On the Roof of the World

“Even a powerful arrow at the end of its flight cannot penetrate a silk cloth.”

                                                                                                            - Zhuge Liang

It might be prudent to begin this article with a once-upon-a-time for it is nothing short of those fables which have shaped the minds of its actors. So once upon a time, say around 822 AD, Tibet and China made a deal of friendship. The treaty went on to state that “Tibet and China shall abide by the frontiers of whom they are now in occupation ... On neither side shall there be a waging of war nor seizing of territory. Between the two countries no smoke nor dust shall be seen ... and the very word enemy shall not be spoken. This solemn agreement has established a great epoch when Tibetans shall be happy in the land of Tibet, and Chinese in the land of China.”

This was carved on a stone pillar at Potala and a similar pillar was erected in China.[1] No one at the time knew that the future of these promises will become an unsettling case-study in diplomatic betrayal, use of force and the so called friendship among nations.

The Character of the Crisis

Mao considered religion to be poison, basing on his idea that the fear of supernatural is a fundamental human instinct often used to exploit people. He considered it to be blocking material and scientific progress, and undoubtedly anything which prevents a scientific exploration of reality is nothing short of societal poison. But what was not understood by him was that the fundamental of scientific thought is the lack of any belief, as Voltaire had noted, doubt is not a pleasant condition but the certainty of anything is absurd. Would he have changed his views upon seeing religions change their characters or Neuroscientists and AI researchers adapting ideas from Buddhist psychology? I shall not dwell on the what-ifs, but it is sufficient to say that the Chinese as well as the Tibetans, must be prepared to revisit some of the ideas which have formed a cornerstone of their unique national existence.   

Moral Judo

“When men get desperate, they consult gods. When gods get desperate, they lie.”

- An old Tibetan proverb

When a student is just beginning, a good sensei takes care of it that the first few weeks, or sometimes even months if required, are spent learning to take a fall. And it is only when the student has learnt to fall gracefully, absorb the pain and come back again and again, that the good teacher teaches him to throw the other guy.

With regards to Tibet and its traditions, China has followed a policy of Strategic Offence - wherein also lies the fault-line of its policy. Evidently, Tibet has learnt to take a fall but whether it can organise itself and execute a Strategic Defense, or rather a Strategic Cultural Defense, is a matter asking which could make even the gods desperate.

The Unconventional Battlefield

Lhamo Tsering, who can planned and coordinated the Tibetan guerilla attacks with the CIA’s help in the early days of the cold war, had apparently acquired a document from a Chinese commander stating that it was taking one bullet for a Tibetan to kill a Chinese but twenty bullets for a Chinese to kill a Tibetan. It is clearly evident who had a higher resolve and the will to fight.

Unfortunately, the will to fight is not the only determinant of success in a battle. At the end of the day, war is a bargain and you cannot eliminate your enemy “one-by-one” as the CIA and Hollywood would have had the Tibetans to believe.

As history has stood as its witness, the Tibetan found a home neither in the land of Tibet nor in the land of China, but as fables generally go, in the land of Buddha. Kissinger had stated that sometimes excessive subtleties can produce a dangerous failure of communication, as has been how the world community approached the matter of the Tibetan people’s struggle for autonomy. The Dalai Lama has now hinted that the Tibetans might want to live in China now, and we can clearly see where such bargain is heading towards.

On the Roof of the World

In a never ending hybrid war, as all wars are, the one who can stand the degradation longer than the enemy is poised to have an upper-hand on the negotiation table. China isn’t a traditional adversary, it is the new breed of imperialism with some pseudo-admirable ideals. To make a strategic adversary such as China to yield, Tibetans buddhists will have to evolve novel methods of carrying on their struggle – those which do not involve burning themselves to death and perhaps mark a fundamental shift in attitude from non-violence to non-use of violence.

The nuclear-crazy modern world unquestionably needs a safe place, a roof over the world. Neither have we lived the the past nor seen the future, but the saying goes that no man ever is born at the finish line, and as Buddhism teaches us, certainly not the monks.