For most of us around the world, in all likelihood we would have just passed the month of November uneventfully but November to me is of great significance. For it was in November 1996, that the first battery of assault against Dorje Shugden and its practitioners were viciously launched and lives of many innocent Tibetan Buddhist were changed forever. It has been a few years since the ban and although Shugden lamas, monks and lay practitioners may have learned to varying degrees of success to adjust to the ban and continue their practice in secret, we must nevertheless not forget than the ban is still in place and and a great injustice has yet to be addressed and resolved.
Here now is a chilling reminder of what innocent Shugden practitioners went through right under the noses of the their government, supposedly elected to protect their freedom per their own Charter. The following account is that of Dr Losang Thubten who had the courage to speak up for what was a grievous wrong that the Tibetan government inflicted on their own people:
At midnight November 7-8 this week, at the Tibetan Colony in Clement Town, near Dehradun, northern India, the family of Dr Losang Thubten was attacked. The FIR, which Dr Thubten gave to the Police, is reproduced here in full. This is the background for the attack:
Dr Thubten is a Tibetan scholar who have been brought up at the 'Tse-Labdra', the school for nobleman at the Potala Palace. In India, he served as a Tibetan school teacher, with distinction, for more than 33 years. He lives with his wife, Pema, aged 44, and daughter Kalsang, aged 24. He has wriflen a book on Tibetan culture, prefaced by the Dalai Lama, and is hoping to publish two more books, currently in manuscript form. To augment Dr Thubten's small pension from the central govt. of India, Pema la engages in a small sweater business in Delhi.
In August this year, we published a 6-cassette pack of talks explaining the background of Dorje Shugden, an analysis of His Hliness' conflicting stand on this topic, and the constitutional, moral and ethical invalidity of this ban. Cassette 2 is a detailed talk given by Dr Thubten.
Since mid-August, there were rumblings that Dr Thubten 'had spoken against His Holiness the Dalai Lama'. This expression, in Tibetan connotation, conveys verbal attack against the Dalai Lama's person. Fused with this emerging 'public' view aganst Thubten was the emphatic attitude of the Tibetan' Representative Office, Tibetan Youth Congress and Tibetan Womens' Association in the nearby Rajpur Tibetan settlement, in support of the ban. At the end of August, office-bearers of a relatively new Tibetan organisation formally petitioned Rev. Khorchen Rinpoche, the head of the Tibetan Colony in Clement Town, to remove Dr Thubten from the settlement since, in their words, he 'spoke against the Dalai Lama'.
On the night of November 7-8, the attackers, 12-14 masked Tibetans, first bolted the doors of the ground floor of Dr Thubten's house from the outside. With his daughter and cousin trapped inside, the attackers then threw a bottle of petrol on the door and set it on fire. Gripped by mortal fear of physical danger and imminent death, Kalsang sreamed time and again for help. Surprisingly, not even one neighbour responded to her desparate calls. When the fire did not catch, the attackers started attacking with fist-sized stones at the wondows, doors, and gates. One stone would have been enough to fell a person unconscious. Besieged by stones and sticks with not a soul to help, the obsenities intensified and in the attack one hate filled voice with an Amdo-dialect could be heard shouting: stop your worship of Shugden; if you still do not follow the Dalai Lama's ban we will exterminate your entire family'.
With no help in sight, the attack went on for more than an hour and a half. It was only the next morning that Kalsang, the daughter, in deep emotional trauma, brutal attack and exhausted, managed to unbolt the door from the inside using her hair pin.
Upon prodding from Delhi, Dharamsala said it will order an inquiry. Five monks sent by us reached Dr Thubten's home late Nov. 8. At noon the next day, Dr and Mrs Thubten, together with four other people from Delhi, reunited with their daughter. Dr Thubten has challenged that he wll be in the colony for ten days, and if within this period the attack is not redressed, he will take the matter to court for the perpetrators of this attack, and their abettors.
Dorje Shugden devotees all over India are deeply disturbed and angered by this personal attack and attempt to wipe out Dr Thubten's family. They fear that, unless the Dalai Lama himself checks this trend in Tibetan society, this attack will encourage other Tibetan settlements to try to evict not only Shugden devotees but anyone who holds a different religious view. When this happens, since Shugden devotees have now decided not to give up their religious faith at any cost, there could be a sad, cyclic, violent confrontations amongst Tibetans themselves, everywhere. Time is fast running out for our peaceful efforts. Even at the cost of permenent disunity amongst his people, the Dalai Lama still remains adament to 'finish what the great Fifth Dalai Lama had started', notwithtsanding the fact that Tibetan then was under absolute theocratic rule with no room for dissent or had awareness of Human Rights.
Source: Dorje Shugden Devotees Religous and Charitable Society, Tibetan Colony Delhi 110054 India
