Circling the Issue: South Asian connections to Tibet

By Iona Liddell and Samdup Tenzin in Issue 5 - July 2012

The town was under complete lock down that cold January day when two young Tibetan men ducked into the courtyard of a hotel, doused their bodies in kerosene and set themselves alight. Running out into the streets of Ngaba in Sichuan province they shouted “His Holiness the Dalai Lama must return to Tibet” and “May His Holiness the Dalai Lama live for 10,000 years!” as they burned. Tennyi, a monk of Kirti monastery, died of his injuries that same day, and Tsultrim, thought to be an ex-monk of the same monastery, passed away the next day.

Tennyi and Tsultrim’s self-immolations were the first of 2012 in Tibet. There have been 23 more since then, taking the total number of self-immolations since 2009 to 38. Over that time, the image of the burning Tibetan – most often a monk or a nun, but also lay people, the young and the old – has been seared by the media into the world’s consciousness. Struck by the poignant horror of such acts, and unable to conduct field research, there has been a certain reticence amongst commentators to deal with their meaning analytically. But the self-immolations are clearly messages. Although an exhaustive statement cannot be made about what each of the self-immolations ‘means’, at the very least it can be concluded that the Tibetans who self-immolated were not content with their lot and, as the immolations were public spectacles, this discontent was sourced outside of themselves in the local socio-political context. It can thus be speculated that their acts embodied the concerns of many people in the same area.

A large majority of Tibet’s self-immolations have been carried out in Sichuan province, outside the Chinese-designated Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). At a talk on the 18^th May of 2012 at the London School of Economics (LSE), Tibetan scholar Tsering Shakya argued that this is in part due to relatively more liberal security policies outside of the TAR as well as the specific dynamics at play in that “very localised context”. After protests had covered large swathes of the Tibetan areas in 2008, the Chinese government identified Ngaba town as a sensitive area due to the existence of Kirti monastery – a stronghold of Tibetan culture and religion with substantial sway in the surrounding areas. The resulting security clampdown on the town is still ongoing, with military checkpoints every 30 to 40 metres along the street. Monks and nuns have been forced to undergo intensive patriotic reeducation classes during which they are pressured to regularly denounce their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Frequent news stories in the local press also serve to malign him publicly. Shakya believes it is highly plausible that these local dynamics have engendered the spate of self-immolations. At LSE he stressed that reading the self-immolations as part of a pan-Tibetan struggle – as many have, including audience members that day – is too assumptive an analysis at present, likely more suited to exile Tibetans’ desire to see a political movement building than to the, as yet unstudied, lived realities on the ground.

But, just over two weeks later, on the 27th of May 2012 two self-immolations in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa,  significantly changed the dynamic. They were carried out at the heart of old Lhasa outside the Jokhang temple– an important place of pilgrimage for Tibetans from across the plateau, which has also been the site of previous protests by Tibetans against the Chinese rule. In March 2008, a group of monks staged a non-violent protest there which spread to Tibetan areas outside the TAR and triggered a nationwide uprising. In a place like Lhasa where ideas of Tibetan identity and political autonomy coalesce, the overt political symbolism of these self-immolations could not go unnoticed. In their aftermath, Tibetologist Robert Barnett told media that Lhasa was in a “boiling situation” with the Chinese authorities “really worried” because of the sense that these acts were clearly “driven by an idea, a political goal.”  Such concern led them to arrest over 600 Tibetans in the self-immolations’ tense aftermath.

The Lhasa self-immolations have brought the act beyond local contexts, revealing it to be part of a wider social and political struggle by Tibetans both against the oppression of the Chinese state, and for an assertion of their cultural and political identity, manifested in calls for the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet. Thus, the on-going cycle of self-immolations can no longer be detached from the larger socio-political context and downplayed as a local phenomenon triggered by local circumstances. The dynamics which have led to their form and occurrence are in part regional. From the historical to the political to the social, these self-immolations involve South Asia.

For centuries prior to the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1951, the inhabitants of the Himalayas had met across the present-day borders, trading, inter-marrying, exchanging cultural practices and religious beliefs. A famous shared son of the Himalayas was born round 2500 years ago, in what is now southern Nepal. Siddartha Gautam travelled, learned, meditated and finally gained enlightenment as the Buddha in present-day northern India. 1000 years later, his teachings crossed the Himalayas to Tibet, to the court of King Songtsen Gampo. It is said that Gampo’s two wives – Chinese and Nepalese princesses – encouraged the King to adopt Buddhism. So began a series of religious exchanges that were to extend over centuries as a result of journeys undertaken by Indian and Tibetan monks and sages, bringing depth, widespread adherence and, at times, resurgence to Tibetan Buddhism throughout the Himalayan range. Compassion is a central tenet  of the teachings. In one incarnation, the Buddha came across a starving tiger and, seeing she was on the verge of eating her young cubs, sacrificed his own life instead, his pure intentions overriding the sin of suicide. In testimony to this flow of ideas, prayer flags now fly from the lake sides of Ladakh in the north of the range, to the bridges of Bhutan in the south. Cultural practices that developed alongside the religion and as a result of intermarriage along trade routes left a sense of shared identity amongst the inhabitants of the Himalayas. So it was that in 1910 the 13th Dalai Lama, when threatened by the then neighbouring Chinese administration, was able to take temporary refuge in a sympathetic India. In 1959, after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, the 14th Dalai Lama and thousands of other Tibetans fled Tibet, and were granted refuge in India by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Since then, on average between two to four thousand Tibetans have escaped repressive Chinese rule annually. Thanks to Nehru’s initial support for the Dalai Lama, Tibetans have been able to establish a government in exile and set up substantial refugee settlements with the support of the host countries and a range of international nongovernmental organizations. The exile governmentestimates that today around 109,000 Tibetans live in South Asia – making it the largest concentration of Tibetans outside Tibet. The circular motion of ideas and actions that occurred between Buddhist scholars back at the forging of Tibetan Buddhism now finds repetition in a circle of ideas which move between Tibet and South Asian countries who play host to Tibetan refugees.

