All the serfs and slaves take with them is their shadow. Their only legacy is their footprints. Tibetan saying.
Chou en Lai, the Panchen Lama, Mao and the Dalai Lama. Beijing, 1952
When the Mongols arrived in Tibet in 1271 AD, Buddhism had split into warring sects that united only to massacre members of the native Bon religion. In 1672, when the fifth Dalai Lama faced a rebellion from the Tsang province, he ordered a Mongolian army under his control to exact retribution:
For the band of enemies who have despoiled the duties entrusted to them: Make the male lines like trees that have had their roots cut; Make the female lines like brooks that have dried in up winter; make the children and grandchildren like eggs smashed against rocks, make the servants and followers like heaps of grass consumed by fire, make their dominion like a lamp whose oil has been exhausted. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.
The even more bloodthirsty British arrived in 1903, wrote Lieutenant Arthur Hadow, “The machine gunners slaughtered the Tibetan soldiers; thirteen hundred died in the massacre. I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire, though the general’s order was to make as big a bag as possible. I hope I shall never again have to shoot down men walking away”.
A journalist on the expedition, Perceval Landon1, described the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s rule as ‘an engine of oppression’ and Captain W.F.T. O’Connor concurred, “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”. Wrote Spencer Chapman2, “Tibet’s rulers invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition among the common people. The Lamaist monk does not spend his time 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”.
After acknowledging China’s suzerainty, the British departed in 1904 and the Buddhists resumed their wars until 1950, when the PRC returned and ejected the warlords, Nazis, and spies who had fled there during the war, and negotiated the Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet:
The local government of Tibet will drive imperialist forces out of Tibet; China will not alter the existing political system, all government officials will maintain their positions, and the status, functions, and powers of the Dalai Lama will remain unchanged. Tibet will carry out reforms following the wishes of its people, through consultation with its leaders rather than by compulsion; the Tibetan people will exercise autonomy under their government, and Tibetan religious beliefs, customs and habits, monasteries, and their incomes will be respected; Tibet will remain a theocracy and retain its autonomy in most military and diplomatic matters; Tibetan troops will be trained and integrated into the PLA and Beijing will guarantee peace with bordering countries.
American diplomat Robert Ford3 wrote, “There was no sacking of monasteries. On the contrary, the Chinese took great care not to cause offense through ignorance. They soon had the monks thanking the gods for their deliverance. The Chinese had made it clear they had no quarrel with the Tibetan religion”. The government allocated $500,000 to renovate the Buddhist temple in Beijing and granted additional funds to Tibetan Muslims for a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1957.
But China’s intervention triggered a violent reaction amongst Tibet’s elite, many of whom terrorized peasants who ‘collaborated’ with the PLA, but Mao4 urged patience, “Although the establishment of the military and administrative committee and the reorganization of the Tibetan troops were stipulated in the Agreement you had fears, and so I instructed the comrades working in Tibet to slow their implementation. The Agreement must be carried out but, because of your fears, it has to be postponed. If you are scared this year, it can wait until next year. If you still have fears next year, it can wait until the year after that”. Then, with Mao’s approval5, a fifteen-year-old Chinese-born boy was installed as the fourteenth Dalai Lama6.
Four years later, The Dalai and Panchen Lamas traveled to Beijing where they were greeted as Heads of State by Premier Zhou Enlai and Chief of General Staff Zhu De. Mao hosted dinners in their honor and the National People’s Congress elected the Dalai Lama Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee7. In a speech to Congress, the Dalai Lama championed regional autonomy for all minorities, “Tibet’s Agreement has enabled the Tibetan people to fully enjoy all rights of ethnic equality and embark on a bright road of freedom and happiness”. He was frank about conditions in his country8 and enthusiastic about China,
Outside the monasteries, our system was feudal… The more I looked at Marxism, the more I liked it. Here was a system based on equality and justice for everyone which claimed to be a panacea for all the world’s ills. From a theoretical standpoint, its only drawback was its insistence on a purely materialist view of human existence. This I could not agree with. I was also concerned at the methods used by the Chinese in pursuit of their ideals. I received a strong impression of rigidity. But I expressed a wish to become a Party member all the same. I felt sure, as I still do, that it would be possible to work out a synthesis of Buddhist and pure Marxist doctrines that really would be an effective way of conducting politics”.
In 1998, Professor Dongping Han9 met the Dalai Lama when he visited Brandeis University:
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