by TARIQ ALI
Four years after the brutal assault on the Tamil population and the killing of between 810,000 Tamils by the Sri Lankan army, there is trouble again. The saffron-robed fanatics, led by the BBSBodu Bala Sena: the most active and pernicious of Buddhist fundamentalist groups that have sprouted in Sinhala strongholds throughout the island are on the rampage again. This time the target is the relatively small Muslim minority. Muslim abattoirs have been raided, butchers shops attacked, homes targeted. Terrified kids and adults in Muslim areas are living in fear. The police stand by watching passively while the Sri Lankan TV crews film the scenes as if it were a school picnic.
A few weeks ago, Buddhist monks led some hoodlums and attacked the car sales room of a Muslim-owned company (Emerald Trading) in Pepliyana. Reason? An employee was stepping out with a young Sinhala woman and her father had complained to a local monk. A journalist on The Sunday Leader (a courageous broadsheet whose editor Lasantha Wickramatunga had, four months ago, denounced President Rajapaksa for corruption, predicted in print that he would be killed as a result and was) reported on 2 April that, Following the complaint, an eye-witness saw a monk leaving one of the temples in Pepiliyana followed by a group of youths, mostly under 25 years of age. The group carried stones and, people were later to discover, kerosene…'
As if the anti-Tamil pogroms were not enough to satisfy the blood-lust, a BBS blogger explained the reasoning' behind the targeting of Muslims in the Colombo Telegraph (6 March 2013):
"Muslims have been living in this country since 7th century and now only they want to have Halal food in Sri Lanka. Population wise they are only 5%. If we allow Halal, next time they will try to introduce circumcision on us. We have to nip these in the bud before it becomes a custom. We should never allow the Muslims and Christians to control anything in Sri Lanka. What is Halal to Muslims is Harem to Sinhala Buddhists. Slaughtering cow and eating beef should also be banned in Sri Lanka. Instead, we should promote pork. We are glad that the parliament has re-introduced pork in their menu. Hijab, burqa, niqab and purdah should be banned in Sri Lanka. The law and the legislature should always be under the control of the Sinhala-Buddhists and our Nationalist Patriotic president. After all, Sri Lanka is a gift from Buddha to the Sinhalese."
Difficult to imagine how circumcision could be nipped in the bud' even by a buddhist, or how the percentage of the Muslim population could have decreased from 9.7 percent in 2011 to 5 percent today. It has undoubtedly gone down but demographers doubt it could have done so by more than one or two percent at the most. The decline is obviously a direct result of unchecked harassment and persecution. It has gone down over the last few decades. The Tamils did their bit. Muslims in Tamil-majority areas were harassed and effectively driven out by ethnic purists from both the communities. They regret what they did now because it has been done to them on a much larger scale.
If it were only the BBS mouthing this nonsense, it would be one thing. But many within Sinhala political-military mainstream pander to rhetoric of this sort. In Pottuvil in the Ampara district, for instance, where the Muslims are a majority, the uniformed soldiers have been collaborating with the local monks and monasteries to erect Buddhist statues and inflaming the region in noise pollution via loudspeakers which start early with Buddhist hymns and a nightly replay. Local women who own land are being driven off it: the monasteries steal as the army provides protection.
The 1911 consensus revealed, as has always been the case, that the Buddhists compose a huge majority (70.2 percent), followed by the Tamil Hindus (12.6), Muslims (9.7) and Christians (7.4). Nobody threatens the Buddha or his followers except fanatics from within.
What of Buddha's gift? It was stolen by European imperialists for 450 years; first by the Portuguese (who intermarried eagerly regardless of caste or social location but insisted on conversion to Catholicism with the locals, leaving behind a socially integrated layer that still bears the old names: Perera, Da Silva, Fernado, Mirano, etc), next came the Dutch who only married the local upper castes leaving behind a burgher cast with names like Kretzer, Van der Porten, Ondaatje; and lastly by the British who didn't marry the locals at all. Had gay marriages been legal, Lord Mountbatten might well have defied the pattern.
