The Tibet Myth by Lapis Blog entry

Blog: Collective Disease Incorporated
by Lapis

The Tibet Myth

Exploring the Buddhist religion as another order that works to enlsave people (have them give their power away).

Date: 6/18/2006 4:48:41 AM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 4853 times

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

by Michael Parenti

www.dissidentvoice.org

December 27,
2003

First Published in the
Michael Parenti
Archive

Throughout
the ages there has prevailed a distressing symbiosis between religion and
violence. The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are
heavily laced with internecine vendettas, inquisitions, and wars. Again and
again, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to terrorize and massacre
heretics, infidels, and other sinners.

Some people have argued
that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic
violence of other religions. To be sure, as practiced by many in the United
States, Buddhism is more a "spiritual" and psychological discipline than a
theology in the usual sense. It offers meditative techniques and
self-treatments that are said to promote "enlightenment" and harmony within
oneself. But like any other belief system, Buddhism must be judged not only
by its teachings but by the actual behavior of its proponents.

Buddhist Exceptionalism?

A glance at history reveals
that Buddhist organizations have not been free of the violent pursuits so
characteristic of religious groups throughout the ages. In Tibet, from the
early seventeenth century well into the eighteenth, competing Buddhist sects
engaged in armed hostilities and summary executions. [1]
In the twentieth century, from Thailand to Burma to Korea to Japan,
Buddhists have clashed with each other and with non-Buddhists. In Sri Lanka,
huge battles in the name of Buddhism are part of Sinhalese history.
[2]

Just a few years ago in
South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order---reputedly
devoted to a meditative search for spiritual enlightenment---fought each
other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went
on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South
Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of
dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various
duties. The brawls partly destroyed the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left
dozens of monks injured, some seriously. Both warring factions claimed
public support. In fact, Korean citizens appeared to disdain both sides,
feeling that no matter what clique of monks took control of an order, it
would use worshippers' donations to amass wealth, including houses and
expensive cars. According to one news report, the mêlée within the Chogye
Buddhist order (much of it carried on Korean television) "shatter[ed] the
image of Buddhist Enlightenment." [3]

But many present-day
Buddhists in the United States would argue that none of this applies to the
Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chinese crackdown in
1959. The Dalai Lama's Tibet, they believe, was a spiritually oriented
kingdom, free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, pointless
pursuits, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society.
Western news media, and a slew of travel books, novels, and Hollywood films
have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La and the Dalai
Lama as a wise saint, "the greatest living human," as actor Richard Gere
gushed. [4]

The Dalai Lama himself lent
support to this idealized image of Tibet with statements such as: "Tibetan
civilization has a long and rich history. The pervasive influence of
Buddhism and the rigors of life amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled
environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed
freedom and contentment." [5] In fact, Tibet's history
reads a little differently. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan
created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as
might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China
sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old
man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all
Tibet. Here is quite a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed
by a Chinese army.

To elevate his authority
beyond worldly challenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did
not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings
that conflicted with his claim to divinity. [6] The Dalai
Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses,
partying with friends, writing erotic poetry, and acting in other ways that
might seem unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was "disappeared"
by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods,
five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their high priests or other nonviolent
Buddhist courtiers. [7]

Shangri-La (for Lords and Lamas)

Religions have had a close
relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed,
it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such
was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama
last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into
religious or secular manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer like
Pradyumna Karan, sympathetic to the old order, admits that "a great deal of
real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great
riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to
accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and
money lending." [8] Drepung monastery was one of the
biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300
great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went to
the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families,
while most of the lower clergy were as poor as the peasant class from which
they sprang. This class-determined economic inequality within the Tibetan
clergy closely parallels that of the Christian clergy in medieval Europe.

Along with the upper
clergy, secular leaders did well. A notable example was the
commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of
land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet.
[9] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its
Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its
people voluntarily observed the laws of karma." [10] In
fact, it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a
gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and catch runaway serfs.
[11]

Young Tibetan boys were
regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be
trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a
monk, reports that it was common practice for peasant children to be
sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated
childhood rape not long after he was taken into the monastery at age nine.
[12] The monastic estates also conscripted peasant
children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and
soldiers.

