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The politics of Tibet: a 2007 reality check

N. Ram

The Dalai Lama, who turns 72 on July 5, has suffered some health setbacks over the past few years. While his senior aides have characterised these problems as “minor” and age-related, the fact that he was hospitalised and has had to cancel some scheduled foreign visits has raised the level of personal concern and political anxiety among his flock.

He has fuelled uncertainty about the future by making a profusion of statements about his own mortality. At times, he has indicated that he might choose to be the last Dalai Lama; and even proposed ‘democratic’ modalities for ending the institution. But he has also said: “If I die in exile, and if the Tibetan people wish to continue the institution of the Dalai Lama, my reincarnation will not be born under Chinese control … That reincarnation … will be outside, in the free world. This I can say with absolute certainty.” These remarks make it clear that while the Tibetan Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation belongs to the mystical-religious realm and asks a lot from 21st century believers, the Dalai Lama’s approach even to rebirth is decidedly ideological-political.

As religious leaders go, the Dalai Lama is certainly one of the world’s most-recognised faces. In this respect, he is comparable to Pope John Paul II and Ayatollah Khomeini, except that he has been on the world stage for much longer than either of them was. Centuries of history bear down on him. For he is the 14th in an ‘incarnate’ series launched in the 16th century when a Mongol chieftain, who owed allegiance to China’s Ming Emperor, conferred the honorific ‘Dalai’ (‘Ocean’) on a ‘Living Buddha’ of the Gelug sect who became the 3rd Dalai Lama. (Two predecessors were posthumously recognised.)

Historical records show that the institution of the Dalai Lama as an ‘incarnate’ politico-religious supremo — recognised and empowered by the Chinese central government — began in the middle of the 17th century, when the Great Fifth received a formal title, a golden certificate of appointment, and a golden seal of authority from the Qing Emperor whom he visited, and paid homage to, in Beijing. Interestingly, on February 22, 1940, Tenzin Gyatso was enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama at the Potala Palace after receiving the necessary certificates and seals of approval from the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, which in fact allocated 400,000 silver dollars to cover the expenses of the enthronement ceremony.

The shy and diffident religious leader who was prevailed upon to flee Tibet during the 1959 armed uprising and has, since 1960, been based with his entourage in Dharamsala — India’s ‘Little Lhasa’ — has developed into a consummate public figure and world traveller. Winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, the 14th Dalai Lama has been primarily responsible for keeping the Tibet question active internationally, within China, and in the arena of India-China bilateral relations.

Politically, Tibet presents a paradox.

On the one side, there is not a single country and government in the world that disputes the status of Tibet; that does not recognise it as a part of China; that is willing to accord any kind of legal recognition to the Dalai Lama’s ‘government-in-exile’ based in Dharamsala. This situation presents a contrast to the lack of an international consensus on the legal status of Kashmir.

With respect to Tibet, India, which started out in the late 1940s with a policy of ambivalence shaped by the British Raj, has come a long way. In the “Declaration on Principles for Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation Between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China,” issued at the end of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s official visit to China in June 2003, India firmly reiterated its “one China policy” and recognised that “the Tibet Autonomous Region is part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China.” It added that it did not allow Tibetans “to engage in anti-China political activities in India.” The Manmohan Singh government reiterated this official Indian position in the Joint Statement issued at the end of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s state visit to India in April 2005.

On the other side, there is little doubt that there is a Tibet political question; that it has a problematical international dimension; that it continues to cause concern to the political leadership and people of China; and that it serves to confuse and divide public opinion abroad and, to an extent, at home.

This problematical side is a function of the interplay of a host of subjective and objective factors. They are the Dalai Lama’s religious charisma combined with the iconic international status of Tibetan Buddhism; his long-lastingness and tenacity; his alignment with colonial interests and western powers and the ideological-political purposes he has served over half a century; his considerable wealth and global investments, and resources mobilised from the Tibetan disaspora in various countries; the grievous cultural and human damage done in Tibet, as in the rest of China, during the decade of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (1966-1976); the nature of the ‘independence for Tibet’ movement that has rallied round the person and office of the Dalai Lama and follows anything but the Buddhist ‘Middle Way’; the links and synergies he has established with Hollywood, the media, legislators, and other influential constituencies in the west; and, most troubling from a progressive Indian standpoint, the reality of a continuing Indian base of operations for the ‘Tibetan government-in-exile.’