What really freaks the Buddhist hardliners is the suggestion that the gift could not have been given to Buddhists alone. The earliest architectural finds reveal Buddhist and Tamil (Hindu) objects. Hardly surprising given the proximity of South India to Northern Sri Lanka, not unlike Sicily and the mainland. And at one point the island must have been land-linked to its parent. Who came first was a burning issue throughout the colonial period. Now it cannot even be discussed since the solution' of the Tamil question.
Ever since independence in 1948, Buddhist fundamentalism has been the driving force behind Sinhala intransigence on the Tamil question'. A Buddhist monk assassinated S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the country's fourth Prime Minister, in 1959. His crime? Making too many (in fact they were too few) concessions to the country's large Tamil minority had cost him his life and spawned a dynasty. But the deterrent effect worked. Sinhala politicians of all stripes began to pander to the monks. Anti-Tamil discrimination was institutionalised. It was a tragedy for the island. The notion that these warped methods could produce long-term stability is risible.
Mainstream Tamil politicians had nothing to show for their labours in the Sri Lankan parliament. As the situation deteriorated, young people became more and more alienated both from Colombo and the elders of Jaffna. They began to speak of Vietnam, Che Guevara and armed struggle as the only way to free themselves from their rulers. There was an example closer to home. If Bengali Muslims could split from their Muslim brethren in West Pakistan and create Bangladesh, why not the Tamils?
Denied reforms, a new generation of post-colonial Tamils turned their back on reformism and opted for something more dangerous. Colombo would soon be confronted with the spectre of urban guerrilla warfare. Having denied the Tamils effective autonomy, they were now faced with a civil war. In 1976, the militants formed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and raised the demand for Eelam…an independent Tamil homeland. They succeeded, for a time, in galvanising an entire generation. Their audacity in those early days drew gasps of admiration even from their opponents. Sixteen and seventeen year olds raided banks to fund their struggle, making their getaways on bikes through the old narrow lanes camouflaged by the permanent guard of honour in the shape of the ancient Palmyra trees and their giant leaves. Their targets were police stations and government officials. When state repression multiplied, local Tamil community leaders shielded their children. They were proud of them. Years of collaboration with the last colonial power had given the older Tamils an image of docility, people in a pose of permanent surrender. No longer.
The tragedy of the Tamils echoed that of similar movements elsewhere. The Tigers were, as armies are, led by their commanders who brooked no dissent. They turned on their own and their mass base became passive and embittered. Sensational acts of terror became a substitute for a political strategy, thus alienating all possible allies in the South. Warring factions fought each other and the Sinhala politicians in Colombo chuckled with delight, bided their time and embarked on large-scale repression that spared nobody. The grand finale in which Tamil men, women and children, without any links to the Tigers were killed in huge numbers, in comparison making civil war in the former Yugoslavia look like a boisterous dinner party. Much of the blame lies with Sinhala chauvinism and its grip on the island's politics. Even the predominantly Sinhala JVP radicals of the Seventies, the first victims of the government and killed in the thousands for challenging its monopoly of violence had extremely ambiguous positions on the Tamil issue. But the Tigers cannot be exempted for their crimes against their own people. There was no justification whatsoever for their brand of authoritarian terrorism. Suicide bombings which they pioneered in Asia were a cynical tactic revealing the Supreme Leader's hold on his membership. Cyanide pillsthat every guerrilla carried are an inducement to self-destruction.
The island is now in a terrible mess. The International Crisis Group report of February 2013 makes for grim reading. Expressed in polite language the message is clear. Rajpaksa's outfit is an authoritarian government, possibly guilty of war crimes for which there is plentiful evidence. The government's use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act' to repress Tamil civil rights, the constant presence of the army in Tamil regions, the curbs on the press and the sacking of an awkward Chief Justice are all highlighted. Hewr replacement is a timeserver who has already declared that the civil rights of the population are not being violated.