News of self-immolations is most often broken to the world’s media from the Indian town of Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh – Tibet’s capital in exile. There Tibetan monks and laypeople work hard against China’s firewalls, radio jamming and phone surveillance and black-outs in order to maintain communication with those inside Tibet. For example, Kirti monastery’s sister establishment in India, populated mostly by monks from Tibet, has become a lifeline for information regarding the self-immolations in Ngaba. When it comes, the news prompts mass mourning and international media coverage. But the self-immolations are not restricted to Tibet. On 26th March 2012, Jamphel Yeshi fatally self-immolated on Indian soil on the eve of Hu Jinato’s visit to Delhi for the BRICS summit. In 1998, again in Delhi, Thubten Ngodup was the first recorded Tibetan to self-immolate, doing so to bring awareness to the Tibetan situation – this time in the context of a Tibetan hunger strike in Delhi which was being broken up by India authorities. As such, it is important to view Tibetan self-immolations as part of a continuing Tibetan struggle. This is reinforced by the fact that the few recorded last statements of some of the self-immolators compellingly call for a wider sense of Tibetan unity. Respected Buddhist Lama Sopa Rinpoche, 40 years and thus one of the older self-immolators, said:

“To all my spiritual brothers and sisters, and the faithful ones living elsewhere: You must unite and work together to build a strong and prosperous Tibetan nation in the future. This is the sole wish of all the Tibetan heroes. Therefore, you must avoid any quarrelling amongst yourselves…You must maintain unity and strength.”

Jamphel Yeshi, originally from Eastern Tibet but who set himself alight in Delhi, had this to say:
“My fellow Tibetans! If you care about your happiness and future, you must have the spirit of patriotism. Patriotism is the soul of a nation. Moreover, it is the confidence in search of truth; and also the harbinger of a happy future.”
As UK-based Tibetan scholar Tsering Topgyal propounds, the self-immolations can be seen to exist at one end of a spectrum of strategic resistance – predominantly nonviolent -  that Tibetans have been engaging in for decades, and increasingly so from 2008 onwards. ““Whether [Tibetans in Tibet] are self-immolating, writing poems, taking to peaceful protest on the streets or posting a blog, they are mostly speaking about Tibetan rights, they have the same goals and aspirations.”With Chinese authorities clamping down heavily upon conventional protests and demonstrations, especially in the aftermath of the pan-Tibetan uprising of 2008, a large number of disaffected Tibetans in the TAR and the adjoining Tibetan areas, have turned to forms of defiance which are largely non-confrontational and centred around a sense of their common heritage and identity.

This home-grown national self-awareness and non-cooperation movement, popularly known asLhakar, is aimed at countering Beijing’s intensified efforts in recent years to systematically undermine Tibetan people’s distinct culture, language and identity.

The Tibetan word “Lhakar” literally translates as “White Wednesday”; Wednesday is an auspicious day for Tibetans because it is, according to Tibetan astrology, the Dalai Lama’s soul day (lah-sah). AsLhakar provides a discreet avenue for people to express their loyalty towards the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause in an implicit manner without attracting harsh punitive consequences, Tibetans from all walks of life have enthusiastically embraced it as a form of strategic nonviolent resistance against what they see as Chinese government’s relentless onslaught on everything Tibetan under the sun.

Thus, Wednesdays for Tibetans have, in many ways, become synonymous with their struggle for survival as a nation and culture. An increasing number of Tibetans, especially the youths, are now asserting their “Tibetan-ness” by donning Tibetan attire and promoting Tibetan cuisine. Whilst some Tibetans are adopting vegetarianism and keeping fasts, many others are taking pledges to converse and write in the Tibetan language on a regular basis, and avoiding the use of Mandarin with fellow Tibetans. Intellectuals and individuals with creative skills are using social media, blogs and music to explicate what being a Tibetan means and entails today. One such example is a composition by a young musician from eastern Tibet which has become somewhat of an anthem amongst Tibetans on either side of the Himalayas:

We are the kin of the same parentage

We are the inheritors of one nation

O ruddy faced Tibetans!

Though seemingly benign, these are gestures of profound symbolic significance for Tibetans both within Tibet and without. And what they have cumulatively done is further consolidate the sense of unity and common purpose fostered by the 2008 uprising.

Notably, in many Tibetan areas, Lhakar has sparked other acts of  civil disobedience.  For instance, early last year, Tibetans in Nangchen county, Qinghai province decided to completely boycott Chinese vegetable and grocery stores to protest against skyrocketing prices of commodities. Locals there are now reportedly purchasing all their supplies from delegated Tibetan vendors and at much lower prices. There have been reports of such boycotts spreading to adjoining Tibetan areas as well. Similarly, in a show of open defiance, Tibetan monks in Lithang county, Sichuan province ignored orders from local authorities and enthroned a life-size portrait of the Dalai Lama during a religious gathering in July 2011 attended by more than 5,000 devotees representing all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism and the Bon tradition. Likewise, in October 2010, between 5,000 to 9,000 high school students from six different schools took to the streets of Tongren, Qinghai province to protest against the Chinese government’s plans to curb the use of the Tibetan language in their classrooms. Since then similar language protests have occurred in other neighbouring Tibetan areas, with the latest protest reported in March of this year. Also worthy of mention here are the mass burnings of garments made from animal fur in various parts of Tibet in response to the Dalai Lama’s appeal in 2006 against the use of tiger and leopard skins by some Tibetans for ornamental purposeswhich, conservationists say, was spurring illegal trade in animal fur and adversely affecting wildlife projects in South Asia and elsewhere. These mass fur-burnings were much less about ecological concern  and much more about being able to demonstrate allegiance to the Dalai Lama over the Chinese State.

This ongoing identity-driven, civil disobedience movement inside Tibet – which is seen by many as a new chapter in the Tibetan people’s five-decade old struggle for greater freedom – has ample historical antecedents in South Asia, in particular the Indian independence movement. It is not hard to see the parallels between  Lhakar and Mahatma Gandhi’s Swadeshi movement launched in 1921. For one,  both these movements were initiated in the aftermath of two very similar historical events -the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 and the pan-Tibetan uprising of 2008.  Tibetans inside Tibet appear to be coopting  elements of  Gandhi’s non-cooperation and Satyagraha movements and employing them to remonstrate against the PRC’s oppressive policies in their land.

Given that there has always been a two-way dissemination of ideas and influences across the Himalayas, it is hardly surprising that, in the face of oppression, Tibetans inside Tibet are emulating the path of strategic nonviolent resistance which was pioneered  against colonialism by a highly esteemed South Asian leader. This two-way dissemination of ideas, in recent decades, has been facilitated by the sizeable Tibetan Diaspora in South Asian countries such as India, Nepal and Bhutan. In fact, the exile community in South Asia has often acted as a conduit for the diffusion of various socio-political trends from across the globe through communication devices, news output or through the many Tibetans who have returned to family in Tibet after education or time spent in exile. With regard to the Lhakar Movement in Tibet, one could argue that certain acts of non-cooperation such as the boycott of Chinese businesses by Tibetans in Qinghai province may have been inspired by similar campaigns to boycott “Made in China” products launched by the leaders of the exile community in the early 1980s. That said, it must be emphasized that Lhakar, as a movement, has its origins inside Tibet. It was only after the movement started gaining momentum within Tibet that the Tibetan Diaspora in South Asia and elsewhere began initiating parallel campaigns to express solidarity with their compatriots back home. Incidentally, this has sparked a hitherto unseen fascination regarding Tibetan culture and identity especially among third generation Tibetans, and engendered an analogous cultural resurgence outside Tibet.

