CHINA VISIT - III

Extraordinary Progress in Tibet

Sitaram Yechury

THE visit of our delegation to Tibet was, indeed, an eye-opener.  Ours was one of the first political delegations from India to visit the Tibet autonomous region in many decades.  The economic development that we could see in the capital city of Lhasa as well as in the other urban and rural areas clearly showed that compared to Nepal, Bhutan or other Indian Himalayan areas, the Tibet region is witness to unprecedented economic and other consequent social developments. 

Imagine that at a height of nearly 4000 meters with rarified oxygen in the air, in the land closest to the sun, one has to confront with traffic jams in the capital city.  Or, imagine that the over 100 kilometer distance from the airport to the city is covered in an hour's time on a four-lane cemented highway on the hills!  Or, imagine that the entry ticket to the 7th century Jokhang Monastery is an interactive CD-Rom!  Or, imagine that as you enter the Tibetan museum in Lhasa, everyone is given a digital devise  which looks like a telephone receiver. Every item in the museum is numbered and once the corresponding number is dialed from your digital set, you can, as you walk around the museum, listen to the detailed explanation -- historical and otherwise -- in an international language of your choice!  Such state of the art technology, we are told, now exists at the famous Louvre museum in Paris. But to expect this in a backward Tibet with its difficult terrain must definitely be considered even by its worst critics as, extraordinary developments.

Half-century ago, landlords and slave owners owned all the productive materials and living materials (cattle, live stock etc) in Tibet, while slaves and serfs who constituted 95 per cent of the whole population owned no productive materials and had absolutely no freedom. One look at the magnificent palaces and monasteries will confirm the fact of intense inhuman exploitation of the Tibetan society prior to the democratic reforms carried out by the socialist state in 1959/60.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PROGRESS

In 1972, the GDP of Tibet was only 132 million Yuan, however in 2002, the GDP reached 15.9 billion Yuan, i e, more than 120 times! In 1952, the illiteracy rate was 95 per cent.  At present, there are more than 1000 schools with more than 4,20,000 students in Tibet, the enrolment rate of suitable age children reached 88 per cent.  From 1994 to 2002, the central government provided more than 53.1 billion RMB Yuan as subsidy to the Tibetan autonomous region. In addition, other Chinese provinces as well as other  ministries and departments of China also invested more than 40 billion RMB Yuan in the region. 

Tibetan people, according to law, enjoy freedom of religion.  There are 1787 places for religious activities at present and more than 46,000 Buddhist monks.  The whole population in Tibet at present is about 2.62 million, among which there are more than 1,20,000 CPC members.  Altogether there are more than 10,000 grass-roots level party committees in Tibet. 

At the time of the democratic revolution in 1959, one out of every ten people was a Tibetan Buddhist monk, numbering 1,10,000.  The Tibet leaders with whom the delegation had extensive discussions informed us that during the cultural revolution, the CPC made many Leftist mistakes concerning religion. Only eight, out of over 1000 monasteries were allowed to function.  Since 1978, however, these have been corrected. Many of the monasteries have been rebuilt and renovated at a huge expense by the centre.  The famous Potala Palace was reconstructed with some thousands of kilograms of solid gold.  At the moment, amongst the various monasteries we visited in our rather extensive tour of Tibet, we found a fairly conducive atmosphere where the Buddhist monks seem to be engaged in their activities without any interference.

This atmosphere of calm, however, is based on the simple principle of separation of religion from politics and strict implementation of equal rights to all religions.  Apart from the five major Buddhist sects, Muslims and Christians also co-exist in Tibet.  There are four functioning mosques and one church.  There is a strict intolerance by the administration and the state for mixing religion with politics. 

In fact, this is the charge that they have against the Dalai Lama.  They claim that in an opinion poll conducted in 2000, while most Tibetans accept the Dalai Lama as a religious head and as the highest manifestation of the living Buddha, 86 per cent of them do not accept him as the political leader.

The question of Tibet being a part of unified China goes all the way back to the 7th century.  During the period of the Tang Dynasty in China (618-907 AD), the great Tibetan leader, Songtsan Gambo, brought together ten separate but influential tribes and established the Tubo Kingdom with Lhasa as the capital.   Songtsan Gambo developed good relations with the Tang Dynasty as well as with neighbouring Nepal and Indian kingdoms of his time.  In 641, he married a Princess of the Tang Emperor cementing the close ties with China.  He is also believed to have married into royal families of Nepal and India.

ARRIVAL OF BUDDHISM

Buddhism comes to Tibet through these intermarriages.   That was a time also when the Buddhists, facing persecution in India from the reassertion and the reestablishment of a brahmanical order, were seeking the refuge outside. One such was padma sambhava considered by many to have taken Buddhism to Tibet.  Interacting with the indigenous religion, Bon, this particular form of Mahayana Buddhism known as Tibetan Buddhism emerged. It has its own distinctive qualities and practices. One such is the recognition of reincarnating living Buddhas, a belief alien to Chinese Buddhism.  The Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama are the manifestations of the living Buddhas. 

Incidentally, it was at this time in the 7th century that the Tibetan language was also developed relying heavily on both Sanskrit and the Chinese languages.  A large number of original Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts are believed to have been translated, under orders from the king, into Tibetan language.  In India, following the persecution of the Buddhists, much of this valuable knowledge as well as history is believed to have been lost.   It was in search of a more accurate historical record of this period that Rahul Sankrityan embarked on his visit to study the Tibet manuscripts.  Every single Tibet monastery has a large collection of manuscripts which are revered by pilgrims today.   Walking below the columns holding these manuscripts is considered a blessing.  This Tubo kingdom disintegrated by the year 842.

BECOMES A PART OF CHINA

However, it is only by the mid-13th century that Tibet, formally, becomes territorially a part of China. The Mongol Gengiskhan established the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) in China and began the process of unification of all Chinese territories.  With the ascendance of Kublai Khan to the throne of the Yuan Dynasty in 1260, Tibet  became an administrative  unit directly governed by the Chinese  central   government.  Since then, the records show that Tibet was all along a part of the Chinese administrative set-up.

During the late Qing Dynasty period, in the beginning of the 20th century, Britain twice launched armed invasions against Tibet.   After the triumph of 1911, democratic revolution in China and the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, Britain taking advantage of the chaotic transition period, intensified its efforts to occupy Tibet. In 1914, Britain organised the Shimla conference and proclaimed a "Shimla convention" which gravely  violated China's sovereignty over Tibet.  The government led by Dr Sun Yat-Sen decisively rejected such a position of British imperialism.  Britain, however, continued to  foment trouble and made efforts all through till the 1940s to separate Tibet from China and to incorporate it with British India.

As the president of the Republic, Dr Sun Yat-Sen, in his declaration to the founding of the Republic of China in January 1912, said: "The foundation of the state lies in the people's power to incorporate the areas inhabited  by the Hans, Manchus, Mongolians, Huis and Tibetans into one country and to unite the Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Hui and Tibetan nationalities into one nation.  That is called the national unification."  The five-colour flag used then as the national flag symbolised the integral whole of the five nationalities constituting Republic of China.