The remit of the report does not extend to the scale of corruption in the country. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is also in charge of Defense, Urban Development, Finance and Ports and Highways. One can only imagine the scale of the kickbacks. As if this were not enough, a brother, Basil, is the Minister for Economic Development, another brother Chamal, is the Speaker of the Parliament, a nephew Shashindra is Chief Minister of Uva, a key province, a cousin, Jaliya Wickramasriya is Ambassador in Washington, his brother-in-law Udayanga Weeratunga is Ambassador to Russia and his 25 year-old boy, Narmat, is the MP for Hambantota, a strategically crucial port, funded by Beijing and, together with Gwadar in Pakistan, part of China's strategic string of pearls.' Chinese policy towards Sri Lanka (and, for that matter, Pakistan) today is consistent. Mao Zedong and Chou en Lai supported the Sri Lankan government when it crushed the JVP uprising and destroyed the best of Sinhala's youth (a mass grave of some of the victims was discovered only a few weeks ago); their successors have given open backing to the current regime and Chinese state security bigwigs have been photographed with the Sinhala army in Jaffna, enjoying the sights and inspecting regions where Chinese projects of various sorts will soon dot the coastline.
The London-based octogenarian Tamil novelist and writer, A. Sivanandan is despondent. He told me that he fears not just for the Tamils but also the Sinhalese people:
Defeated, the Tamils are now rethinking everything, at least in the diaspora which so heavily and uncritically supported the Tigers. They are no longer talking of independence, but of political rights and democracy. Is it too late? I honestly don't know. The Buddhist monks will soon turn on their own, denouncing Sinhalese who are not orthodox Buddhists and if Rajapaksa, family and friends back them, they might be in for a surprise. Mass uprisings are in the air. All that is left is hope.'
He might have added Hebert's ditty to the mixture. The late colonial Bishop of Madras and Calcutta wrote after a visit in 1819:
What tho' the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile?
The Commonwealth leaders and their Queen who will soon assemble on the island could do worse than sing these lines for a start. And will talk of Burma joining the Commonwealth be nipped in the bud? Buddhists have clashed with a tiny Muslim minority and driven them out of their villages, though the cause in this case appears to be material rather than ethno-religious Puritanism. The Buddhists wanted the land for themselves. A macabre confrontation resulted in, of all places, an Indonesian refugee camp where the Burmese Muslims had been provided with shelter. Eight Burmese Buddhist fisherman whose vessel had foundered in nearby waters were also rescued by the Indonesians and taken to the same camp. That night the two sides battled and all the fishermen apart from one were killed. Muslim casualties were two dead, and seven wounded. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/o...mentalism/
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Here's a statue of the Buddha stolen by the SS Ahnenerbe.
Quote:Priceless Tibetan Buddha statue looted by Nazis was carved from meteorite
Relic taken by SS in 1930s analysed by researchers following reappearance at auction in 2007
Mark Taylor guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 September 2012 00.26 BST
Jump to comments (180)
The Buddhist statue that a Nazi expedition brought back from Tibet. Photograph: Elmar Buchner/AP
A priceless Buddha statue looted by Nazis in Tibet in the 1930s was carved from a meteorite which crashed to the Earth 15,000 years ago, according to new research.
The relic bears a Buddhist swastika on its belly an ancient symbol of luck that was later co-opted by the Nazis in Germany.
Analysis has shown the statue is made from an incredibly rare form of nickel-rich iron present in falling stars.
The 1,000-year-old carving, which is 24cm high and weighs 10kg, depicts the god Vaisravana, the Buddhist King of the North, and is known as the Iron Man statue.
It was stolen before the second world war during a pillage of Tibet by Hitler's SS, who were searching for the origins of the Aryan race.
It eventually made its way to a private collection and was hidden away until it was auctioned in 2007.
The new owner approached Dr Elmar Buchner of University of Stuttgart to unlock the secrets of the unusual carving's past.
Buchner's team of researchers from Germany and Austria dated it to a specific event in astronomy history when the Chinga meteorite fell in the border region of eastern Siberia and Mongolia between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.
Tests proved the icon was made of a rare ataxite class, the rarest meteorite type found on Earth.
Gold prospectors discovered debris from the Chinga crash in 1913, but the fragment from which the statue was carved was collected centuries before.
Meteorites have long been heralded as acts of God across many cultures, and early knives and jewellery were often carved from the remnants of space rocks. But tracing their exact origins has proved difficult for scientists.
