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The Changing Peasant: Part 2: the Uprooted

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The Changing Peasant: Part 2: the Uprooted 19791No. 41 by Richard Critchfield The Changing Peasant Asia [ RC-4-'793 Part II: The Uprooted Theirs is the true lost horizon. Whatever their number, most jutting rocks of shale, schist, and Tibetans are nomadic shepherds limestone. Tibet is the source of all The Tibetan homeland is still so who live in yak-hair tents and move the great rivers of Asia: the Sutlej remote, unmapped, unsurveyed, about much of the year in search of and Indus, the Ganges and and unexplored that in 1979 less is grass for their large herds of yaks, Brahmaputra, the Salween, known about its great Chang Tang sheep, goats, and horses. Aside Yangtze, and Mekong. Violent plateau and Himalayan-high from Lhasa (population 50,000) and gales, dust storms, and icy winds mountain ranges than is known some town-like monasteries, before blow almost every day. about the craters of the moon. the Chinese occupation almost no Until the Chinese occupation the human habitations existed; the Tibet remains a mystery. wheel, considered sacred, was Tibetan herdsman's life, like that of never used: horses, camels, yaks, the Arab Bedouin, revolves around sheep, and men provided the only It is now 29 years since Mao Tse- his livestock, their wool for clothing tung's armies invaded what had transport over rugged tracks and and shelter and their meat and milk precarious bridges spanning deep almost always been an independent for food. sovereign country and declared it an narrow gorges. Even the way of autonomous area within the The Tibetans are racially and death was harsh, the bodies being People's Republic of China. It is 20 culturally close to the Mongols of cut up and fed to buzzards (a years since rebellion broke out in Genghis Khan's historic hordes. cu'stom still practiced among most Lhasa and the Dalai Lama, Tibet's Their beliefs, although transfigured Tibetan refugees). spiritual and temporal leader, fled to by Indian Buddhism and the secular One man in four was a Buddhist India. Yet the southward flow of refinements of the Chinese, still lama. Some of the monasteries were refugees has never completely have strong undertones of Mongol vast and the Dalai Lama's Potala stopped. Today there are more than shamanism with its "possessed" Palace in Lhasa is claimed by most 100,000 uprooted Tibetans in India, oracles, amulets, and magic charms. Tibetans to number 10,000 rooms. Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan; at Yet except for the Khampa warriors While the ecclesiastical dignitaries universities in India, Europe, and the of eastern Tibet, who can be were mostly high-born nobles, the United States, Buddhist scholars excitable and brutal, most Tibetans Dalai Lama himself was usually a from Lhasa attempt to preserve are remarkably cheerful, calm, poor herdsman's child, chosen Tibetan Lamaism, which is humorous, intelligent, and kindly. through oracular revelation, born at essentially Indian Mahayana Paradoxically, I find them the least the moment of his predecessor's Buddhism of the seventh to twelfth "foreign" of all Asians. death, and generally believed to be centuries. his reincarnation. Their harsh land has made them Nobody knows exactly how many very hardy. Mostly occupying a high In 1973 the present Dalai Lama Tibetans there are. Tenzin Gyatso, plateau 600 by 800 miles between shocked his people by warning that the 44-year-old fourteenth Dalai the Himalayas and Kunlun while the Dalai Lama in the past Lama now living in exile at Mountains at altitudes of 12,000 helped unify the Tibetan people, he Dharmsala in northern India, feet and more, they graze their yak may have outlived his usefulness. "I estimates there are 6 million in Tibet and sheep herds on barren, treeless, might be the last Dalai Lama," he itself. A Chinese census in 1963 put windswept wastes broken by had also warned in 1972. "It is not the number at 1.2 million. Another thousands of often saline lakes (one, important. What is important is that four million or so people of Tibetan Nam Tso, covers 950 square miles), Tibet should benefit." During a visit origin and culture populate the snow-covered mountain ranges to Europe in fall 1973 when he met Himalayan border regions. soaring above 20,000 feet, and great the Pope, the Dalai Lama spoke of his desire to return to Tibet and not Cultural Revolution and many Nationalist pressure was involved; spend his days "like an exiled Tibetans had assumed he was dead. he grew up under the protection of European king surrounded by his In 1964 he was stripped of his post Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers. court." He even voiced a willingness as chairman of the election In 1944, still never having set foot in to