In the Dalai Lama and Tibet's struggle against China, Tibet has been portrayed as what was once Shangri-la and the Tibetans as innocent and helpless victims against a powerful oppressor. The Tibetans in their fight against China are seen as the harmless, lovable and almost helpless Ewoks against the wicked Chinese Darth Vader and his Imperial Army. The image the world has accepted of the Dalai Lama is that of "a simple monk" who values peace above everything else.
If indeed the Dalai Lama, the CTA (previously TGIE) and the average Tibetan are as benign as the image they project, why then is the Chinese so paranoid of just about everything to do with the Dalai Lama, even to the point of imprisoning pilgrims returning from a Kalachakra Initiations held in India and conducted by the Dalai Lama in January this year? What is it that the Chinese fear which leads them to use what the international public see as excessively heavy handed methods?
Here are some declassified US State Department documents that may explain China's chronic paranoia towards the Dalai Lama and the CTA:
The Chinese have long claimed that the Dalai Lama and the CTA are behind the violent protests by Tibetans against the Chinese Government which are planned and not spontaneous as the Dalai Lama has claimed. The Dalai Lama in turn laughs at Chinese attempts to "demonize" him. Is there any truth to the Chinese claim?
Amongst some declassified US State Department documents, is a telegram from the New Delhi Embassy dated 30 March 1967, which shows that the Bureau of the Dalai Lama privately admitted to their involvement in organizing ‘spontaneous’ protests.
In addition, documents show how natural disasters - such as floods and earthquakes - were exploited by the then TGIE, purely for political gain. A telegram from the US Embassy in Calcutta, dated 8 January 1955, describes a ‘Tibetan Flood Relief Commitee’ set up by the Tibetans in exile. The telegram revealed that the objective of supporting the relief effort was to win a propaganda coup over the Chinese. Furthermore, the telegram explicitly reveals that the Tibetans conceived TFRC principally as a psychological tactic against Chinese communists.
Even some teaching visits by the Dalai Lama were planned political maneuvers against China by the Dalai Lama in collusion with the US. A US Government Office Memorandum dated 21 February 1952 contains information of a discussion on how best to respond to the Dalai Lama’s request for US assistance against the Chinese Communists.
In a few particular memos it is clear that the CIA were deeply involved. The CIA went on to formulate and fund a strategy of anti-communist propaganda with the Dalai Lama that included sponsoring him personally, and well as establishing Tibet Houses on his behalf in various locations and encouraging him to teach widely. In the discussion mentioned in this memo, they describe organising a teaching tour by the Dalai Lama as:
"..a major step towards utilizing certain elements of the Buddhist world in one aspect of psychological warfare"
This was a time around the Vietnam War when the biggest threat to the US was Communism. Knowing this, did the Dalai Lama offer himself and Tibet as instruments of propaganda for the US?
And did the Dalai Lama agree to use monasteries in Tibet as centres from which to organize insurgencies against China as revealed in a telegram from the US Embassy in Calcutta to the Secretary of State in Washington, dated 11 September 1952:
Could this be why China is still viewing monks with deep suspicion?
While the documents above reveal old facts, do they also betray the Dalai Lam's image as a man of peace? Did the TGIE and Dalai Lama have true intentions of striking a peaceful compromise with the Chinese, or was there a bigger political haul to be had with partnering the US in its Cold War? What value might a small country in the Himalayas offer a world power like the US? None. It is not the nation of Tibet that the US wanted but the "nation" of Buddhists around the world that the Dalai Lama represents and the Dalai Lama as the Ambassador of Peace that he is perceived to be, that has value to the US.
That being the case, would the Dalai Lama be more valuable as a monk still fighting to free his country and people instead of a monk who have since regained his country for his people? Perhaps it was never politically expedient for the Dalai Lama to regain Tibet.
For now, we know that the Dalai Lama is not beyond using violence and silent aggression to achieve his objectives. We may say that it was a time of war and that things are different now. More recent events that reveal the Dalai Lama's continuing modus operandi, is HH's call for protests of the Beijing Olympics which turned violent, after which China stepped up its aggressive stance against Tibet. HH's call in public may have been for "peaceful" protests but who knows what instructions were given in private?