"We were quite astonished by the results," Buchner told the online journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
"If we are right that it was made in the Bon culture in the 11th century, it is absolutely priceless and absolutely unique worldwide," Buchner said.
"It is extremely impressive, it was formerly almost completely gilded there is a great mystery represented by it."
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
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[TD] I. For Lords and Lamas Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises, none more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor dogmatic--so say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a meditative and investigative discipline intended to promote an inner harmony and enlightenment while directing us to a path of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is not only on oneself but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of one's connection to all people and things. "Socially engaged Buddhism" tries to blend individual liberation with responsible social action in order to build an enlightened society. A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and widely varying forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal fanaticism, nor free of the violent and exploitative pursuits so characteristic of other religions. In Sri Lanka there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded history about the triumphant battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore. During the twentieth century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, armed battles between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have taken many lives on both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty of the world's most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them were religious, specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist.[SUP]1[/SUP] In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, "it would use worshippers' donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars." [SUP]2[/SUP] As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects are often fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies of the leadership. For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the prestigious complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than 1,400 years, "a nasty battle" arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the Tacchu, a group of temples nominally under the chief priest's sway. The Tacchu monks accused Komatsu of selling writings and drawings under the temple's name for his own gain. They also were appalled by the frequency with which he was seen in the company of women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who were critical of his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and made it into the courts.[SUP]3[/SUP] But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort of strife? And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that "the pervasive influence of Buddhism" in Tibet, "amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment." [SUP]4[/SUP] A reading of Tibet's history suggests a somewhat different picture. "Religious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet," writes one western Buddhist practitioner. "History belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan lamas and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and nonviolent goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old Tibet was much more like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation." [SUP]5[/SUP] In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. His two previous lama "incarnations" were then retroactively recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers. [SUP]6[/SUP] For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in bitterly violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too "like eggs smashed against rocks…. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names." [SUP]7[/SUP] In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama's denomination). The Gelug school, known also as the "Yellow Hats," showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional prayers: "Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/ who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine." [SUP]8[/SUP] An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. [SUP]9[/SUP] This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches." Much of the wealth was accumulated "through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending." [SUP]10[/SUP] Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself "lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace." [SUP]11[/SUP] Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [SUP]12[/SUP] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma." [SUP]13[/SUP] In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs. Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. [SUP]14[/SUP] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers. In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [SUP]15[/SUP] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery's land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.[SUP]16[/SUP] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [SUP]17[/SUP] As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf's maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds. One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: "Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished"; they "were just slaves without rights."[SUP]18[/SUP] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord's men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.[SUP]19[/SUP] The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.[SUP]20[/SUP] The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives. [size=12]The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion."[SUP]21[/SUP] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [SUP]22[/SUP][/SIZE] In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.[SUP]23[/SUP] Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of oppression." At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft." Tibetan rulers "invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth."[SUP]24[/SUP] As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism's western proselytes. II. Secularization vs. Spirituality What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the Dalai Lama's rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration "to promote social reforms." Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. "Contrary to popular belief in the West," claims one observer, the Chinese "took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion."[SUP]25[/SUP] Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.[SUP]26[/SUP] The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet. The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.[SUP]27[/SUP] Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.[SUP]28[/SUP] Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.[SUP]29[/SUP] "Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure," writes Hugh Deane.[SUP]30[/SUP] In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: "As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed."[SUP]31[/SUP] Eventually the resistance crumbled.