accept the role of a purely committee for the Tibetan region Tibet, he was enthroned as the and charged with "opposing the religious leader. Panchen Lama. In 1949 Radio people, the fatherland and During Mao Tse-tung's lifetime Peking announced that the Panchen socialism." Since then he had been Tibet remained virtually cut off from Lama, then 12 years old, had variously reported as being in a labor the outside world, a garrison state "appealed" to Mao Tse-tung to camp or "studying" Maoism in with 300,000 Chinese troops. But "liberate Tibet." He met the Dalai Peking. the Tibetans are a stubborn people Lama for the first time in 1952, and the threat of insurrection in Like the Dalai Lama, the Panchen repairing a breach that dated from event of seriously worsening Lama is regarded as a reincarnation the time of their predecessors; they relations with Russia has never been of Buadha. He originally visited Peking together in 1954 and, lost on Peking. No one today collaborated with the Chinese after each carrying a movie camera, expects traditional Tibet to ever be their conquest of Tibet in 1950. His toured India together in 1956. The restored. The Dalai Lama himself crime in 1964, according to Tibetan Panchen Lama did not join in the has stressed that resistance to lamas who escaped to India, was Lhasa rebellion that led to the Dalai change in the late twentieth century failing to denounce the Dalai Lama Lama's flight into exile in 1959. is futile; he concedes the Chinese and calling for "a halt to the Instead he came to be treated as have brought many needed reforms. oppression and religious one of China's officials. Then, in But, as he has observed, "Great persecution" of Tibetans. 1964, the Chinese military commander in Tibet began unexpected changes have occurred Many ordinary Tibetans tend to attacking unnamed "schemers" in the world; it is my hope the dismiss the Panchen Lama as a who plotted "the restoration of the Chinese leaders will review the new Chinese. As the story goes, he was integration of politics and religion." realities." born in 1937 in China's Sinkiang It soon became evident the target Apparently this has been province; as a boy named Kum-bu- was the Panchen Lama himself. happening. The most dramatic tze-den he was discovered at age six indication was when the Panchen at play in his father's peasant hut by The rehabilitation of the Panchen Lama, the second most revered pilgrims searching for the Lama after 14 years has generally traditional spiritual leader in Tibet, reincarnated spirit of the previous been interpreted as a conciliatory showed up for the Fifth Chinese Panchen Lama. The child was said gesture toward Tibetans by China's People's Political Consultative to have selected his predecessor's post-Mao leadership. The Dalai Conference in Peking's Great Hall of clothes and spectacles from a pile of Lama himself suggested in March the People in late February 1978. It garments and to have cried, 1978 that China may reinstall the was the Panchen Lama's first public "Lama!" Many Tibetans contested Panchen Lama as its figurehead in appearance since China's Great the choice, asserting that Chinese Lhasa, in order to make a more convincing case, especially to Tibetans in exile, that conditions are improving in Tibet and that it enjoys relative autonomy. He noted Deputy Prime Minister Teng Hsiao-ping's reputation as a pragmatist. Teng himself, in a visit to Kathmandu in February 1978, indicated China was in no hurry to open Tibet to the outside world. Tibet's mountainous terrain and high altitude complicated the development of tourism and trade, he told the Nepalese, who had just opened the first foreign consulate in Lhasa. "I had wanted to stop at Lhasa on the way here," Teng said, "but my colleagues did not allow me. Lhasa is almost 4,000 meters above sea level and anyone who Migrant peasants - Kharnpa tribals on Tibetan-Nepal border. wants to go to Tibet must get a replied that since the Dalai Lama our only hope. Do not expect medical checkup." had not applied for a visa, the miracles. And do not expect me to Few of the trickle of foreigners so question of denying him one did not make prophecies because I cannot." far allowed into Tibet have seen arise. Asked why Tibet seemed excluded from President Carter's In March 1978 he took note of post- much more than Lhasa. And many human rights policy, the State Mao China's campaign to present its reports were evidently colored by Department spokesman replied: occupation of Tibet in a better light: the desire to keep on the good side of the authorities in Peking. Author The President has a strong Recently the Chinese have Han Suyin (Love is a Many- commitment to human rights and its intensified their propaganda about Splendored Thing) went in 1975 and important role in our foreign policy.
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