THE POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS DISCERNIBLE BEHIND THE PERSECUTION OF A RELIGIOUS MINORITY BY THE DALAI LAMA.
THE DORJE SHUGDEN ISSUE
PART TWO
2008: "VOTING" TO EXTIRPATE A RELIGIOUS BELIEF
The Indian government had with much discretion been warning the Dalai Lama not to abuse the hospitality that has been extended to him. The Ministry of External Affairs issued an acknowledgment to the Dorje Shugden Society –that had filed a number of appeals for protection.
Instead of relenting, encouraged by the Medal of the Congress of the United States, the Dalai Lama decided to respond by forcing a "referendum" against Dorje Shugden practitioners in the monasteries, externally proclaiming adherence to democracy, internally perpetuating the fear, proferring threats that weigh in Tibetan ears much more than any Westerner can fathom:
"So take this voting on majority choice. No one will be put under any pressure; I am not putting any pressure. If 'yes' sayers have 60 or 70 majority, then from that day onwards I will not speak even one word on Dholgyal (a demeaning nickname for the Deity Dorje Shugden). And you will be responsible for whatever the consequence." (The Dalai Lama, speaking to the abbots of Southern India in January 2008.)
Aware that the concern in Western countries about his actions might threaten his image and purposes, the Dalai Lama resorted to a varnish, a caricature of democracy to obtain his ends. Using the advantage of being a national icon, stirring the fear that Tibetans have to become outcasts in their own closed society, he decided that the monks of Southern India and the whole of the Tibetan community should vote on his desires, on his now personal obsession against a Deity.
During the last Winter Retreat, when all three great monasteries meet in one place for a month of intense study of Logic, some of the Dalai Lama's followers ruined the traditional event by refusing to engage in debate with Dorje Shugden practitioners. Abbots and disciplinarians tried to preserve the neutrality of the debate field. When the Dalai Lama, soon after, arrived in Southern India, he congratulated the troublemakers and scolded the abbots and disciplinarians. Then he gave the abbots the abovementioned orders, of organizing the "vote".
Thus, in January-February 2008 a referendum against Dorje Shugden and his practitioners was urgently implemented in the monasteries. No public debate was held, not one word of explanation was allowed to “the other party”, silenced in advance.
The "referendum" didn’t have the slightest of the many guarantees that any democratic process demands. After so many years of demonizing campaign, after using his own presence to pressure the Southern India monks, no doubt the voting against Dorje Shugden was a 100% in favor of the Dalai Lama’s desires. No dissenting voices. Only several hundred monks from Sera Mey Pomra House and from Ganden Shartse Dokhang House refused to even vote.
This misuse of democratic tools has been ignored by the Press. When journalists were alerted, their answer was just utter disbelief: “What? The Dalai Lama, that incredibly compassionate being, doing what? It cannot be true.” So he was able once again to misuse his power against a religious group withouth the world realizing or acknowledging it.
SEGREGATION(3)
If the Dalai Lama and his followers have still not been able to throw the dissenting monks out of the monasteries altogether, it’s because a letter campaign alerted the local Indian authorities, and because the land over which the monasteries are built belongs to India. The monks are, instead, being segregated in a way that no decent human being would approve.
They are not allowed to eat with others, not allowed to set foot in their main temple, not allowed to attend the debates that are a central part of their daily studies, they are cut from all the usual gatherings for prayers and rituals that they had previously attended on a daily basis.
They had to be protected by Indian police in order to attend from afar the prayers of the sacred yearly Monlam Chenmo Festival, created by their religious founder Je Tsongkapa and were denied the traditional tea and bread offered to the monks on that occasion.
They are deprived of food. They are not allowed in any of the monastery's kitchens. Even if they receive some external help for their survival, they cannot buy food from the monastery's shop, they are forbidden to buy food in shops of the nearby Tibetan settlements.
It is forbidden to talk to them.
It is forbidden to walk close to them. If you see one of the monks practitioners of Dorje Shugden you have to deviate your stepts in order not to cross him in the path.
Now they fear that as soon as the Indian authorities neglect the subject –which would only be the natural course of things– they are going to receive more attacks in order to force them out of their own homes.
The campaign was brought to the neighboring Tibetan settlements, and from there, the monks receive threats, cowardly posted during the night, and they fear any moment to be mobbed.
Also the lay Tibetans were made to take the double oath of not worshipping the Protector Dorje Shugden and forsaking all contact with the practitioners.
As if the campaign of calumnies against the practitioners had not been enough, now the lay Tibetans became officially justified in their hateful actions because they are following the religious oath demanded by the Dalai Lama.
The discrimination against the practitioners and their utter segregation are now generalized in the whole of the Tibetan community.
The segregation is done by means of a yellow card. With some curious reversal of symbols, the Tibetan leaders distribute yellow cards to those monks or lay people that have taken the oath of not worshipping Dorje Shugden and the vow of shunning the practitioners, in other words, to the followers of the Dalai Lama. If you don't have a yellow card then all your rights are denied.
If you don't show a yellow card you are not allowed to travel in the same taxicab or rickshaw with other Tibetans.
If you don't show a yellow card you cannot buy anything anywhere, not even the most essencial groceries. The monks have to travel to the Indian markets because the shops of the Tibetan settlements refuse to sell them goods.
If you don't show a yellow card you cannot stop in a restaurant to have some food.
If you don't show a yellow card your children cannot attend school. If they were going to school they are expelled.
If you don't show a yellow card you cannot be a schoolteacher. If you were one, you are expelled.
Even if you are a child –if you don't have a yellow card you cannot go to a shop and try to buy a piece of candy.