[size=12]Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.[SUP]32[/SUP] [/SIZE] Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler's SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese "were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived." They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.[SUP]33[/SUP] By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.[SUP]34[/SUP] Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But monks who had been conscripted as children into the religious orders were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.[SUP]35[/SUP] Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that "more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation."[SUP]36[/SUP] The official 1953 census--six years before the Chinese crackdown--recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.[SUP]37[/SUP] Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else. Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They themselves, however, have been charged with acts of brutality by exile Tibetans. The authorities do admit to "mistakes," particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls "and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades."[SUP]38[/SUP] In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit some Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.[SUP]39[/SUP] By the 1980s many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities abroad, "restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there."[SUP]40[/SUP] As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and tolerated by officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard forms of worship were allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had to sign a loyalty pledge that they would not use their religious position to foment secession or dissent. And displaying photos of the Dalai Lama was declared illegal.[SUP]41[/SUP] In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China's immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and "patriotic education." During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in "political subversion." Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.[SUP]42[/SUP] Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus mainly on Chinese history and culture. Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (There is only a one-child limit for Han families throughout China, and a two-child limit for rural Han families whose first child is a girl.) If a Tibetan couple goes over the three-child limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by district.[SUP]43[/SUP] None of these child services, it should be noted, were available to Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.
. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans. Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to return to power. "I've already lived that life once before," said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, "I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave."[SUP]57[/SUP]
Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (University of California Press, 2000), 6, 112-113, 157.
Kyong-Hwa Seok, "Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple Turf," San Francisco Examiner, 3 December 1998.
Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2006.
Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998), 205.
Erik D. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today (Alaya Press 2005), 41.
Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet (Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123; and Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (University of California Press, 1995), 6-16.
Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 50.
Stephen Bachelor, "Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden," Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 7, Spring 1998. Bachelor discusses the sectarian fanaticism and doctrinal clashes that ill fit the Western portrait of Buddhism as a non-dogmatic and tolerant tradition.
Dhoring Tenzin Paljor, Autobiography, cited in Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 8.
Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.
See Gary Wilson's report in Worker's World, 6 February 1997.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.
As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.
Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.
Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.
Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1959), 15, 19-21, 24.
Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.
Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.
A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.
Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96.
Waddell, Landon, O'Connor, and Chapman are quoted in Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125.
Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52.
Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985), 29.
See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet," Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998.
On the CIA's links to the Dalai Lama and his family and entourage, see Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (London: Faber and Faber, 1989).
Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet."Â
Hugh Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet,"Â CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 1987).
George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos Communist China and Tibet (1964), quoted in Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet." Deane notes that author Bina Roy reached a similar conclusion.
See Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance, 248 and passim; and Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet, passim.
Harrer, Return to Tibet, 54.
Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 36-38, 41, 57-58; London Times, 4 July 1966.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 29 and 47-48.
Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet," Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.
Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.
Elaine Kurtenbach, Associate Press report, 12 February 1998.
Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 47-48.
Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 8.
San Francisco Chonicle, 9 January 2007.
Report by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril (Berkeley Calif.: 2001), passim.
International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril, 66-68, 98.
im Mann, "CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in '60s, Files Show,"Â Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1998; and New York Times, 1 October, 1998.
News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 3.
The Dalai Lama in Marianne Dresser (ed.), Beyond Dogma: Dialogues and Discourses (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1996)
These comments are from a book of the Dalai Lama's writings quoted in Nikolai Thyssen, "Oceaner af onkel Tom," Dagbladet Information, 29 December 2003, (translated for me by Julius Wilm). Thyssen's review (in Danish) can be found at http://www.information.dk/Indgang/VisArk...154141.txt.
"A Global Call for Human Rights in the Workplace,"Â New York Times, 6 December 2005.
San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 2007.
San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2005.
Times of India 13 October 2000; Samantha Conti's report, Reuter, 17 June 1994; Amitabh Pal, "The Dalai Lama Interview," Progressive, January 2006.
The Gelders draw this comparison, The Timely Rain, 64.
Michael Parenti, The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories, 2006).
John Pomfret, "Tibet Caught in China's Web,Â" Washington Post, 23 July 1999.
Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 3.
Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 13 and 138.
Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 21.
Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, passim. For books that are favorable toward the Karmapa appointed by the Dalai Lama's faction, see Lea Terhune, Karmapa of Tibet: The Politics of Reincarnation (Wisdom Publications, 2004); Gaby Naher, Wrestling the Dragon (Rider 2004); Mick Brown, The Dance of 17 Lives (Bloomsbury 2004).
Magda Hassan Wrote:Looks like it was a European creation and not a Tibetan one so who was to gain?
The SS Ahnenerbe.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
