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Letter from (Nirmala Deshpande)

Akh'il Bharat Rachanatmak Samaj-

GANDHI ASHRAM

KINGS WAY CAMP

DHELHI - 110 009

TEL: 7434514

New Delhi, September 1, 1997

Dear Friends,

In continuation to our earlier letter dated 1st Aug' 97 along with the copy of our appeal to the President of People's Republic of China, we regretfully inform that Chinese authorities did not respond to us until yesterday that is 1st t Sep' 97 the last date we had cited in our earlier letter. Under such circumstances now we have decided to start our Satyagraba by entering into Tibet from 2nd Oct' 97, Gandhi's Birthday.

With love and compassion for the people of Tibet and as well as for the people of China, we will undertake this Satyagrha with an absolute determination whatever may come as a consequence. We appeal to all the Tibetan Support Groups, sympathizer for Tibet and justice loving people of the world to give full support for our Satyagraha. We would welcome any number of Styagrahis from world over and from all the sections of the Tibetan Support Groups to join us from 2nd Oct' 97 to make this Satyagraha a success. You are also requested to share this information with all other Tibetan Supporters to whom we could not communicate directly. We look forward to receive your fullest support for this effort. All those who want to join this Satyagraha, are requested to reach Delhi by 28th September 1997.

With out best wishes.

Yours Sincerely.

(Nirmala Deshpande)

President

Akihl Bharat Rachnatmak Samaj

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Letter from Samdhong Rinpoche

ASSEMBLY OF PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES

The President

Dharamsala, September 2, 1997

Dear friends,

You must have received the communication dated 1st August, 1997 from Ms. Nirmala Deshpande, Member of Rajya Sabha and President of Akhil Bharat Rachanatmak Samaj in which she sought your support for the proposed Satyagraha Movement to press her demand to request the Chinese authorities to begin dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

This is one of the unique movement initiated by the Indian community for the cause of the Tibet, taking great risks for themselves. You will find from her earlier communications that the demand put forward by her were most reasonable and not impossible for the Chinese to consider.

I, therefore, request you all to take her appeal seriously and extend all possible moral and material support and also assist her in promoting publicity as well as media coverage in your area. I shall be most grateful for your timely support.

With my best wishes,

(S. Rinpoche)

CHAIRMAN

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THE WAY OF LEGAL ENCROACHMENT (9)

By Paolo Pietrosanti, General Council Member of the TRP

The term Satyagraha was introduced by Gandhi because nonviolence and "ahimsha" contained a negation, and semantically imposed the definition of a concept through the negation of an opposed idea. But Satyagraha is synonymous with nonviolence: it best expresses the concept, according to Gandhi, and expresses no other.

If the etymology of Satyagraha, which is a compound term consisting of two Sanskrit words, can be interpreted in any other way, there is no doubt that it would have to do in some way with the idea of truth. It seems to me that the main problem, within the benefits and ills of understanding and misunderstanding, is that, with respect to the idea of truth, we must not forget that Gandhi never ceased emphasizing that throughout his life, and therefore throughout his politics, he always spoke of experiments with truth. Experiments. The experimental path to truth constitutes a profound negation of every concept of truth with axiomatic and ideological connotations that may be fixed or still. Nonviolence is not an ideology, yet it is neither an arsenal of instruments of action, or a jukebox from which we may choose sit-ins or fastings, marches or hartal.

The intellectual and cultural foundation of nonviolence, and therefore of the Satyagraha, is an immediate relationship between means and ends. In reality, means are ends, and the means prefigure and condition the ends: the literature and history of political nonviolence, in effect, are exterminated.

It is for this reason that it does not seem useful to discuss the differences between violent and nonviolent means. It would be better to begin from the ends which they offer to us, in none other than rational terms, and to seek them out we must employ the most adequate and useful methods. The discourse is very complex and in many cases decays into oversimplification. In any case, it is evident to all that an attempt to confront one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world, and a nation whose army is the largest on earth, with violence would not be recommendable, not to mention that such an event would cause the loss of a substantial consensus in international public opinion. In essence, the intelligent fighter (whether violent,or nonviolent) always attempts to bring his adversary onto a battlefield upon which he has a chance of winning, as opposed to no chance at all.