In March 2008, in his ‘An Appeal to the Chinese People’ the Dalai Lama said:
"Similarly, despite my repeated support for the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities, with the intention of creating a rift between the Chinese people and myself, the Chinese authorities assert that I am trying to sabotage the games".
And the result of the Dalai Lama's call for protest is this:
Seeing that the Dalai Lama is the undisputed leader of Tibetans, his decisions are never challenged for fear of reprisal. Is the Dalai Lama truly a man of peace? Is Tibet really the Shangri-la, a haven of peace and bliss? Not according to recent Wikileak documents that reveal facts not synonymous with peaceful intentions:
There are more facts that are in stark contrast with the picture the Dalai Lama likes to paint of himself as a peacemaker and a non-political monk who has been thrust into a difficult situation. It is indeed ironic that the years leading up to the Dalai Lama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, HH was busy recruiting young Tibetans into the 'Establishment 22', a program that forced young men into a paramilitary unit under the command of the Dalai Lama.
Establishment 22 was (and may still be) the Dalai Lama’s secret army, stocked with fresh recruits from Tibetan children as revealed in the Wikileaks cables. The graduating Tibetan children, mainly orphans were not given a choice to join or not. This is the army that the Dalai Lama sent to fight Pakistan in India's war against Pakistan in 1971. It wasn't even Tibet's war.
In 1989 when the Dalai Lama received his Nobel, Egil Aarvik, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee had this to say in his presentation:
"This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded … first and foremost
for his consistent resistance to the use of violence in his people’s struggle to regain their liberty.This is by no means the first community of exiles in the world,
but it is assuredly the first and only one that has not set up any militant liberation movement.’ Please also bear in mind that the Dalai Lama is a fully ordained Buddhist monk with vows to forsake killing and any actions of harming others.[ See:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1989/presentation-speech.html ]
Contrast the above perception of the Dalai Lama with the following US Sate Department documents:
And:
The US responded with conditions i.e. : that (i) the Dalai Lama leave Tibet, (ii) disavow the agreement with the Chinese, (iii) and organise the resistance.
With this deal, the 14th Dalai Lama, like his predecessor the 5th Dalai Lama, became a man of war.
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http://www.westernshugdensociety.org/dalai-lama/fifth-dalailama-wars-murder ]
When we really look into how little has been achieved by the Dalai Lama and the CTA in their reconciliation efforts with China, one wonders if the Dalai Lama truly wants the return of Tibet to Tibetan rule. Or perhaps the status quo of a strained relationship between Tibet and China serves the Dalai Lama better in the execution of a bigger picture that does not make much sense to the ordinary observer for now.
On the face of it, it does not seem like the Dalai Lama is the simple monk he has portrayed to the world. But the Dalai Lama has never been merely a simple monk, but the emanation of the Buddha Of Compassion and how is the simple mind to comprehend the actions of a Bodhisattva? It is easy to judge without understanding. One thing is for sure i.e. for the greater good of mankind, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has had to immerse himself in the darkest and murkiest depth of human activity.
Our confusion stems from the facts of events not meeting with our idealistic fantasies of peace, and not meeting our idea of what a peaceful Lama is supposed to do. This peace according to man and the measures that man have taken to preserve peace, have never succeeded in the longer term. How can there be real peace in Samsara?
We look at the Dalai Lama's actions and judge based on our own experiences as fallible human beings, and so we are bound to forget how extraordinary Chenrezig's commitment to nonviolence is. Our values are not the same as the Dalai Lama's values. Buddhist scripture and legend tells us that Chenrezig readily takes a warrior's form when needed and supports the warfare of righteous kings.
At Harvard in April 2009, the Dalai Lama explained that "wrathful forceful action" motivated by compassion, may be "violence on a physical level" but is "essentially nonviolence". So we must be careful to understand what "nonviolence" means. Under the right conditions, it could include being a man of war.
