Why Beijing just can't grasp
Tibet By Pallavi Aiyar
BEIJING - Over the past three decades, the
Chinese leadership has proven remarkably
responsive to changing circumstances. The ruling
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has displayed a
pragmatism and flexibility that has allowed it to
retain power, even as the Iron Curtain of the
former Soviet Union was torn down along large
parts of China's borders.
Yet while the
CCP has shown itself to be adept at identifying
and addressing a range of problems - from the need
to pursue vigorous economic reforms to the need to
ensure balanced growth between rural and urban
areas - Tibet remains its Achilles' heel.
After almost 20 years of a relatively
quiescent Tibet, the recent protests across the
Tibetan parts of China have caught Beijing
off-guard. Following the riots of the 1980s, the
CCP's strategy towards Tibet has been one of
dealing with dissent harshly
while
simultaneously developing the
region economically. The hope is that rising
prosperity will bind the restive region closer to
the center and convince Tibetans that it is the
party, rather than the Dalai Lama, that can ensure
a better life for them.
The opening of the
Beijing-Lhasa railway is but one high-profile
example of this approach. The railway is also
evidence of the confidence Beijing felt for the
success of its measures. Gradually, the Tibet
Autonomous Region has been opened up to tourism,
and temples that were once hotbeds of dissident
have been allowed to resume activity.
The
events of the past few weeks, however, demonstrate
that Chinese authorities have failed to read the
pulse of the Tibetan people accurately. This
failure boils down to an inability to grasp a
society in which the spiritual is prioritized over
the material.
No matter how much the Dalai
Lama is projected domestically as a sinister
"splittist", the average Tibetan still believes
the spiritual leader is a living Buddha; a belief
which cannot be bought off by subsidies and
trains. The Tibet issue is therefore not one of
"independence", as it is commonly framed, but of
the freedom to believe and worship. In Tibet such
freedom is equivalent to worshipping the Dalai
Lama.
There is a visceral religiosity in
Tibet, evidenced by the fluttering prayer flags
attached to every conceivable grounded object, the
smell of incense and yak butter lamps in the air
and the crush of prayer wheel-whirling pilgrims
who circle Lhasa's temples at any given time of
the day. Moreover, this religiosity sets Tibet
apart from the rest of startlingly secular China.
Even before the communist accession of
1949, after which religious worship was attacked
as a feudal superstition, religion in Han China
was of a different texture than that in Tibet.
Confucianism and legalist philosophies shaped the
dominant modes of Chinese thinking and these were
rarely concerned with the metaphysical or divine,
being firmly grounded in matters of the here and
now.
Buddhism, which was introduced to
China from India around the first century AD, was
the exception to this traditional Chinese emphasis
on the practical rather than spiritual but was
never able to achieve clear supremacy of place
within the Chinese belief structure.
In
any event, China's multi-layered philosophical and
religious history was abruptly rent apart during
the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when, following
Mao Zedong's diktats, temples and places of
worship across the country were attacked, and
monks publicly paraded in the street and flogged.
It was communist ideology rather than religion
that people were taught and expected to believe
in.
In the post-reform period much has
changed. In many ways the new religion worships in
banks and ATM machines. But while money-worship
may have replaced ideological fervor for the most
part, a genuine religious renaissance is also
taking place and with the consent of the CCP.
Although officially atheist itself, the party has
transformed from a revolutionary to a status-quo
power and sees the usefulness of traditional
philosophies like Confucianism and Buddhism with
their emphasis on harmony and order.
Although religious freedoms in China are
growing, Beijing continues to set strict
parameters within which this "freedom" can be
practiced. Heads of temples, mosques and churches
are handpicked by the CCP. All places of worship
must be registered with the government. Moreover,
freedom of religion is allowed only as long as the
believers continue to accept the politburo rather
than a religious leader as their supreme
authority.
Catholics, for whom the pope
elicits a devotion that is beyond the control of
the leadership, are subject to tight controls and
ties between Beijing and the Vatican had been
severed since 1951. "House church" Protestantism
which involves informal gatherings by believers in
private homes or other places outside authorized
churches is vulnerable to crackdowns.
Followers of religions other than the five
which are officially recognized - Buddhism, Islam,
Taoism, Protestantism and Chinese Catholicism -
are viewed with suspicion.
"I find it
difficult to tell even my friends that I'm a
vegetarian because in their eyes that would make
me unorthodox and therefore suspect," said one
Chinese member of the Radha-Saomi spiritual group
in north India.
In the CCP's refusal to
allow religious devotion unless it remains
subservient to the party lies the real nature of
the Tibet issue and the undiminished belief of
Tibetans in the Dalai Lama.
In the summer
of 2006, I visited Lhasa as part of a journalistic
contingent aboard the first Beijing-Lhasa train.
Everywhere I went in the city ripples of
excitement seemed to spread simply by virtue of my
Indian nationality. Roadside sellers of
bric-a-brac, monks in the Potala Palace, itinerant
city guides, aged pilgrims: what this motley
assortment of Lhasa residents had in common was
the desire to talk to me about the Dalai Lama.
Eyes brimming with curiosity, they asked,
"Had I been to Dharamsala?", where the Dalai
Lama's government in exile is based in India. "Had
I met his holiness?" Many showed me pictures they
carried of the exiled leader, even though
possession of such icons is banned by Beijing.
What became clear was that religious
freedom in Tibet, in the absence of the freedom to
believe in the Dalai Lama, is meaningless. For the
hundreds of monks in Tibet denouncing the Dalai
Lama, their living Buddha, is a compulsory daily
routine. The CCP has inserted itself into Tibetan
religious rituals in other ways as well. Beijing
recently announced that the party has the sole
authority to approve reincarnations - the divine
process by which a "living Buddha" is chosen in
boyhood. In a speech last year, Zhang Qingli, the
party secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region,
went so far as to say that "The central party
committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans".
The fierce anger that such blasphemy is
bound to evoke in the heart of believers does not
seem to be grasped by Beijing.
In India,
the mere slaughter of a cow has been known to
provoke riots where hundreds have been left dead.
The publication of a few cartoons depicting the
Prophet Mohammed has caused violent protests
around the world. Many feel the constant
vilification and forced criticisms of the
spiritual leader of the Tibetans should be seen in
this context.
Beijing's strategy for
dealing with the Tibet "issue" is to wait for the
Dalai Lama's passing in the belief that in his
absence Tibetans will be more inclined to focus on
the material prosperity Chinese rule promises and
less concerned with devotion to a god-king who can
offer them little in tangible returns.
There is little to indicate that this will
be the case. "We [Tibetans] will never be bought.
Our souls are not for sale," says one Tibetan
resident of Beijing.
The manner in which
Tibetans have reacted to Beijing's overtures over
the past three decades suggests that a recognition
of Tibetan spirituality is needed, rather than
Beijing's attempts to change or suppress it.
Pallavi Aiyar is
the author of the forthcoming book, Smoke and
Mirrors: China Through Indian Eyes, Harper
Collins (India), May 2008.
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