Such resurgence is reflected throughout the democracies of Himalayan South Asia, where, in stark contrast to Tibet, Himalayan cultures and languages have been able to flourish. In late 2011, Himalayan Buddhists gathered for a conference on the Nepali plains, at Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha. Australian Tibetologist Gabriel Lafitte noted its significance in creating a renewed sense of “heartfelt” identity amongst Himalayan peoples of Tibetan origin “and thus to a wider concept of Tibet as the spiritual home”. Significantly, the conference had the support of 17 members of Nepal’s parliament, including the Deputy Prime Minister, Vijay Kumar Gacchadhar, who attended as Chief guest. Events like this are manifestations of a growing sense of awareness in recent years among Himalayan peoples such as Sherpas, Tamangs, Bhutias, Ladakhis, Spitians, Bhutanese, Dompos, Monpas and others about their shared Tibetan heritage. Not surprisingly, these peoples, along with thousands of non-Himalayan Nepalese and Indians, form the core support base for Tibetans in South Asia. The Burmese people, with whom Tibetans share both cultural traits and a history of oppression, have also been very forthcoming in their support for the Tibetan cause. In fact, just days after protests broke out in Lhasa in March 2008, the All Burma Monks Alliance, an underground monk’s organization inside Burma founded in September 2007 during what is dubbed as the “Saffron Revolution”, and the International Burmese Monks Organization issued separate statements in support of Tibetan monks and condemned the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on Tibetan demonstrators.

Of all the South Asian states, the public level support for the Tibetan cause may well be most vocal in India. Given that the Tibetan movement has such strong similarities with the  Gandhian ideas and strategies of India’s independence movement, a large number of Indian citizens can identify with it. For instance, during the recently concluded BRICS summit in New Delhi, many prominent Indians especially from the Himalayan region and the North East expressed their outrage over racial profiling and preventive custody of Tibetans and “Tibetan-looking” Indian citizens by the authorities. In a show of sympathy, Union Minister Agatha Sangma who hails from the Indian state of Meghalaya in the northeast told reporters that Tibetans like everyone else should have the right to protest peacefully on Indian soil. Similarly, in 2008, Bhaichung Bhutia, the then captain of the Indian National Football team refused to carry the Olympic torch during the India leg of its journey to voice his support for the people of Tibet and their struggle.

Yet despite the public-level solidarity which is extended to Tibetans in South Asia, this has not translated into real political support. The Chinese government is sensitive to the fact that recognition of strong shared cultures and histories across the Himalayas negates its meta-narrative that Tibet has always been a part of China. This sensitivity is greatly increased by the fact that, until recently, Tibetan refugees residing in South Asian countries have been able to use their relative freedom to non-violently call for change in the Tibetan situation. The Tibetan uprising in 2008 sparked solidarity protests across the world, led by Tibetan exiles. These reached a height in Delhi, Dharamsala and Kathmandu where, daily, Tibetan refugees raised their voices against the regime on the other side of the Himalayas. Beijing is well aware that despite its closed borders and restricted communications, furtive connections on telephones and the internet, international news broadcasts, as well as refugees and returnees enable ideas to cross the physical and technological barriers that surround Tibet, allowing those inside, and the refugees outside to share in and shape one movement.

Shaken by the 2008 uprising, Beijing has since viewed Tibetan refugee activity as a serious threat to China’s political integrity. In a conscious move to mitigate this threat, China has firmly centred its political negotiations with northern South Asia on the issue of Tibet. Indeed, China’s interest in joining SAARC as an observer state, prominent Tibetan commentator Bhuchung K Tsering notes, is to be able to have more leverage on how South Asian countries deal with Tibet. Both politically and geographically, China now meets South Asia through the prism of Tibet.

China’s rise to the echelons of superpower means that over the past few years, the democratic ideals of Nepal, Bhutan and India have been strongly tested by a Chinese government keen to see adherence to a ‘One China’ policy, wherein states publicly support the concept of China’s territorial sovereignty. In order to prove their commitment to this policy, China uses considerable political pressure, soft power and financial incentives to encourage states bordering Tibet to stem the Tibetan refugee flow, and silence Tibetan refugee communities. As a result, where once they were safe havens, India, Bhutan and Nepal have become increasingly restrictive in their treatment of Tibetans.

This is most evident in Nepal, which is the least stable of the three Himalayan states, and receives the majority of new arrival Tibetan refugees. A decade-long conflict that ended in 2006, and the years of political turbulence which have followed gave Beijing opportunities to assert itself in Nepal’s internal affairs. After the conflict, China switched from providing arms to the Nepal Army to funding infrastructure projects and providing aid. In return, China asks for only one thing, a demonstrated commitment to stopping “anti-China” activities, in adherence with a One-China policy.  The freedoms which Tibetan refugees once enjoyed in Nepal have been dramatically reduced as a result.  In correlation with China’s funding of Nepal’s security forces, with the express command to quell “anti-China’ activities, the rates and lengths of detentions of Tibetan refugees have soared. Tibetans report being harassed and detained by police at protests, but also at cultural events and, often, seemingly, for no reason at all bar political expediency. In January 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao touched down into Kathmandu for a state visit – the highest level such visit in a decade – that lasted less than 5 hours. On the day before the visit, over 200 Tibetans were rounded up and detained, only to be later released without charge. While these Tibetans languished in detention, Wen Jiabao made clear China’s determined engagement with Nepal by announcing an increase in development aid to $119 million this year. The figure was just $128,200 in fiscal year 2005/6.