The long-term assessment of China’s political leadership has been that the Dalai Lama cannot be treated merely, or even primarily, as a religious leader. If he were just a pre-eminent religious leader, there would be no problem in accommodating him within the constitutional framework that guarantees religious freedom to all citizens and regional autonomy to ethnic minorities in extensive parts of a giant country. In fact, the 14th Dalai Lama is a consummate politician leading a movement that seeks to take ‘Greater Tibet’ away from the motherland — an anti-communist and separatist political figure, with external links.

The Dalai Lama’s track record certainly bears out this assessment. In September 1959, acting against Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s advice, he sought unsuccessfully to get the United Nations to intervene in Tibet. His ‘Tibetan government-in-exile,’ with its ‘Draft Constitution for Future Tibet’ and its front organisations, functions in flagrant disregard of legality as well as India’s long-declared official policy of not allowing Tibetans “to engage in anti-China political activities in India.”

Over the past three decades, following a high-level political decision, the Dalai Lama has travelled extensively abroad to rally support for the internationalisation of the Tibet question and presented various ‘realistic’ proposals for its ‘satisfactory and just solution.’ These have included a Five Point Peace Plan unfurled in a September 1987 address to members of the U.S. Congress; the elaboration of these five points in the so-called Strasbourg Proposal of June 1988; the withdrawal, in March 1991, of his “personal commitment” to the ideas expressed in the Strasbourg Proposal on the basis of the allegation that the Chinese leadership had a “closed and negative” attitude to the problem; and an abrasive and propagandistic open letter written to Deng Xiaoping in September 1992.

In his major pronouncements, the Dalai Lama has taken the stand that Tibet has been an independent nation from ancient times; that it has been a strategic ‘buffer state’ in the heart of Asia guaranteeing the region’s stability; that it has never ‘conceded’ its ‘sovereignty’ to China or any other foreign power; that China’s control over Tibet is in the nature of ‘occupation’ by a ‘colonial’ power; and that ‘the Tibetan people have never accepted the loss of national sovereignty.’

Equally important, he has repeatedly spoken of ‘six million Tibetans.’ He has falsely accused China of rendering Tibetans, through a state-sponsored policy of population transfer and Hanisation, into a ‘minority’ in their own land. The plain truth, borne out by official censuses and easily verifiable by foreign observers and experts, is that Tibetans constitute more than 92 per cent of the population of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). The Dalai Lama has even accused the Chinese socialist state of unleashing a ‘holocaust’ and exterminating more than a million Tibetans. He has put forward the demand for the reconstitution of a ‘Greater Tibet’ known as ‘Cholka-Sum’ and comprising the areas of ‘U-Tsang, Kham, and Amdo.’ He has demanded that ‘Chinese forces,’ the People’s Liberation Army, should pull out of Greater Tibet and that “a regional peace conference should be convened to guarantee demilitarisation in Tibet.” If the 14th Dalai Lama has his way, a single ‘de-Hanised’ administrative unit, which will be formed by breaking up four Chinese provinces, will appropriate one-fourth of China’s territory — instead of the one-eighth covered by TAR.

The Dalai Lama has even sought to implicate India in his political project, observing on one occasion, at a seminar, that “it is more reasonable for India to own sovereignty over Tibet than China.”

There have been other political provocations under the guise of exercising traditional religious authority. On May 14, 1995, in a pre-emptive bid, the Dalai Lama in exile in India ‘recognised’ the boy Gendhun Choekyi Nyima, sight unseen of course, as the 11th Panchen Lama. However, in December 1995, the Chinese central government, going by centuries-old custom and tradition that empower it to recognise and appoint both the Dalai and the Panchen Lama, approved the enthronement of Gyaltsen Norbu as the 11th Panchen Erdeni.

Over the past three decades, the Chinese leadership has fashioned and finessed its strategy of dealing politically with the Dalai Lama and his followers. In December 1978, Deng Xiaoping announced in a media interview that “the Dalai Lama may return, but only as a Chinese citizen” and that “we have but one demand — patriotism. And we say that anyone is welcome, whether he embraces patriotism early or late.” In May 1991, Prime Minister Li Peng clarified that “we have only one fundamental principle, namely, Tibet is an inalienable part of China. On this fundamental issue, there is no room for haggling … All matters except ‘Tibetan independence’ can be discussed.” However, after several rounds of informal talks and contacts with the Dalai Lama’s emissaries and fact-finding delegations between 1979 and 1992, and after watching his performance on the international stage, the Chinese government came to a provisional conclusion by the time it held the Third National Conference on Work in Tibet in 1994. The conclusion was that the ‘Dalai clique’ was demonstrably insincere; that it was working overtime to separate Tibet from China and destabilise the situation in TAR in concert with ‘China’s international enemies’; and that its real demands were tantamount to independence, ‘semi-independence’ or ‘independence in disguise.’

