Published by World Tibet Network News - Wednesday, November 5, 1997The Hindu, Tuesday, November 04, 1997
SECTION: Books
Date: 04-11-1997 :: Pg: 28
THE SPIRIT OF TIBET - Vision of human liberation: Selected speeches and writings of H. H. the XIV Dalai Lama; Edited by A. A. Shiromany;
Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 576, Masjid Road, Jangpura, New Delhi-110014. Rs. 300.
One of the saddest and most distressing chapters in the history of free India was the desertion of Tibet by the Government of India during its struggle to preserve its political and cultural independence. It is one of the tragic ironies of history that this desertion of Tibet was coincidental with the most degrading, the most outrageously humiliating genuflections of the Government of India before aggressive communist China. This maladroit course was made worse by criminal negligence of Chinese encroachments on Indian territory resulting in the building of a military road across Aksai Chin, then a part of Indian territory, which enabled China to put through a thorough going military occupation of Tibet and repression and subjugation of its harmless, peace- loving people.
We had indisputable rights and privileges in Tibet which helped in its gradual,if slow modernisation, won for India by the Colonel Young Husband mission to Tibet during Lord Curzon's viceroyalty. Except for these apparently innocuous deductions from sovereignty, Tibet was absolutely free under its own Lamarchy. There was only the faintest sign of Chinese link with Tibet. Tibet negotiated with India without the slightest Chinese participation, apart from a certain Ambon being a silent spectator of the signing ceremony.
Nehru learnt in bitterest disillusionment that the Chinese were resolute, unscrupulous and utterly ruthless in armed enforcements of their fantastic territorial and other claims. It was a humiliating spectacle to find Nehru speaking of Indian territory occupied by the aggressive Chinese as ``very cold'' regions where not a blade of grass grew. It was worse when Nehru, to the measureless shock of the U.K. and the U.S made himself the self-chosen sponsor of China's claim to a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council. Far worse, he declined a permanent seat for India, offered informally to blunt his pro-communist infatuations. And all the immediate rewards for these extravagances was an attack on him by Chou-en- Lai, the then Prime Minister of China, as an extremely arrogant man, in a statement made during the visit to Nepal-China spoke of its armed attack in the Northeast as punishment meted out to India for political impertinence. It was, they said, a lesson India would not forget.
It is against this dismal picture of pathological incompetence and sheer stupidity that there stands out before us the moving dignified figure of the XIV Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama's escape into India was truly one of God's authentic miracles. The Chinese who were all around waiting to kidnap him were fooled and Nehru summoned sufficient courage to allow him to enter India as a political exile who was not to embarrass him by way of political activity of recovering Tibetan independence. The whole world venerates and respects the Dalai Lama. It is too full of pity for the Government of India's colossal exercise in diplomatic incompetence to rub it into our sensitivities that we are too stupid even to look after our own national security interests.
The figure that emerges from the book under review is of a truly holy symbol of the great Buddha's compassionate concern for all life on this earth. There is a quiet dignity, a gravity and a grace revealed in the speeches and writings in this book which move one most deeply. How on earth could any person with the faintest regard for the values and decencies of the civilised life treat the Dalai Lama as India treated him politically? He is allowed to speak out on his country's woes and humiliations in every country in the world outside China but not in India. This is an intolerable situation for any-person with self respect but a Mahatma like the Dalai Lama, far from feeling aggressively aggrieved about it avoids public pronouncements on his country's problems.
In his interview with the editor of this book, the Dalai Lama says that neither the Russians nor the Chinese seem concerned about Marxism. They are concerned with nationalism and this leads to a Marxist imperialism, in fact, however self contradictory it may be in words. The Chinese pretense that they are in Tibet for the sake of the Tibetans is a rehash of the British claim, the brazenly hypocritical claim, that they were in India for the benefit of the Indians. All imperialist nations have this monstrously absurd notion when they exploit ruthlessly other people to make progress.
In this moving story of his life, a classic of autobiographical literature, the Dalai Lama does not criticise Nehru at all. About Chinese killing thousands of unarmed Tibetans armed only with their rosaries and their prayer wheels, he says that in the Chinese claim that they were the guardians of peace and order in Tibet, that the world has not yet discovered bombs or bullets which would single out only armed and rebellious Tibetans for destruction.
The Dalai Lama expresses his wholehearted acceptance of Gandhian non-violence, recognising it to be authentically Buddhist in its provenance. Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are in the great line of successors to the great Buddha.
Speaking of the growing intolerance and conflict among world religions, he says that if religion does not promote human well- being, brotherhood and harmony among peoples, it is no religion at all. It is the criminal misuse of religion for political and economic ends that causes all the trouble we face today in this sphere. Religious militancy is a contradiction in terms. God is an Almighty Father. Whether, He has form or is formless, compassion is the true form and function of God.
In the sections on the political situation and the role of violence in the struggle for freedom, the Dalai Lama is disarmingly frank. He cannot give up his claim for national freedom for his stricken and oppressed people. He cannot plan any violent overthrow of the Chinese presence, in his sacred country.
His exile in India has helped him to concentrate on the education of his people and the opening up of their minds. It is a most moving impression this book leaves on its reader that there still is in our midst at least one figure who inspires the deepest, the most spontaneous reverence for him as an embodiment of all that is most holy and sacred in life.
The enigmatic smile of the Dalai Lama in all the pictures which adorn this book makes it something to be treasured. One feels thus though one would have been happy to have the Dalai Lama's own account of the various phases of his country's freedom struggle, in addition to the valuable accounts of his religious philosophy. S.R.