Though a stronger state, India too has often capitulated to Chinese pressure with regard to Tibetans. This was apparent in the run up to the BRICS summit in April this year when the Indian authorities cordoned off Tibetan colonies and hostels in and around Delhi and preemptively detained hundreds of Tibetan activists and students. But India has always walked a fine line on the issue of Tibet, its actions largely motivated by long-standing geopolitical concerns. A major factor in Sino-Indian relations is the 3,380 km long shared border that is disputed by both sides and along which numerous Chinese incursions have been reported in recent times. India claims that China has illegally occupied the Aksai Chin area bordering Tibet in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and China in turn lays claim on the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it refers to as “South Tibet”, and also parts of Sikkim. Ironically, much of this border was already demarcated via a bilateral agreement between British India and the then independent state of Tibet in 1914. India inherited this agreement on its independence in 1947 but the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1951 complicated the equation. So, to resolve this longstanding border issue, the two Asian giants have had several rounds of talks since the 1980s. But China has often made its participation in such talks conditional upon New Delhi restricting the activities of what it calls “splittist” elements from its territory. For example, in November 2011, Beijing pulled out of what was to be the 15th round of border talks between the Special Representatives of the two countries when New Delhi refused to call off a congregation of religious leaders and scholars in the Indian capital that was to be addressed by the Dalai Lama. Thus, India’s imposition of increased restriction on the political activities of exiled Tibetans in recent times should be viewed within this larger geopolitical context. Tibetans still greatly benefit from India’s hospitality, but are increasingly becoming a pawn in their political game with China.

In contrast to India, other less developed South Asian states like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma have readily echoed China’s position on Tibet and helped further Beijing’s agenda in South Asia. But these countries themselves are not immune to the adverse consequences of China’s presence in Tibet. The livelihoods of millions of people in South Asia depend upon rivers originating in Tibet. Chinese proposals to divert these rivers and build multiple dams on them are likely to hit them the hardest. As such, Beijing’s mismanagement of Tibetan rivers has the potential to disrupt economic activity in the whole of South Asia and trigger unprecedented social unrest in the region, far beyond Tibet.

Which brings us back to the messages that are the self-immolations.  Taking into account all the connections, Tibet is, in many ways, a South Asian nation. South Asians, having had such close connections with Tibetan people, are perhaps better equipped than most nations to ‘read’ the situation inside Tibet. But as South Asian states respond to the current geopolitical context by strengthening economic and political relationships with China rather than speaking up for their oppressed brethren, the trade-off is increased Chinese influence over their internal and external policies. Given that China also exerts control over South Asia’s water and threatens its northern states’ borders, that some Tibetans have gone to the lengths of setting themselves on fire to draw attention to their plight under Chinese rule is both a warning and an appeal, which South Asia – both public and political – would do well to heed.

Iona Liddell is a freelance writer-activist who has lived and worked in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. She writes on human rights, conflict and refugee issues in South Asia.

Samdup Tenzin is a writer, blogger, and Tibetan rights activists.

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Tibet burning  

By Topden Tsering

A close look at past and present shows the self-immolators and their struggle to be anything but apolitical.

Jamphel Yeshi, New Delhi, March 2012.

The string of self-immolations inside Tibet – started in 2009 by a Kirti Monastery monk named Tapey and which most recently claimed two monks in Barkham County on 30 March – shows no sign of letting up. On the contrary, despite the Chinese government unleashing one of its harshest crackdown to date, despite state paranoia and military repression even more acute than during the clampdown on the 2008 uprising, and despite the abysmal response from the international community, an incredible wind seems to be fanning across occupied Tibet – a wind at once frightening, and pregnant with hope.

While analysts scramble to offer logical explanations for these horrific protests, many of them regurgitate the obvious and overlook the vital. If anything, the self-immolations suggest three undeniable truths. One: the Tibetan freedom struggle’s patience has snapped. Two: these protests embody the movement’s radicalisation, which was a long time coming. And three: Tibetans inside Tibet, and not the exile leadership or the diaspora, drive the narrative of the struggle. As with the ground on which they fell, the 33 self-immolators (32 of them in the last year alone), embers falling from their bodies like rosary beads, have left the landscape of the Tibetan freedom movement irreparably scorched and irredeemably altered.

One recurring point of reference has been the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc who, photographed as he burned in meditation pose in Saigon in 1963, is immortalised in what remains the most iconic image of self-immolation as protest. The Vietnamese self-immolator was protesting against the religious persecution of the country’s Buddhist population by the Roman Catholic administration ruling Vietnam at the time. Thich Quang Duc and those Vietnamese who later followed his example were all from the monastic community. To a great extent the same is also true of Tibetan self-immolators, the majority of whom have been monks or nuns. The parallel, however, stops there.

Beyond that, ascribing any exaggerated religious impulse to the self-immolations is unwarranted. Doing so amounts to fabrication, and is a disservice to those who have sacrificed their lives. While some such distortions are simply ill articulated, others are downright manipulative. A case in point is an article titled ‘Man on Fire’ (Himal Southasian, 10 February 2012) written by Bhuchung K Tsering of the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), who termed the self-immolations a precursor to a ‘Tibetan Buddhist Liberation Theology’.

Bhuchung’s emphasis on religion, supported by quotes from an obscure Peruvian priest, could have been dismissed as banality had the article’s overall implications not been so damaging. As vice president of a generously funded Tibet advocacy group established to lobby for support from the US government, Bhuchung’s position has made him one of the foremost advocates of the ‘Middle Way’. Bhuchung’s utterances have typically centred on censoring Tibetans’ political nationalism and independence aspirations. His writings, even on crises such as the one currently unfolding in Tibet, read almost like brochures for a Buddhist spiritual utopia.

In his Himal piece, Bhuchung’s purpose is seemingly to discredit any pro-independence reading of the fiery protests. Citing his response to the first Tibetan self-immolation in 1998, Bhuchung pats himself on the back for having ‘warned against reactions that unintentionally glorified death’, before quoting his own piece in the Tibetan Review at that time:

Thupten Ngodup’s action was the result of the courage of his conviction. Interpreting it in any other way so as to bolster a short-term political objective would not be doing justice to Thupten’s action. We should not take his action as a model...for other Tibetan freedom fighters to follow.

Bhuchung’s chastisement is presumably directed at those who advocate Tibet’s complete independence, among them the exiled political activist Jamyang Norbu who, shortly after Thupten Ngodup’s self-immolation, wrote a studied piece on the political motives and implications of such an action. Thupten Ngodup, a dedicated member of the Tibetan Youth Congress – the oldest and most influential Tibetan NGO committed to restoring independence – set himself alight when the Delhi Police forcibly interrupted a hunger strike unto death demanding, among other things, urgent UN intervention in Tibet. Yet Bhuchung conveniently sidesteps these details. As for how Thupten Ngodup’s action could have been motivated by anything but his clearly political goals, one is offered little clue.