But that was by no means the end of the story. In an era of China’s unprecedented economic growth, inclusive and nuanced socio-political and cultural policies, when serious international political support for ‘Tibetan independence’ is non-existent, the Dalai Lama has been obliged to back-pedal on the key issues. In turn, the Chinese central government and the Communist Party of China have shown exceptional patience. This has meant that since 2002 five rounds of discussion have taken place between the representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government.

According to remarks made on November 14, 2006 at the Brookings Institution by Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, the ‘lead individual’ designated by the Dalai Lama to “reach out to the Chinese leadership,” these talks have deepened mutual understanding, “brought the dialogue to a new level,” and gone “a long way towards establishing a climate of openness that is essential to reaching mutually agreeable decisions regarding the future of the Tibetan and the Chinese people.” For a start, the Dalai Lama’s representatives have declared themselves to be “encouraged by the new focus within China’s leadership on the creation of a ‘harmonious society’… [and] by the concept of China’s ‘peaceful rise,’ whereby it will develop as a ‘modern socialist country that is prosperous, democratic, and culturally advanced.’”

They have also stated that the Dalai Lama’s current approach is to “look to the future as opposed to Tibet’s history to resolve its status vis-À-vis China” because “revisiting history will not serve any useful purpose.” Further, they have clarified, the crux of the Dalai Lama’s ‘Middle Way’ approach is to “recognise today’s reality that Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of China … and not raise the issue of separation from China in working on a mutually acceptable solution for Tibet.” His commitment is to “a resolution that has Tibet as a part of the People’s Republic of China, the need to unify all Tibetan people into one administrative entity, and the importance of granting genuine autonomy to the Tibetan people within the framework of the Chinese Constitution.”

Therein lies a big gap — which cannot be narrowed unless the Dalai Lama and his establishment radically modify their stand on two core issues.

First, the concept of ‘high-level’ or ‘maximum’ autonomy in line with the ‘one country, two systems’ principle (which Beijing holds to be applicable only to Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) is very different from what the Chinese constitutional framework and the law on national regional autonomy stipulate. The law, it has been pointed out, defines national regional autonomy as the basic political system of the Communist Party of China to solve the country’s ethnic issues using Marxism-Leninism. The content of autonomy, which in the Chinese constitutional and political context essentially means self-administering opportunities and subsidies and preferential policies from the state to help the autonomous region overcome historical backwardness, can certainly be improved.

However, the kind of autonomy that the Dalai Lama demanded in November 2005 — “the Central Government should take care of defence and foreign affairs, because the Tibetans have no experience in this regard, but the Tibetans should have full responsibility for education, economic development, environmental protection, and religion” — cannot possibly be accommodated within the Chinese Constitution. Further, his demand that “a Tibetan government should be set up in Lhasa and should have an elected administrative chief and possess a bicameral legislative organ and an independent judicial system” is ruled out of court. Beijing’s 2004 white paper, “National Regional Autonomy in Tibet,” is emphatic that, in contrast to Hong Kong and Macao that follow the capitalist system, Tibet does not face the possibility of introducing another social system. The democratic reform, introduced in 1959 ahead of schedule thanks to the armed uprising and the Dalai Lama’s flight, abolished serfdom along with the ancien regime and introduced the socialist system in stages in Tibet. Beijing is clear that there is no going back on this.

Secondly, the 2.6 million Tibetans in TAR — a number that has grown steadily and is more than twice the Tibetan population in the region when the Dalai Lama went into exile — form only 40 per cent of the total population of Tibetans in China. In responding to the demand for ‘one administrative entity’ for all ethnic Tibetans, the Chinese government makes the perfectly reasonable point that TAR parallels the area under the former Tibetan regime. Acceptance of the demand for ‘Greater Tibet’ means breaking up the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan, where there are a large number of Tibetan autonomous counties and prefectures; doing ethnic re-engineering, if not ‘cleansing’; and causing enormous de-stabilisation and damage to China’s state, society, and political system.

The talks will continue, as they should. Civility, open-mindedness, flexibility, and a positive attitude to resolving the Tibet question will certainly help, on both sides. During our visit to Tibet in June 2007, Nima Tsiren, vice-chairman of the regional government, responded to a question on the Dalai Lama by citing an observation made by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao at a Beijing press conference on March 16, 2007: “We will not only hear what he has to say; more importantly, we will watch what he does. We hope that the Dalai Lama will do something useful for China’s unity and the development of Tibet.”

Democratic India must hope so too.

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