images of
helpless Iraqi prisoners being tortured in the most humiliating manner by
the "civilized and modern" forces led by United States of America and
United Kingdom has got the Tibetans rethinking. The images naturally
invoked empathy as common victims of foreign military invasion as that of
the Iraqis. When China first invaded Tibet, they came in as friends,
showing camaraderie to win over the natives. I know many old palas and
amalas who in their teens worked with Chinese cadres, buildings roads and
bridges. China looked at Tibet as a treasure house inhabited by the
"barbaric and dirty people whose mind is poisoned by its religion."
It was true that aristocrats and local fiefs ran Tibet and there was
slavery. There were no schools in the modern sense of four-walled
classroom, 40 odd students and a boring teacher. There were no metal roads
or cement bridges. Like any community there were social and political
problems in Tibet. But, who are they to come to our country and dictate
terms to us? We could have sorted out the problems ourselves.
China came to Tibet with the mission, to "liberate" Tibet from the "old
and barbaric mind and poverty" and also to liberate its people from the
"imperialist foreigners". Our direction of development was focussed
inwards. In the same way our culture aims to understand the mind or the
inner being or the universe within. By the help of Tibetans' studies,
practices and scholarships a religion like Buddhism, which was born in
India, attained greater heights as a philosophy and way of life.
The Communist China's ambition to uproot the "old and traditional mind"
sent tremors of destruction all across China. Today, China is bereft of
its spirituality. The Chinese have killed it for themselves and have
caused irreparable damage to other communities that they have occupied and
imposed their communism like the Islamic Turks (in what is now called
'Xinjiang'), Mongolians, Manchus and the Tibetans. But the strength of our
spirituality is such that it has survived all the wanton destruction. It
is there at a place where no physical force can reach – it is there in
everyone's heart like a butter lamp.
Today's China blames the "Gang of Four" for all the destruction caused on
the cultural houses across China during the Cultural Revolution. However,
the present corrupt Chinese leadership lives on the pumped-up nationalism
and the indoctrination China injected during those years of 1960's. I have
met some Chinese students learning Buddhism from Tibetan lamas, they say:
"because our Buddhist cultural roots were snapped, with the new
materialistic life-style devoid of any cultural roots, I feel in exile in
China." Today, the Chinese government is morally degenerated. The 400-odd
capitalist-minded politburo members now run the country in the name of
communism, without any labour rights or the right to expression of the
common people. China is weak under its apparent monolithic economic and
military power. Today it is a country surviving on shaky grounds of
silenced people's agony. And this makes me unable to understand as to why,
the world's highest moral authority His Holiness the Dalai Lama is willing
to make Tibet a party to this corrupt communist regime, a regime that has
lost the confidence of its own people.
The recent 37-page white paper released by China called "Regional Ethnic
Autonomy in Tibet" yet again retorted that His Holiness should give up the
demand for independence of Tibet. Even after 25 years of effort by the
exiled Tibetan community for a "genuine autonomy" for the Tibetans; within
the mainframe of People's Republic of China and without asking to separate
Tibet from the Mainland China. Such demands have repeatedly come up.
With this, the Tibetan hope for a Hong Kong kind of autonomy has been
thrashed. I have always spoken for Independence of Tibet and of nothing
less than that. Here we do not need to beg, we work for it and earn it for
ourselves with dignity what we have lost. And with the power of truth it
is possible, and we can do this. One of the things that I greatly
appreciate about His Holiness is his vision of Tibet, for the future. The
idea of Tibet being a self-reliant and self-sufficient country and the
fact that it be made a zone of peace. With this I am hopeful that the
dignity of the people can be restored, and its culture would be preserved
and promoted. It's a different question altogether that even after proving
Tibet as an independent country in the language of the nation state – the
International Commission of Jurist, declaring so, at the time of Chinese
occupation – no state government today supports this stand. And this is so
frustrating a fact that we have to live with. Still there is patience that
the truth will triumph. The truth remains that Tibet was an independent
country until the Chinese occupation in 1949. Today, China may have
silenced all the heads of the government with her lure of money and power,
over the heads of the billion Chinese who look for a free and democratic
China. But the honeymoon will not last beyond the conjugal heat. The truth
is with the people. People of the world support us. Our leader His
Holiness the Dalai Lama is loved more than the Chinese leaders whether it
is Hu or Wen.
It is this strength that gives me the conviction that even after the Dalai
Lama, the Tibetan struggle will live on, and perhaps would gain more
urgency, unlike some pessimists who say that the Tibetan issue will die
with the present Dalai Lama. Often, I have been asked the meaning of the
word Semshook, the title of my one-page column. At personal levels, I have
offered my explanation. Semshook is the courage and determination it takes
for the truth to prevail. The willingness to make any sacrifice the truth
demands, and finally the act of achieving it. Such a Semshook we must all
inculcate lest the gold remain in dust for a very, very long time.
How and when would the truth prevail depends on us. Nobody will champion
our cause, whether it be the US or India. We have to work and make it
happen on our own.
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