Tapey, February 2009. Image: SFTHQ, flickr

Martial monks

Furthermore, in trying to portray monks as apolitical actors, Bhuchung’s simplistic interpretation discounts the complex political roles Tibetan monks have played throughout history, both during factional infighting within Tibet and in the armed struggle against Chinese Communist occupation. In the 1940s, the trenchant rivalry between the regent Redring and the incumbent Tagthra, both high reincarnate lamas who at various times led the Tibetan administration when the current Dalai Lama was a minor, saw monks from the two camps engage in fierce battles. Many monks, among them the 13th Dalai Lama, played pivotal roles in battles for Tibet’s independence in 1912-13, when the last imperial Chinese soldiers were driven out. At the time, the monk Kalon Jampa Tendar disrobed and took up arms to lead the Tibetan army. The paradox of Tibetan Buddhist sensibilities is best encapsulated in the words of Rathu Ngawang, a former Tibetan resistance fighter. In Shadow Circus, a documentary on the CIA-backed Tibetan armed resistance of the 1960s and 1970s, he says: ‘My father would tell us…the Communist Chinese are enemies of Buddhism. So, since they were enemies of Buddhism, we never felt it was a sin to kill them. In fact we were happy to kill as many as we could. When we kill an animal, we say a prayer, but when we killed a Chinese, no prayer came to our lips.’

To say that politics was secondary to religion for those monks and former monks would be unsubstantiated. It was just that the terms and symbols describing individual or national political identity were not widely used. In a vocabulary-rich civilisation where a single reincarnate lama’s title could fill up several pages, the term ‘politics’ at best denoted administration, which was in turn understood to mean a system for the flourishing of Buddhism. It warrants mentioning that in old Tibet, while flags and banners of every religious stripe were ubiquitous, the Tibetan national flag was very rarely used other than by the ragtag Tibetan army. As a national symbol, the flag became popular only after Tibetans were forced into exile.

This, however, cannot be construed to mean that the Tibetans did not hold their nation’s political sovereignty paramount, just as it cannot be argued that by calling for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama the self-immolators were not pointedly and politically defying fifty-three years of bloody Chinese occupation.

If the self-immolations carry any religious connotation, it is the concept of Lu ski Chonme Phul wa (offering one’s body as flame). By turning themselves into human bonfires, these courageous protestors shed light on the suffering of the larger Tibetan population under the heel of tyrannical Chinese rule, and gave that suffering a visible, visceral manifestation.

The self-immolations represent a new level of resistance and defiance. The fates of those following more conventional forms of resistance such demonstrations, pamphleteering and postering are ultimately controlled by the Chinese authorities. Dissenters are inevitably arrested, imprisoned and tortured, to die in prison or be released back into the society years later as mere shells of their former selves. Self-immolation, on the other hand, grants protestors greater control over their bodies, and a precious finality to their expression of resistance. One burns, one dies, refusing the tormentors any claim over one’s body. It amounts to an unequivocal rejection of the oppressor state. There will be no revocation of the kind normally extracted from protestors after intense torture by Chinese soldiers.

More than any ulterior Buddhist motives, the self-immolators seem driven by pure anger at the Chinese government, primarily though not only for its unrelenting religious persecution. The state-enforced patriotic re-education campaign instituted in 1994 requires all monks and nuns to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist government, denounce the Dalai Lama as a counter-revolutionary and a separatist, and accept the Chinese-appointed Gyaltse Norbu as the 11th Panchen Lama over Gedun Choekyi Nyima, the candidate chosen by the Dalai Lama. Incidentally, Gedun Choekyi Nyima was abducted in 1995 at the age of six, and his whereabouts have since remained unknown. To the monks and nuns perennially exposed to arrest, expulsion, torture and death for simply wanting to practice their religion, China’s oppressive policies carry a singular message: Tibetan culture, and the Buddhism that is an intrinsic part of it, simply cannot co-exist with Communist China.

This realisation lays bare the contradiction inherent in the Middle Way approach, which hopes that Communist China will allow Tibet cultural autonomy as a reward for giving up its independence. The self-immolations can be seen as a direct response to the failure of the Middle Way policy, which frames dialogue with China as an end in itself, and not as a means to an end. If this passive strategy required its proponents to wait and bide their time, the self-immolators have demonstrated it to be an unviable option. As one early self immolator stated: ‘Let alone living under the Communist China for one more day, I cannot even live for one more minute.’

Thich Quang Duc, Saigon, 1963

Invisible lines

The rate of self-immolations increased noticeably a week after Lobsang Sangay assumed prime ministership of the Tibetan government-in-exile in April 2011 following the Dalai Lama’s complete political retirement. The first self-immolation in Tibet took place in February 2009. The second one occurred two years later, five months before the historic power shift in exile leadership. At the swearing-in ceremony, the new prime minister stated, ‘Let me be clear: the Tibetan Administration does not encourage protest [in Tibet] in part because we cannot forget the harsh response Chinese authorities hand down in the face of free and peaceful expression.’ Within a week, a third self-immolation was reported.

Since then, an average of three to four such protests have taken place in Tibet every month, mostly concentrated in the erstwhile provinces of Kham and Amdo. These fiery self-sacrifices have prompted massive gatherings which have on at least two occasions erupted into open revolt. In January, Chinese soldiers shot into crowds of protestors in Ngaba and Kartze, killing at least ten people. When Lobsang Sangay reminded Tibetans that it was not to him alone that the Dalai Lama had devolved his power, the self-immolators might have taken the concluding remarks of his speech to heart: ‘Let us never forget: during our lifetime, our freedom struggle will meet the fate of justice or defeat. Tibet will either appear or disappear from the map of the world.’

This synchronicity of events is not accidental. Invisible lines of communication connect Tibetans inside Tibet and their exile counterparts. Their dialogue is unspoken and cryptic. No instructions, orders or appeals are involved. Over the Himalayan divide, at least, no overt call to action has ever been made. Given this scenario, China’s allegation that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile are behind the self-immolations is absurd. Still, developments in Dharamsala continue to affect events inside Chinese-occupied Tibet, and vice versa.

The 1987 uprising serves as a good example. The revolt, which began with a protest on 27 September outside Lhasa’s Jokhang cathedral, had roots in an event halfway across the world – the Dalai Lama’s address to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus. This was the first time the Tibetan leader had been accorded such a high-profile platform, and he used the opportunity to introduce the Five Point Peace Plan, which laid the basis for what would become his Middle Way approach.

