When Mao Tsetung died in 1976, curtains were being drawn all over Lhasa. After returning from the official grief stricken demonstrations, the Tibetans brought out the chang and celebrated. When I was told by my Lhasa friends I vaguely remembered my parents and their friends also hitting the vodka in East Germany when Stalin died in 1953.
Together with Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin make up the monstrous quartet that define the dark side of the 20th century. I would guess that there isn’t a single human being in the world whose personal history hasn’t been touched in some ways by their ghastly deeds. However, a lot has happened since their days. The Soviet Union is no more. The Germanies are reunited. The killing fields a gruesome memory. China the emerging economic giant and a future top nation, while America continues to decay.
But Mao’s legacy in Tibet remains. On the 49th anniversary of the Chinese occupation tear gas and shots are once again fired in Lhasa, ambulances are crowding around the central hospitals, the streets are full of troops, monks are arrested, and tourists are being sequestered in their hotels. There is a tragic inevitability about the eventual outcome, even though there is a sturdiness about the Tibetan protest that reminds one of the fact that they are cousins of the Mongols, and that they were once the feared conquerors of the East including China before Buddhism tamed them.
Perhaps religion will restrain the monks in their despair, as it did the monks of Burma. Based on the patient diplomatic statements of the Dalai Lama, what they want is not independence. It is more modest: religious freedom and basic human rights. But to China these are extreme demands, and Drapchi prison near Lhasa is full of political prisoners who want no more than this.
In a world with so much bloodshed and much newer flash points, Tibet is becoming an old cause. The Freedom for Tibet stickers are fading on cars, the Dalai Lama’s appeals are a regular item on the news. It is supported largely by middle-class Westerners and celebrities, but in no way does it detract from the overwhelming justice of the Tibetan cause. Forget Hollywood. Tibet is of immense importance to the whole world.
Spiritually, Tibet has preserved one of the great religions of the world in pristine, authentic fashion. During a millenium of total geographical isolation, Lamas transmitted the teachings of the Buddha in snowbound caves and vast monastic cities. More than any other culture on earth, they studied the psychological underpinnings of our actions and developed a mind science of such sophistication that western psychology is hard pressed to keep up.
Culturally, Tibetan Buddhism is the last perfectly preserved religion on earth. Observing its rituals and practices is akin to witnessing any of the ancient religious heritages of world history. A country drenched in its spiritual practices, Tibet preserved one of humankind’s most exquisite edifices of religious expression in a unique form that is still just surviving the onslaught of Chinese repression.
Ecologically, most major rivers of Asia have their origin on the Tibetan high plateau. Deforestation and dumping of nuclear waste endanger vast down stream areas, with potentially catastrophic results. If we believe that the earth is an interconnected ecosystem, then what happens in Tibet affects the whole world. China has to stop ravaging Tibet and treating it as a dump before it is too late.
Lastly, the political fall-out. China attacks Tibet in two ways: directly, as it does now by brutally quelling dissent, and indirectly, by resettling large numbers of Han Chinese in Tibet, already vastly outnumbering the indigenous population.
This is cultural murder by stealth. Most Chinese, even outside China, strongly believe that Tibet is part of the Chinese motherland. Racially and historically this is untrue, and repression and brutality do not make it any more true. World opinion is against China. The treatment of Tibet and China’s other minority regions remains a stain on a nation in the grip of historic upheaval and change.
If the Olympic Games are going to be more than a modern replay of that other event in 1936, then the Chinese government has to review what it is doing. We never believed the mighty Soviet Union would collapse or that the Berlin would fall.
Change is not only possible. It is inevitable.