Published by: World Tibet Network News Saturday, November 15, 1997

Rain or shine, the exiled Dalai Lama forges ahead for a free Tibet while making the Chinese see red

GEORGE MAGAZINE, Issue November 1997

(An interview by John Kennedy)

Hollywood has an unlikely new hero these days. He has been wearing the same old clothes for years; he abhors violence and eschews sports and material attachments; and he has been celibate for all his 62 years. But the man who is the inspiration for two major films of the fall season (Seven Years in Tibet, with Brad Pitt, and Martin Scorsese's Kundun) has far more important things on his mind than celluloid immortality. He is the religious and political leader of the Tibetan people and a larger-than-life symbol of their resistance to the Chinese occupation of their homeland. he is also a Nobel laureate, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and the man who his followers believe is a living form of Buddha.

There is no one in the world quite like the Dalai Lama, which makes is difficult to take his measure as a conventional political leader. He is a demigod struggling for temporal gains for his followers; an exiled monarch presiding over a flourishing and culturally intact refugee community; a displaced theocrat who, by virtue of his birthright and his many personal sacrifices, has not only preserved his legitimacy but also enhanced the influence of his religion around the world; and a political leader who has been pitted against a relentless foe seemingly immune to his moral authority. While political progress in both Northern Ireland and South Africa is a testament to the efficacy of the carrot-and-stick approach, the Dalai Lama's strategy is unapologetically all carrot. yet it hasn't secured what his people want most -- their country.

According to the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, each Dalai Lama is the godlike reincarnation of a single enlightened soul who reappears in a child born within a few years of the death of the preceding Dalai Lama. To his four surviving siblings (his mother gave birth 16 times), Tenzin Gyatso has been a god ever since he was taken from his parents' home in eastern Tibet by monks looking for the new boy-king. After the thirteenth Dalai Lama's death, a series of omens had pointed the search party to Tenzin's village of Takster. The head of the deceased Dalai Lama had turned east in its coffin while the body lay in state' a rare fungus had suddenly grown on the east side of a sacred pillar; and the name of the young successor's village had appeared to the interim head monk in a dream. But it was not until the child picked out a number of relics that had belonged to his predecessor-- including a walking stick, a pair of spectacles, and a toy drum-- from a jumble of worthless look-alikes that his divinity was confirme

d. Later, after Tenzin had been brought to the holy city of Lhasa to be further scrutinized, the young boy pointed to a closed vault in the Potala Palace containing the former Dalai Lama's teeth and said, "My teeth are in there." With that, he took up residence in the palace to begin years of study and reflection in preparation for his ascent to the seat of the Dalai Lama once he reached maturity.

In 1950, the Chinese invaded Tibet in search of land an raw materials, which the "rooftop of the world" had in abundance. The occupying troops of the new People's Liberation Army (PLA) had another mandate as well: to liberate Tibet from the "poison" of religion, which Mao believed had kept the country in a semifeudal state. In 1959, after years of suffering escalating humiliations and atrocities at the hands of the Chinese, Tibetans in Lhasa rebelled, only to be ruthlessly suppressed by the Chinese. Amid word that the PLA intended to capture or kill the Dalai Lama, whom Chinese officials regarded as the root cause of Tibetan nationalism, the young ruler fled the region in a dramatic nighttime escape from the encircled palace. Along with a few bodyguards and llamas, the ragtag party crossed the icy passes of the Himalayas (the same route that is used by streams of refugees today) and eventually took up residence in the former British hill station of Dharamsala, India.

During the next two decades, China vigorously pursued the destruction of Tibetan culture (and people) and sought to inculcate the Tibetan people with Chinese ways. More than 1.2 million Tibetans were shot or tortured to death, or perished in prison or labor camps. More than 6,000 monasteries were destroyed (only 13 remained in the entire country), and sacred texts tat were centuries old were used as fuel and toilet paper. Tibetan children were relocated to China in masses for "re-education," and millions of Chinese were transplanted to Tibet. There are now a million more Chinese than Tibetans in Tibet, and they have laid claim to the best land and jobs available. It is a crime to carry a picture of the Dalai Lama.

In recent years, the Chinese have softened their rule, preserving the gains they have made while maintaining only a lowgrade police presence in most of the country. Their official position is that Tibet has been a part of China since the thirteenth century, so any talk of independence is tantamount to sedition. The Dalai Lama "clique," as the commission in exile is referred to, is depicted as a reactionary group of despots who are in cahoots with the "enemies of a strong China." So a loose standoff is maintained. The Chinese have invited the Dalai Lama to come live in Beijing, provided he renounces all claims of Tibetan autonomy. The Tibetan commission's position is elucidated in a five-point proposal in which it concedes control of foreign policy and defense to China but demands local control of all religious, social, and educational matters.

Any effort made by outside nations, such as the United States, to move the process along is usually met with a stern rebuke from the Chinese not to meddle in their internal affairs. So the Dalai Lama continues to make conciliatory statements in public and maintains a public relations campaign on behalf of his cause that is perhaps unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

But already there are signs that the next phase of the struggle for Tibetan autonomy will take place after the fourteenth Dalai lama passes on and his soul finds a successor. A battle is already under way over the next Panchen Lama, the second-highest-ranking monk in Tibetan Buddhism, who helps choose the next Dalai Lama. The Chinese hold the world's youngest political prisoner under house arrest in Beijing, a young boy whom the Dalai Lama determined to be the reincarnation of the last Panchen Lama (who had remained in Tibet after the Chinese takeover and dies under suspicious circumstances in 1989). The Chinese have selected another boy and are pressing to have him approved by the coterie of religious authorities who reside in Tibet.

Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama has stated publicly that his own succession is a matter for the Tibetan people to decide. Whether Tibetans choose a new leader in the traditional manner or elect one instead is their decision. But the Dalai Lama remains sanguine, as only this most enlightened of All Tibetan Buddhists can be, for if he doesn't see a free Tibet in this lifetime, there's always the next one.

John Kennedy