But there is a characteristic of political struggle and the theory of political nonviolence that is unfortunately forgotten at times, yet which is very evident in the writings and work of Gandhi as well as Dr. King. The ends always coincide with the affirmation of a now legality: in law, rights, and therefore of order, as well as rules, institutions, and democratic power and authority that are the framework - mutable in its progressive, experimental nature - in which dialogue and confrontation between individuals may occur, and even develop the procedure and course that will become political democracy.

The defect and absence of legality are the primary problem of the system which governs the planet today, and of which the weakest individuals and peoples are victims.

The construction and organization of this identification between means and, ends is one of the fundamental keys, if not the fundamental key, of the Satyagraha for Tibet. Even the most brutal regime has its laws, no matter how perverse. We must place them in discussion, and, most of all, impose confrontation and deflate the contradiction between the power of Peking and its own legality. Peking has signed international conventions on human rights, and has a fundamental law (Constitution) with respect to which it has constructed an enormous body of normative, administrative and governing acts, as well as an immense number of Chinese laws that are in open contradiction to these conventions. The Satyagraha movement will be the movement of firm dialogue which will convince Peking to respect its legality.

The nonviolent activist provokes insupportable contradictions in enemies, placing adversaries before their own violations of the rules which they have adopted. But this is only a general framework, and is not enough. It is necessary that we work within this framework with. the prospective of "invading" Tibet.

We can and we must put together a schedule of precise deadlines which provides, for example, for international days dedicated to article "X" of the Chinese Constitution, or law "Y" which violated human rights convention "Z"...

We must prepare to converge in the thousands, from all over the world, upon Tibet: or Peking. We must go to be arrested, deported, and beaten before the media of the world, while throughout the planet others, many others, ask their respective governments to pay for their politics of complicity.

Fastings, marches, vigils, sit-ins, flags and manifestations, along with initiatives in parliaments and the UN buildings are not only useful, but necessary; they must be organized, and scheduled. It is necessary to find and secure organizational headquarters for the planning of this global campaign. But without volunteers, we will not have a chance.

Most of all, however, the way in which the Tibetan problem is habitually presented must be transformed in some way. The freedom of Tibet and democracy in China are in the of the Tibetans because these things are in the interest of the peaceful, comfortable and protected of the West. I do not believe that a great deal will be accomplished within the absence of this awareness. And it is not true that such concerns are of a strictly idealistic nature.

It is true that freedom and democracy are indivisible, and are not even conceivable if they allowed to be repressed in such vast territories, or be reduced to merely empty enunciations: it is for this reason that so many radicals - myself included - have known the prisons of so many nations. But it is also true that the globalization of economics, when unaccompanied by a progressive and rapid globalization of the institutions and norms of freedom and democracy, of the international rights and their transformation, will not bring any good, and only make us people of the North rich with an ungovernable assembly (because it is without a real market, which is a thing of rules) of economies in which the cost of labor of millions of what are in substance slaves cuts into the price of goods only a fraction of what it cuts from. nations which have high social standards and social protection.

This, more than elsewhere, is at stake in China. The Tibetans will have to make an effort to understand that they serve us as much as we serve them, and we who live in nations whose opulence is in decay must understand the same.

This is an urgent question for those who toll the bell of Tibet, the bell which has summoned the brightest minds not only for the Satyagraha for Tibet, but the Satyagraha for the affirmation of rights and law: with the Tibetans more than for them.

I am firmly convinced that it is necessary to conceive, without delusion and only with the employment of the top professionals, the convergence upon Tibet and its frontiers of thousands of men and women from dozens of countries of the world. It will be a request, beyond that of the United Nations, for Chinese legality. I am not as sure that we will be able to do so.

(Published by FREEDOM FOR TIBET/DEMOCRACY IN CHINA ! - Number 64 - 16 September, 1997)