The Dalai Lama’s time in the global spotlight irked Beijing, and its propaganda stepped up its denunciation campaigns, accusing the Dalai Lama of colluding with ‘Western Imperialists’ to further their ‘split-ist’ designs of tearing Tibet away from China. Jampa Tsering, a monk from the Ganden Monastery who was among the first protestors in the subsequent wave of unrest, later told this writer, ‘We knew the risks were enormous, but we had to do something. We felt staying silent would be construed to mean we agreed with China’s defamation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.’ And so, on a frosty September morning, Jampa and his fellow monk-protestors circumambulated the Jokhang cathedral three times, then took out their hand-drawn Tibetan flags and shouted slogans demanding Tibetan independence. Within minutes Chinese soldiers showed up, beat the protestors and drove them away. But the façade of calm that had reigned for almost three decades had cracked. This unprecedented defiance sparked off a series of open revolts, and thanks to images smuggled out by Western tourists Tibet was once again making newspaper headlines.

The following year continued the cycle of courageous defiance. In 1988 the Dalai Lama addressed members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. In what became known as the Strasbourg Proposal, the Dalai Lama expanded the fifth item of the previous year’s Five Points Peace Plan, declaring it central to his China policy henceforth. Tibetan independence was now officially eschewed as a goal of the Tibetan struggle. In its place, the three provinces of Tibet were to become an autonomous entity under the Beijing’s political sovereignty in return for cultural autonomy. Meanwhile, even as the exile leadership engineered the surrender of Tibetan independence, inside Tibet the revolt continued. A year later in 1989, as Tibet reeled under martial law, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

From our Archive: Unrest in Tibetan areas

Man on fire (February 2012) Putting out the fire (October 2011) Between enraged and engaged Buddhism (July 2008) The pan-Tibetan uprising (April 2008)

Reclaiming resistance

The 2008 uprisings that shocked the world began with a procession of some 300 monks from the Drepung Monastery on Lhasa’s outskirts to the city centre. The monks’ main demand was the release of Drepung monks who had been detained the previous October for whitewashing a wall in celebration of the conferment of the US Congressional Gold Medal upon the Dalai Lama. This protest kicked off a revolt that spread across the entire Tibetan plateau, with the unprecedented participation not just of monks and nuns, but also of laypeople of all ages and backgrounds. The Chinese paramilitary crackdown that followed spawned the bloodiest reprisals the country had seen since the uprisings of the 1980s.

The exile Free Tibet movement responded with equal vigour. Activists across the world successfully stripped the Olympic torch relay of its perceived glory and turned Beijing’s bid for international legitimacy into a magnet for shame. This injected renewed vitality into Tibet’s struggle for freedom, and a new sense of hope prevailed. In India, Nepal and elsewhere in the world, activists from the Tibetan Youth Congress, Students for a Free Tibet, the Tibetan Women’s Association and other organisations forged an unbroken link of protests, dispelling any illusion Beijing may have held of a respite in resistance.

While the exile administration waited for Beijing to respond to its overtures, Free Tibet activists had brought the fight to China’s door. The Beijing Olympics protests triggered a media frenzy, but there was precious little international attention or diplomatic support for those who wanted a Tibetan future different from the one envisioned by the government-in-exile. The world’s attention soon turned elsewhere, but Beijing understood, as clearly did the exile activists, that the force driving the narrative of Tibet’s struggle lay inside Tibet. As if cued by voices from behind the Himalayas, the diaspora assumed a certain autonomy of its own through the decentralisation of resistance. While Tibetans’ spiritual allegiance to the Dalai Lama remained unwavering, every second Tibetan on social network sites had a new middle name: Rangzen (Independence).

Against this background, the self-immolation in Delhi of 27-year-old Jamphel Yeshi assumes immeasurable importance. A recent escapee from Tibet, and by all accounts an unassuming youth with a devout turn of mind and an inexhaustible appetite for Tibetan history, Jamphel bolted across the Jantar Mantar ground in a raging cloud of flames during a Tibetan demonstration protesting Chinese president Hu Jintao’s visit to India. The Chinese-imposed media blackout meant that the 30-odd self-immolations inside Tibet were communicated to the rest of the world only through a few grainy and obscure images. Jamphel Yeshi’s burning figure, however, more than satiated the world’s appetite for photographic evidence. While China had rendered protestors inside Tibet largely invisible, Jamphel Yeshi escalated the radicalisation of the Tibetan freedom struggle in a single stroke. Before he succumbed to his burns two days later, Jamphel had given Tibetan self-immolators a face. That face was splashed across the screens and front pages of the international media, and it was the face of a man on fire, as befitting the seething country he stood for.

It is no accident that the site of Jamphel Yeshi’s sacrifice was the same ground that witnessed the first Tibetan self-immolation in 1998. While some have argued that the more recent self-immolators inside Tibet were inspired by Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor whose self-immolation unleashed the Arab Spring, given Chinese censorship of the Arab uprisings it is more likely that their inspiration came from a closer source – Thupten Ngodup, the Tibetan exile whose self-immolation first shook the Tibetan world. In becoming the second Tibetan exile to self-immolate, Jamphel Yeshi has completed the circle. And this time, if the world fails to act, that circle might become a prayer wheel that keeps on spinning, leaving China struggling to control a country of men and women in flames.

~ Topden Tsering is former editor of the Tibetan Bulletin and former president of the San Francisco chapter of the Tibetan Youth Congress. He lives in Berkeley, California and has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeley Daily Planet, India Site and Global Post, among others.

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Until the last Tibetan   

By Tenzing Sonam

The Tibet movement has stalled, partially because there is little understanding of how it will continue after the Dalai Lama’s passing. While those who disagree with the Middle Way approach are not necessarily looking to violence as the answer, they are looking for reaffirmation of what exactly it is they are trying to achieve.

Photo Credit: Lobsang Wangyal

On a cold and wet Saturday morning a few weeks ago, several thousand of us exile Tibetans gathered once again with our leader, the Dalai Lama, in the courtyard of the main temple in Dharamsala to commemorate the anniversary of the Lhasa Uprising of 10 March 1959 – the event that triggered our exodus to India, and sealed China’s occupation of our homeland. As with every 10 March commemoration, speeches were made and songs were sung to remember those who gave their lives in pursuit of Tibet’s freedom.

In his statement this year, the Dalai Lama once again reiterated his commitment to the Middle Way approach – his proposal to resolve the Tibet issue by making the key concession of giving up demands for independence, in return for a genuinely autonomous Tibet within the People’s Republic of China. And once again, the unresolved incongruities of the Tibetan situation manifested themselves. As the Dalai Lama spoke, above him stretched an enormous Tibetan national flag, still banned in Tibet for being a symbol of nationalist aspirations. Those gathered also sang the Tibetan national anthem, another expression of Tibet’s separate identity proscribed by Beijing. And during the traditional march to the town centre in Lower Dharamsala that followed the speeches, the crowd once again raised slogans calling for a free Tibet, and demanding that China leave the plateau.