THE YEAR OF THE OLYMPICS: A PERFECT TIMING
It’s very interesting the timing chosen by the Dalai Lama. He gave orders to implement the false referendum against the monks practitioners of Dorje Shugden in January 2008, and he instructed that it had to be completed around mid-February. There were attempts from practitioners around the world to alert public opinion about this campaign of discrimination, but a few days later all of this was going to be drowned by the events in Tibet.
Now it's easy to understand why the Dalai Lama chose 2008 as the year to terminate for ever the practice of Dorje Shugden. 2008 was going to be the year of the Olympic Games in China, and he, more than anybody else, knew what huge unrest was being prepared in Tibet and the rest of the world. A perfect timing for the perpetration of a schism “from above” in the religious community of the monks, a perfect moment for the civil segregation to go unnoticed. For, who would then pay attention to accusations against the champion of the Tibetan nation?
But foremost: his perfect timing is serving his main purpose, to get away with accepting the Chinese rule over Tibet without the opposition of Tibetans. Contrary to the past, where his declarations about the future of Tibet were relatively sparse, since March he has repeated a thousand times that he desires autonomy for his country, not independence. He is thus finally imposing to Tibetans his unilateral decision and transforming it in a "fait acompli" before they can say a word about it. Tibetans around the world are too absorbed this very moment in implementing the segregation of Dorje Shugden practitioner's to be distracted with matters about their own Motherland. The bizarre twist is that it's the Dorje Shugden people who are accused of being pro-Chinese, when it's the Dalai Lama who is handing Tibet to China on his own accord, without Tibetans realizing what is really going on. So once again the deity Dorje Shugden is the scapegoat that allows the Dalai Lama to further establish his solitary decision of giving up Tibetan independence, while the riots in Tibet, which put him again in the limelight as the champion of Tibetans, gave him the golden opportunity to culminate the extermination of the practice of a Divine Being that he hates, without anybody noticing the civic destruction of the practitioners.
Tibetans are too distracted to pay attention. Journalists are too distracted to pay attention. The Dalai Lama rides the wave of public respect that he obtained with wonderful words about compassion –taught to him by the Lamas whose lineage he is trying to exterminate. The Dalai Lama seems invincible. The press in the world seems blind.
Even though it's important to understand that the Dalai Lama is acting as a political leader to promote this religious segregation, it has to be clear also that he lacks any religious authority whatsoever to do what he is doing. The world has been served an image of the Dalai Lama as the religious leader –a Pope of sorts– of all Buddhists. He is not.
People need to know that the Dalai Lama does not have the slightest religious authority to do what he is doing. In a general way because Buddhism accepts all internal religious beliefs and doesn’t harbor the notion of persecuting heresy, and in particular because there is no level of authority in the Buddhist religion to order or implement a religious persecution.
EXPORTING DISCRIMINATION(4)
TO WESTERN COUNTRIES
Not only in India is the Dalai Lama enacting this religious discrimination, he is exporting it abroad. The voting and oath against the religious practice of Dorje Shugden and against the practitioners has already started in the West. Prominent executors of the Dalai Lama's desires are the numerous FPMT centers belonging to Lama Zopa, that quickly jumped to the occasion to please the Tibetan leader.
Western practitioners were already following the Dalai Lama in his unholy crusade, and because it came from him they are now approving this idea of discriminating against others because of their beliefs … even in the United States, a country whose first European fathers came to its shores in search of protection against religious persecution!
The Dalai Lama is sowing the seeds of unimaginable futures with this new policy of inviting people to take oaths, swearing that they are going to discriminate against others based on their religious faith. It's not difficult to imagine the bad habits that this is going to create in the numerous European and American Dharma centers. But it's impossible to calculate the dammage that this is going to inflict to the painfully acquired sense of human rights that our Western culture has tried to develop since the Age of Enlightenment.
The few websites where practitioners of Dorje Shugden express themselves show something that is not uncommon in the web: that most of the members hide their names. But it has to be known that in their daily lives many practitioners have to hide their beliefs.
Many of the Dorje Shugden practitioners in the West, both Westerners and Tibetans, are forced to remain anonymous because the Dalai Lama constantly preaches against them. They can loose their jobs. They cannot both teach Dharma and let others know about their faith in the Protector without being abused or humiliated by the followers of the Dalai Lama, through organized rumors and letter campaings.
Their anonimity is at the same time the result and the symptom of religious segregation. Dorje Shugden practitioners fear the Dalai Lama's followers, both in Asia and the rest of the world, with good reasons. Because who would accept as an employee, as a co-worker, as a teacher, the worshipper of an evil spirit? This is the type of slander that Dorje Shugden practitioners are constantly submitted to, because of the actions of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
The Tibetan communities in the West have already implemented some type of segregation, even before the taking of the oath. People who have or had in the past ties to Lamas of the lineage have to hide their relationship. They do it for themselves but most of all for their children, lest they be shunned by their fellow Tibetans. Some Tibetans act in this way in order to follow the desires of their beloved Dalai Lama. Others act in this way out of fear of his wrath, enacted by the Tibetan Associations.
Just some days ago there was a demonstration against the Dalai Lama's actions at Colgate University. One of the monks who attended was recognized by members of the American Tibetan community as the brother of a restaurant's owner. The segregation that pleases the Dalai Lama was swiftly applied and people stopped attending that restaurant. This business is going to close soon.
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3 -Segregation -1. enforced separation of groups: the practice of keeping ethnic, racial, religious, or gender groups separate, especially by enforcing the use of separate schools, transportation, housing, and other facilities, and usually discriminating against a minority group.
4 -A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of civil rights are freedom of speech, press, and assembly […] and the right to equality in public places.
Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class. (Cornell University Law School).