In Old Tibet there were
small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and
perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families
of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were
beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned
nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [13]

In 1953, the greater part
of the rural population---some 700,000 of an estimated total population of
1,250,000---were serfs. Tied to the land, they were allotted only a small
parcel to grow their own food. Serfs and other peasants generally went
without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring
for the monasteries and individual high-ranking lamas, or for a secular
aristocracy that numbered not more than 200 families. In effect, they were
owned by their masters who told them what crops to grow and what animals to
raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama.
A serf might easily be separated from his family should the owner send him
to work in a distant location. Serfs could be sold by their masters, or
subjected to torture and death. [14]

A Tibetan lord would often
take his pick of females in the serf population, if we are to believe one
22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf: "All pretty serf girls were
usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished." They
"were just slaves without rights." [15] Serfs needed
permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture and
forcibly bring back those who tried to flee. A 24-year old runaway serf,
interviewed by Anna Louise Strong, welcomed the Chinese intervention as a
"liberation." During his time as a serf he claims he was not much different
from a draft animal, subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold, unable
to read or write, and knowing nothing at all. He tells of his attempts to
flee:

The first time [the landlord's men] caught me
running away, I was very small, and they only cuffed me and cursed me. The
second time they beat me up. The third time I was already fifteen and they
gave me fifty heavy lashes, with two men sitting on me, one on my head and
one on my feet. Blood came then from my nose and mouth. The overseer said:
"This is only blood from the nose; maybe you take heavier sticks and bring
some blood from the brain." They beat then with heavier sticks and poured
alcohol and water with caustic soda on the wounds to make more pain. I
passed out for two hours. [16]

In addition to being under
a lifetime bond to work the lord's land---or the monastery's land---without
pay, the serfs were obliged to repair the lord's houses, transport his
crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying
animals and transportation on demand. "It was an efficient system of
economic exploitation that guaranteed to the country's religious and secular
elites a permanent and secure labor force to cultivate their land holdings
without burdening them either with any direct day-to-day responsibility for
the serf's subsistence and without the need to compete for labor in a market
context." [17]

The common people labored
under the twin burdens of the corvée (forced unpaid labor on behalf of the
lord) and onerous tithes. They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for
the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed
for planting a new tree in their yard, for keeping domestic or barnyard
animals, for owning a flower pot, or putting a bell on an animal. There were
taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell
ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released.
Even beggars were taxed. Those who could not find work were taxed for being
unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they
paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them
money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father
to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked
being placed into slavery for as long as the monastery demanded, sometimes
for the rest of their lives. [18]

The theocracy's religious
teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught
that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their
foolish and wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the
misery of their present existence as an atonement and in anticipation that
their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course
treated their good fortune as a reward for--and tangible evidence of-virtue
in past and present lives.

Torture
and Mutilation in Shanghri-La

In the Dalai Lama's Tibet,
torture and mutilation---including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues,
hamstringing, and amputation of arms and legs--were favored punishments
inflicted upon thieves, runaway serfs, and other "criminals." Journeying
through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former
serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery.
For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use.
He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to
blind me I thought there was no good in religion." [19]
Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees to be
seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some
offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in the freezing night
to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,"
concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [20]

Some monasteries had their
own private prisons, reports Anna Louise Strong. In 1959, she visited an
exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords.
There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and
instruments for cutting off noses and ears, and breaking off hands. For
gouging out eyes, there was a special stone cap with two holes in it that
was pressed down over the head so that the eyes bulged out through the holes
and could be more readily torn out. There were instruments for slicing off
kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and
special implements for disembowling. [21]

The exhibition presented
photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or
suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed
him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of
the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who
opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken
off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips
cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.
[22]

Theocratic despotism had
been the rule for generations. An English visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A.
L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan people were under the "intolerable
tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to
terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's
rule as "an engine of oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement."
At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor,
observed that "the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in
their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while
the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and
priest-craft the world has ever seen." Tibetan rulers, like those of Europe
during the Middle Ages, "forged innumerable weapons of servitude, invented
degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common
people. [23]

In 1937, another visitor,
Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in
ministering to the people or educating them, nor do laymen take part in or
even attend the monastery services. The beggar beside the road is nothing to
the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries
and is used to increase their influence and wealth." [24]

Occupation and Revolt

The Chinese Communists
occupied Tibet in 1951, claiming suzerainty over that country. The 1951
treaty provided for ostensible self-government under the Dalai Lama's rule
but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign
relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal
administration "to promote social reforms." At first, they moved slowly,
relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect change. Among the
earliest reforms they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and
build some hospitals and roads.