The Tibet movement has suffered this split-personality syndrome ever since the Middle Way approach was first broached, more than two decades ago. The Tibetan community’s complete devotion to the Dalai Lama as our spiritual and political leader has meant that, for the most part, we have accepted his proposal without any question. Indeed, until recently, any expression of doubt on this matter was immediately denounced within the community as being a personal attack on the Dalai Lama himself. But while on the surface there has been a unified show of support and commitment to the Middle Way approach, deep down many Tibetans have suffered a disquieting crisis of confusion and conflicting loyalties (See Himal December 2006, “Roadblock on the Middle Path”).

In exile, we were brought up to believe that our raison d’etre was to fight for Tibet’s independence. From the time we were children, the word rangzen – independence – was relentlessly hammered into us. To be suddenly told thatrangzen was no longer our goal was almost impossible to comprehend; and indeed, during the 1980s, in the early days of the Middle Way approach, we went about our lives as if nothing had fundamentally changed in our struggle. But as time passed, we could no longer pretend that this contradiction between our loyalty to the Dalai Lama and our instinctive belief in Tibet’s independence did not exist. Our confusion became more difficult to ignore, and we were stricken by a sense of helplessness and frustration. As a result, some vital force was sucked out of our movement, and it began to founder. Even our most ardent supporters began to wonder what it was that we were fighting for, and the once-impressive international support-group network that we had so painstakingly built up began to unravel for want of a clearly defined cause.

A movement adrift
There is evidence to show that we exiled Tibetans are not alone in evincing this duality of purpose. Inside Tibet, although faith and belief in the Dalai Lama remains largely undimmed, the demonstrations that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s were all driven by the demand for independence. Even today, despite heightened security controls and measures, any leaflet or wall poster that surfaces invariably calls for independence.

This dilemma, between supporting the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way approach and continuing to believe in independence, is now so deep-rooted in the fabric of our condition as exiles that it even creeps into our official statements. Last year Prime Minister-in-exile Samdhong Rinpoche, one of the staunchest supporters of the Middle Way approach, said: “Since the struggle of the Tibetan people is based on truth and non-violence, there is no need for us to lose heart, as all Tibetans believe that the truth will prevail some day.” The Kashag – the executive body of the government-in-exile – in a statement on 6 July last year, reaffirmed its “determination to engage in dialogue for resolving the issue of Tibet through the present Sino-Tibetan contacts”, but concluded its statement by exhorting: “May the truth of the issue of Tibet prevail soon!”

What exactly is the ‘truth’ to which Samdhong Rinpoche and the Kashag are referring? The official website of the government-in-exile gives us the answer:

At the time of its invasion by troops of the People’s Liberation Army of China in 1949, Tibet was an independent state in fact and law. The military invasion constituted an aggression on a sovereign state and a violation of international law. Today’s continued occupation of Tibet by China, with the help of several hundred thousand troops, represents an ongoing violation of international law and of the fundamental rights of the Tibetan people to independence.

How can Samdhong Rinpoche and the government-in-exile be promoting the Middle Way approach – which requires that we bury this ‘truth’ – while simultaneously continuing to present the case for Tibet’s independence? Is it any surprise, then, that Beijing continues to view the Middle Way approach with deep mistrust, branding it as a call for “disguised independence”? Or that, before it will make any move towards a serious dialogue with the Dalai Lama, it insists that he declare, once and for all, that Tibet was never independent, that it was always a part of China?   But Samdhong Rinpoche and the Kashag are not anomalous in inadvertently manifesting this contradictory position. All Tibetans are complicit in this fundamental paradox within our ‘cause’, and it is precisely this that has led to the gradual erosion and dissipation of Tibet’s national struggle. In order to have any hope of success, the key demands of the Middle Way approach – a genuinely autonomous region made up of the three traditional provinces of Tibet, and ruled by a democratically elected local government – would have to be watered down, or even given up entirely. But making such concessions would rob the Middle Way approach of any credibility – indeed, its meaning – and there is no way that the Dalai Lama can deny Tibet’s past. The result is the stalemate that we see today. Behind the smokescreen of presumed dialogue, which it has no intentions of furthering, China continues to do what it wants in Tibet with impunity. Meanwhile, the once-vibrant Tibet movement floats listlessly in the doldrums.

Beyond the Middle Way
Two statements emanating recently from Dharamsala seem to indicate a slight shift in its thinking with regard to the Middle Way approach. In January, Samdhong Rinpoche said: “In the past, we have asked the Tibetan people not to annoy the PRC [People’s Republic of China] by [engaging in] propaganda or campaigns against them. Unfortunately, since last year the PRC has not cared for our actions and they have attacked His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Under such circumstances, we are not able to ask the Tibetan people to keep quiet.”

This statement reflects a welcome retreat from Dharamsala’s earlier appeals to Tibetans and Tibet supporters not to hold demonstrations, particularly against visiting Chinese dignitaries, for fear of jeopardising the ‘conducive atmosphere’ necessary to help the Middle Way approach make progress. It comes in recognition of the fact that efforts by Dharamsala to appease Beijing have only resulted in a stepped-up campaign of vilification aimed specifically at the Dalai Lama. One immediate consequence of this climb-down was the unexpectedly large (and loudly pro-independence) crowds that turned out across the world for this year’s 10 March demonstrations – evidence that Tibetans, especially the younger generation, need only the slightest encouragement to give expression to their desire to fight for an independent Tibet.

More significantly, on 23 January, Prime Minister Rinpoche stated that Tibetans should, “Hope for the best – ie, to hope for a successful resolution of the Tibet problem within the lifetime of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.” At the same time, they should also, “Prepare for the worst – ie, to be prepared for the worst eventuality, whereby the Tibetan movement has to be sustained indefinitely, for centuries until the last Tibetan.”

This grim warning is perhaps the first official admission of the possibility that the Middle Way approach may not bear fruit within the lifetime of the Dalai Lama. Assuming that this worst-case scenario comes to fruition – and all indications point in that direction – how then can the “Tibetan movement … be sustained indefinitely”? More to the point, what is the nature of the struggle that is to be sustained indefinitely? Are we to assume that, in the absence of the Dalai Lama, the Middle Way approach can still retain the credibility to fire the Tibet movement until the so-called last Tibetan remains standing? Or should we be considering new initiatives that will ensure the continuation of Tibet’s freedom struggle while we still have the Dalai Lama to lead, guide and inspire us?

