Dalai Lama's Dilemma

The persona of the Dalai Lama comes into sharp focus as Tibetans demonstrate, riot and protest after nearly fifty years under Chinese rule

PRAHLAD SINGH SHEKHAWAT

The persona of the Dalai Lama is in sharp focus as he is the political and spiritual leader of Tibetans as they demonstrate, riot, and protest against the Chinese rule in Tibet and around the world. He has caught attention also because of his profound,nuanced, simple, simplistic and sometimes inexplicable opinions

Dalai Lama is called his holiness, the wise guru, one with oceanic wisdom and Indians may well call him karuna doot.He is definitely the most smiling guru. He himself modestly calls himself a simple Buddhist monk. The Chinese leaders demonise him as splittist, feudal, theocrat, liar etc which only demeans the Chinese leaders themselves. From all independent accounts, form the huge growth of Buddhism which has recorded the highest growth rate compared to any other faith, for his advocacy of peace in the world and compassion for his Chinese tormentors, from worldwide enthusiastic attendance at his talks and by the number of best selling books, he could be called one of if not the wisest and most respected person today. This respect is profound because it is not based on any political or military power but on soft and moral power

Yet he is struggling with difficult and complex dilemmas as the political struggle intensifies. He has maintained a consistent stand on genuine autonomy within China and on the use of peaceful methods which he told me he would insist on as long as he was alive. Recently he threatened to resign if the violence in Tibet got out of hand. Yet he has not developed or initiated a proper nonviolent strategy and he is sometimes very pessimist about peaceful methods. Some years ago I asked him if the Gandhian civil disobedience movement can grow under the present Chinese system. His reply was "That is difficult. This year some Tibetans (in India) organized one peace march (to Lhasa). So finally I was compelled to suggest to them not to do so. Tibetans outside of Tibet reach there and if Tibetans inside remain silent, so it looks very strange. Then on the other hand if the Tibetans rose, demonstrated then the Chinese may eliminate them. Information from Tibet proved my fear. There are instructions (to a special commando force), should the Tibetans demonstrate, they all must be eliminated on the spot"

Some Tibetans purticularly intellectuals and the youth groups point out that historically Tibetans were many times a martial people and won many battles and that the Dalai Lama became a great advocate of peace especially after coming under Gandhian influence in India and after wining the Nobel prize which won him a huge international following. Yet at the same time this policy causes concern among the Tibetan groups who have become increasingly impatient as the Chinese have refused to respond positively to Dalai Lama's peaceful middle path for decades .The " Dalai" paradox is that the more he succeeds globally the more removed he becomes from the Tibetan struggle. In this sense he is the victim of his own success.

Pico Iyer who knows the Dalai Lama well writes in his new book Dalai Lama: The Open Road: “The more he gave himself to the world, the more Tibetans have come to feel like natural children bewildered by the fact that their father has adopted three others.” A leading Tibetan intellectual Jamyang Norbu is alarmed that Tibetan support groups and the government-in-exile have become “directionless” in trying to “reorient their objectives around such other issues as the environment, world peace, religious freedom, cultural preservation, human rights—everything but the previous goal of Tibetan independence.” Another poet and former head of the Tibetan Youth Congress who should remain unnamed told me in angry sadness that how can you apply peaceful middle path against a power like China when they believe that power comes only from the barrel of the gun.” While we meditate for peace invoking compassion for the Chinese our identity and culture faces sure destruction. It is a time to do or die now. Later it will be too late"

Probably the most independent and in some ways pro-Chinese Tibetan intellectual today is Tashi Tsering. Educated in an American university, he then became a Maoist red guard with a burning zeal for modernizing the old society. Later becoming unpopular for his "independent" views the Chinese made him a political prisoner. Now in his sixties he lives in Lhasa willingly under Chinese Tibet although he had a choice to live a comfortable life in America or with the Tibetan government in exile in India. In his autobiography" The struggle for Modern Tibet" he writes that he does not want to return to the "old Tibetan theocratic feudal society" but the price of change and modernisation should not be the loss of one's language and culture, the cultural revolution taught me how precious those are."

Dalai Lama in his Strasburg proposals and elsewhere has clarified that in a genuinely autonomous Tibet there will be adult franchise and being a democrat he himself will not be the head of government. In order to allay the fears of a feudal theocracy felt by Tashi Tsering and many others the Dalai Lama can further expand democracy in the Tibetan Government in Exile which may have elements of feudal theocracy. Yet his dilemma is that many Tibetans in exile are deeply religious and respect nobility. As Ashis Nandy has noted that Indians and Hindus in the West tend to be more Indian than Indians in India and more Hindus than Hindus in India. On the one hand the Dalai Lama is very liberal and progressive in his interpretation of Buddhism and even proposes secular ethics and humanist values which tend to negate the need for religion. On the other hand Tibetan Buddhism with its sects is replete with ancient rituals, ceremonies and hierarchies

The Tibetan struggle is caught in a frustrating dilemma: violent means are not allowed as a matter of principle and peaceful means are also not expected to succeed. International opinion unmatched by any action by governments and the UN is not achieving any results. Even the call for boycott of the Olympics which could have put pressure on China has been magnanimously disapproved by the Dalai Lama. He has sometimes even expressed disapproval pf peaceful methods like hunger strike and boycott of Chinese goods as Pico Iyer narrates. Yet all Tibetans profess loyalty and awesome respect for the Dalai Lama. What to do now? The struggle must go on, somehow

The Dalai Lama needs to make more consultations with all groups among Tibetans especially with the youth and explore all kinds of alternative nonviolent strategies and methods to intensify the struggle in a organised manner., Unless Tibetans raise their nuisance value with the Chinese, progress is very difficult. At the same time the Dalai Lama has to persuade his people of not only the moral value of nonviolence but also its practical realism, that there is no other alternative. If there is consensus within the Tibetan movement as seems to be the case, for mobolising boycott of the Olympics in Beijing then one hopes being such a noble person he would kindly respect that. Finally the type of nonviolent strategy and democratic consultations that have not worked so far deserves rethinking NOW