Mao Zedung and his
Communist cadres did not simply want to occupy Tibet. They desired the Dalai
Lama's cooperation in transforming Tibet's feudal economy in accordance with
socialist goals. Even Melvyn Goldstein, who is sympathetic to the Dalai Lama
and the cause of Tibetan independence, allows that "contrary to popular
belief in the West," the Chinese "pursued a policy of moderation." They took
care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion" and "allowed the old
feudal and monastic systems to continue unchanged. Between 1951 and 1959,
not only was no aristocratic or monastic property confiscated, but feudal
lords were permitted to exercise continued judicial authority over their
hereditarily bound peasants." [25] As late as 1957, Mao
Zedung was trying to salvage his gradualist policy. He reduced the number of
Chinese cadre and troops in Tibet and promised the Dalai Lama in writing
that China would not implement land reforms in Tibet for the next six years
or even longer if conditions were not yet ripe. [26]

Nevertheless, Chinese rule
over Tibet greatly discomforted the lords and lamas. What bothered them most
was not that the intruders were Chinese. They had seen Chinese come and go
over the centuries and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo and his
reactionary Kuomintang rule in China. [27] Indeed the
approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of
the present-day Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the young Dalai Lama was
installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chiang Kaishek's troops
and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old
tradition. [28] What really bothered the Tibetan lords
and lamas was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a
matter of time, they were sure, before the Communists started imposing their
egalitarian and collectivist solutions upon the highly privileged theocracy.

In 1956-57, armed Tibetan
bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The
uprising received extensive material support from the CIA, including arms,
supplies, and military training for Tibetan commando units. It is a matter
of public knowledge that the CIA set up support camps in Nepal, carried out
numerous airlifts, and conducted guerrilla operations inside Tibet.
[29] Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society
for a Free Asia, a CIA front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan
resistance. The Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, played an active
role in that group.

Many of the Tibetan
commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of
aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never
heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself.
[30] The small and thinly spread PLA garrisons in Tibet could not have
captured them all. The PLA must have received support from Tibetans who did
not sympathize with the uprising. This suggests that the resistance had a
rather narrow base within Tibet. "Many lamas and lay members of the elite
and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the
populace did not, assuring its failure," writes Hugh Deane.
[31] In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar
conclusion: "The Tibetan insurgents never succeeded in mustering into their
ranks even a large fraction of the population at hand, to say nothing of a
majority. As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people
of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting
against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed."
[32] Eventually the resistance crumbled.

The
Communists Overthrow Feudalism

Whatever wrongs and new
oppressions introduced by the Chinese in Tibet after 1959, they did abolish
slavery and the serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many
crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and
beggary. They built the only hospitals that exist in the country, and
established secular education, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of
the monasteries. They constructed running water and electrical systems in
Lhasa. They also put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a
form of criminal punishment. [33]

The Chinese also
expropriated the landed estates and reorganized the peasants into hundreds
of communes. Heinrich Harrer wrote a bestseller about his experiences in
Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. (It was later revealed
that Harrer had been a sergeant in Hitler's SS. [34]) He
proudly reports that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese and "who
gallantly defended their independence . . . were predominantly nobles,
semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the
lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further
humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived."
They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and
vagrants. [35]

By 1961, hundreds of
thousands of acres formerly owned by the lords and lamas had been
distributed to tenant farmers and landless peasants. In pastoral areas,
herds that were once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of
poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new
varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced,
along with irrigation improvements, all of which led to an increase in
agrarian production. [36]

Many peasants remained as
religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But people were no longer
compelled to pay tributes or make gifts to the monasteries and lords. The
many monks who had been conscripted into the religious orders as children
were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially
the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends,
and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and
funerals. [37]