The new generation: Tsundue and Phuntsok

The stigma of violence
One of the most common misrepresentations in the ongoing debate between supporters of the Middle Way approach and proponents of independence is the reduction of these two positions to one simply of ‘non-violence versus violence’. The Middle Way approach is consistently presented as the only way of resolving the Tibet situation that directly conforms to the Dalai Lama’s commitment to peace and non-violence; whereas its detractors, particularly those who support independence, are unfailingly portrayed as pushing for violence. If the Middle Way approach does not succeed, we are told (usually by its supporters), the alternative is a Palestine-like cycle of unending violence and chaos.

Such a grim scenario has by now been widely picked up by the media. Almost every article on the question of Tibet seems to contain a statement similar to this one, which appeared in the 24 January 2007 issue of the US pop-culture magazine Rolling Stone: “Increasingly, young Tibetans reject His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence, engaging instead in the tactics of Palestinian militants.” The constantly emphasised point is that those who reject the Middle Way approach reject the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence – that supporting independence as a goal necessarily implies supporting violence as the means of attaining it.

Unfortunately, this perception is not helped by statements made by those at the forefront of the pro-independence lobby. In the same article, Kalsang Phuntsok, the president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, which supports independence, was quoted as saying: “We are admitting at the international level that Tibetan people, and the Dalai Lama, are happy in China. We need to educate Tibetans that attacking China is the only way. If you’re willing to die, you have no fear.” The article then went on to say this about Tenzin Tsundue, one of the most prominent and vocal champions of independence: “Unwilling to accept anything less than complete independence, [Tsundue] and his supporters have abandoned His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s peaceful approach, drawing inspiration instead from the Palestinians and other militant organisations.”

I personally do not believe that Tibetans such as Phuntsok and Tsundue are actively promoting violence as a means of pushing for independence. The fact remains, however, that people increasingly equate their stance with violence, in direct contradiction to the non-violent and compassionate approach symbolised by the Dalai Lama. This subsequently sends a signal to the outside world that anyone supporting Tibetan independence must necessarily be a dangerous militant with terrorist tendencies.

This is an unfair generalisation. Why should supporting Tibetan independence be incompatible with a non-violent approach? There are many Tibetans who are committed to non-violence as a principle, but who find no contradiction in believing that regaining Tibet’s independence should remain the primary objective of the struggle. We need only take the example of Mohandas K Gandhi – a leader much admired by both the Dalai Lama and Samdhong Rinpoche – whose satyagraha (firmness of truth) movement, although rooted in ahimsa, or non-violence, was in fact a dynamic, forceful and often confrontational form of resistance, which had as its ultimate goal nothing less than India’s independence from British rule.

When Tsundue says in the Rolling Stone article, “Youngsters tell me they don’t want to join a non-violent protest. Youngsters feel non-violence is getting nothing”, I for one do not believe that these ‘youngsters’ are necessarily asking to engage in violence. Rather, they are asking for something to believe in – a cause they can fight for, a clear goal to which they can aspire. Their frustration stems not so much from the lack of results through non-violent protest, as from confusion about what it is that they are trying to achieve.

Anti-Apartheid lessons
When I first went to the University of California’s Berkeley campus as a student in the early 1980s, the grounds were feverish with the anti-Apartheid campaign. The immediate issue was the divestment of the University of California’s investments in companies that did business with South Africa. Day after day, the central Sproul Plaza was the scene of raucous demonstrations. The climate of student activism was contagious. But more importantly, the issue at stake was clear and uncomplicated: this was a ‘good v evil’ scenario, literally a black-and-white question. Apartheid was evil; it had to go. It was that simple. It did not take much effort before I found myself a willing participant in the movement. Not buying anything made in South Africa was a simple act of solidarity, and before long it became an instinctive gesture – so much so that, years later, even after Apartheid had long been dismantled, I still found myself resisting South African grapes or wines.

A number of years ago, when Nelson Mandela made his triumphant state visit to England, I happened to tune into a radio programme on which some former anti-Apartheid campaigners were being interviewed. Commenting on the contribution made by the worldwide grassroots campaign to defeat Apartheid, one interviewee said that the success of the anti-Apartheid movement lay in the fact that it was ultimately able to reach and draw support from every level of society; that although it was widespread and might have appeared spontaneous, it was, in fact, carefully orchestrated by African National Congress leaders in exile.

Although there is a huge difference between the anti-Apartheid movement and the Tibetan struggle – not least in the fact that China is a far more powerful adversary, economically, politically and militarily, than was the white South African government – we should not forget one important lesson: A well-coordinated and widespread grassroots movement can apply immense pressure on governments, and achieve results. China may appear impregnable, but it is not immune to international leverage, particularly so when it seeks to play a leading role in global affairs. But we must also realise that such a movement can only be effective if it is focused around a clear-cut cause – one that pits right clearly against wrong.

We are fortunate that in the case of Tibet, as with the Apartheid regime in South Africa, there has never been any moral ambiguity. And just as the anti-Apartheid movement was guided by the moral force of its leader, Nelson Mandela, the Tibet movement is blessed in having the universally respected figure of the Dalai Lama at its head. Moreover, we already have in place a wide and committed network of international supporters who are only waiting for a clear rallying call to galvanise themselves into action.

But before this can happen, the Tibetan leadership must act upon its realisation that the Middle Way approach may not achieve the results it seeks within the lifetime of the Dalai Lama. All Tibetans believe in the truth of Tibet’s independence, without any doubt or question. This is the one aspiration that can immediately dissolve the morass of conflicting goals and loyalties besetting the Tibet movement, and unite all Tibetans, whether inside or outside Tibet. Restoring the truth of Tibet back to the core of the movement, and making it once again the freedom struggle that it rightfully is, holds no guarantee that Tibet will become independent any time soon. What it will achieve, however, will be to reactivate the increasingly moribund Tibet movement by giving it focus; bring a sense of urgency to the Tibet issue; make it harder for Beijing and the international community to ignore it; and ensure that our struggle remains strong and motivated, even after the present Dalai Lama passes away. If Samdhong Rinpoche’s appeal to sustain the Tibetan movement indefinitely – “for centuries until the last Tibetan” – is to make any sense, this is the only option available.

~ Tenzing Sonam is a writer and filmmaker. Along with Ritu Sarin, he is co-director of the Tibetan feature film Dreaming Lhasa.

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