The charges made by the
Dalai Lama himself about Chinese mass sterilization and forced deportation
of Tibetans have remained unsupported by any evidence. Both the Dalai Lama
and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that "more
than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation."
[38] No matter how often stated, that figure is puzzling.
The official 1953 census---six years before the Chinese crackdown---recorded
the entire population of Tibet at 1,274,000. Other estimates varied from one
to three million. [39] Other census counts put the ethnic
Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese
killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of
the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated,
transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass
graves---of which we have seen no evidence. The Chinese military force in
Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many
people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

Chinese authorities do
admit to "mistakes" in the past, particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural
Revolution when religious persecution reached a high tide in both China and
Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were
incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and
grain farming was imposed on the peasantry, sometimes with disastrous
effect. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls over Tibet "and
tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades."
[40] In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms
reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and
self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private
plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to
grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was
again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit Tibetans to
visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal. [41]

Elites,
Émigrés, and CIA Money

For the Tibetan upper class
lamas and lords, the Communist intervention was a calamity. Most of them
fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight
by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for
a living. Those feudal elites who remained in Tibet and decided to cooperate
with the new regime faced difficult adjustments. Consider the following:

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong
visited the Central Institute of National Minorities in Beijing which
trained various ethnic minorities for the civil service or prepared them for
entrance into agricultural and medical schools. Of the 900 Tibetan students
attending, most were runaway serfs and slaves. But about 100 were from
privileged Tibetan families, sent by their parents so that they might win
favorable posts in the new administration. The class divide between these
two groups of students was all too evident. As the institute's director
noted:

Those from noble families at first consider
that in all ways they are superior. They resent having to carry their own
suitcases, make their own beds, look after their own room. This, they think,
is the task of slaves; they are insulted because we expect them to do this.
Some never accept it but go home; others accept it at last. The serfs at
first fear the others and cannot sit at ease in the same room. In the next
stage they have less fear but still feel separate and cannot mix. Only after
some time and considerable discussion do they reach the stage in which they
mix easily as fellow students, criticizing and helping each other.
[42]

The émigrés' plight won
fulsome play in the West and substantial support from U.S. agencies
dedicated to making the world safe for economic inequality. Throughout the
1960s the Tibetan exile community secretly pocketed $1.7 million a year from
the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998.
Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued a
statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA
during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the
Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual share was $186,000, making him a
paid agent of the CIA. Indian intelligence also financed him and other
Tibetan exiles. [43] He has refused to say whether he or
his brothers worked with the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.
[44]

While presenting himself as
a defender of human rights, and having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989,
the Dalai Lama continued to associate with and be advised by aristocratic
émigrés and other reactionaries during his exile. In 1995, the Raleigh, N.C.
News & Observer carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being
embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the
headline "Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right." [45]
In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the
first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to
release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a
longtime CIA client who had been apprehended while visiting England. He
urged that Pinochet be allowed to return to his homeland rather than be
forced to go to Spain where he was wanted by a Spanish jurist to stand trial
for crimes against humanity.

Today, mostly through the
National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more
respectable-sounding than the CIA, the US Congress continues to allocate an
annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for
"democracy activities" within the Tibetan exile community. The Dalai Lama
also gets money from financier George Soros, who now runs the CIA-created
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other institutes. [46]

The
Question of Culture

We are told that when the
Dalai Lama ruled Tibet, the people lived in contented symbiosis with their
monastic and secular lords, in a social order sustained by a deeply
spiritual, nonviolent culture. The peasantry's profound connection to the
existing system of sacred belief supposedly gave them a tranquil stability,
inspired by humane and pacific religious teachings. One is reminded of the
idealized imagery of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative
Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval
Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in deep spiritual bond
with their Church, under the protection of their lords. [47]
Again we are invited to accept a particular culture on its own terms, which
means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those at the top
who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more
resemblance to historic reality than does the romanticized image of medieval
Europe.

It might be said that we
denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the equations of happiness
and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more "spiritual" and
"traditional" societies. This may be true, and it may explain why some of us
idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging
is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is still a
brutal class injustice whatever its cultural embellishments. There is a
difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist
side by side.

To be sure, there is much
about the Chinese intervention that is to be deplored. In the 1990s, the
Han, the largest ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China's vast
population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet and various
western provinces. [48] These resettlements have had an
effect on the indigenous cultures of western China and Tibet. On the streets
of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Chinese preeminence are readily visible.
Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall
office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that
might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing.

Chinese cadres in Tibet too
often adopted a supremacist attitude toward the indigenous population. Some
viewed their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic
development and "patriotic education." During the 1990s Tibetan government
employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from
office, and campaigns were launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual
Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor
for attempting to flee the country, and for carrying out separatist
activities and engaging in political "subversion." Some arrestees were held
in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets,
subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment. [49]

Chinese family planning
regulations that allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families have been
enforced irregularly and vary by district. If a couple goes over the limit,
the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing,
and education. Meanwhile, Tibetan history, culture, and religion are
slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan,
focus on Chinese history and culture. [50]

Still, the new order has
its supporters. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that the Dalai
Lama continues to be revered in Tibet, but

[F]ew Tibetans would welcome a return of the
corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the
bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in
surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans.
Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to
return to power.

"I've already lived that life once before,"
said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes
for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan
Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, "I may not be
free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave."
[51]

To support the Chinese
overthrow of the Dalai Lama's feudal theocracy is not to applaud everything
about Chinese rule in Tibet. This point is seldom understood by today's
Shangri-La adherents in the West.

The converse is also true.
To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the
former feudal régime. One common complaint among Buddhist proselytes in the
West is that Tibet's religious culture is being destroyed by the Chinese
authorities. This does seem to be the case. But what I am questioning here
is the supposedly admirable and pristinely spiritual nature of that
pre-invasion culture. In short, we can advocate religious freedom and
independence for Tibet without having to embrace the mythology of a Paradise
Lost.

Finally, it should be noted
that the criticism posed herein is not intended as a personal attack on the
Dalai Lama. He appears to be a nice enough individual, who speaks often of
peace, love, and nonviolence. In 1994, in an interview with Melvyn
Goldstein, he went on record as having been since his youth in favor of
building schools, "machines," and roads in his country. He claims that he
thought the corvée and certain taxes imposed on the peasants "were extremely
bad." And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes
passed down from generation to generation. [52]
Furthermore, he reportedly has established "a government-in-exile" featuring
a written constitution, a representative assembly, and other democratic
essentials. [53]

Like many erstwhile rulers,
the Dalai Lama sounds much better out of power than in power. Keep in mind
that it took a Chinese occupation and almost forty years of exile for him to
propose democracy for Tibet and to criticize the oppressive feudal autocracy
of which he himself was the apotheosis. But his criticism of the old order
comes far too late for ordinary Tibetans. Many of them want him back in
their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the
social order he represented.

In a book published in
1996, the Dalai Lama proffered a remarkable statement that must have sent
shudders through the exile community. It reads in part as follows:

Of all the modern economic
theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles,
while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is
concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the
equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with
the fate of the working classes-that is the majority---as well as with the
fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about
the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system
appeals to me, and it seems fair. . . .

The failure of the regime
in the Soviet Union was, for me not the failure of Marxism but the failure
of totalitarianism. For this reason I think of myself as half-Marxist,
half-Buddhist. [54]

And more recently in 2001,
while visiting California, he remarked that "Tibet, materially, is very,
very backward. Spiritually it is quite rich. But spirituality can't fill our
stomachs." [55] Here is a message that should be heeded
by the affluent well-fed Buddhist proselytes in the West who cannot be
bothered with material considerations as they romanticize feudal Tibet.

Buddhism and the Dalai Lama
aside, what I have tried to challenge is the Tibet myth, the Paradise Lost
image of a social order that was little more than a despotic retrograde
theocracy of serfdom and poverty, so damaging to the human spirit, where
vast wealth was accumulated by a favored few who lived high and mighty off
the blood, sweat, and tears of the many. For most of the Tibetan aristocrats
in exile, that is the world to which they fervently desire to return. It is
a long way from Shangri-La.

Michael Parenti
is a noted author and political commentator. Among his widely read books are

The Terrorism Trap,

Democracy For the Few,

History as Mystery, and

Against Empire. His latest book is

The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome
(New Press, 2003). This article first appeared on Michael's website:

http://www.michaelparenti.org.