Week 7: Stories, Nonviolence, and a Very Important Birthday
I’m back in Hope Café & Stories on Monday evening for this week’s Stories of Tibetans program, this time from a young woman around my age named Tenzing. The program starts in about half an hour, so I find a spot at the big communal table to sip my way through a banana lassi while I wait. As people filter in and the table fills up, I get to chat with acquaintances—who I hope are becoming friends—and share drinks with several new faces from all over the world. There are people here in Hope Café tonight from France, Greece, Australia, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, and more all supporting the movement to free Tibet. Much of our conversation revolves around how we all got involved with the Tibetan cause and what we are doing or aim to do to help. The rest of the conversation is about my friend; no one is used to seeing me alone in town. I explain that she is at the hotel nursing a headache, which circles back around to us by the end of the week through people checking to see if she is okay now, because they heard “the news all over town” that she wasn’t feeling well. The sense of community here is one thing I know I will miss.
The projector hanging from its bright blue tethers whirs to life. Tenzing, robed in a chuba, a traditional Tibetan dress (elegant, redesigned in silk for the hot Indian climate, and worn daily by many Tibetan women here), leaves the table full of her friends who came to support her tonight and greets us all with a smile. Tenzing is a third-generation Tibetan refugee. She begins her presentation gently, showing us pictures of the small Tibetan settlement in northeast India where she grew up, Sonada, and telling stories about her favorite childhood memories. Then, she tells us how she has spent much of her life grappling with the privilege she feels she has, and how that has impacted her identity as a Tibetan; an identity that is now often shaped by adversity. I cannot imagine what kind of privilege Tenzing—a stateless refugee—could feel guilt about. She tells us her privilege can be traced back to her great-grandparents who fled here to India. They are regarded as privileged, apparently, because when they made the harrowing trek into exile they came from near the Tibet-Bhutan border, which is a shorter route than many Tibetans must take, and because of this route they were able to use a pack horse instead of carrying by themselves only what they could fit in a backpack. Until this moment, I have never considered that anyone forced into making the choice between living under horribly violent, oppressive rule or fleeing their home country to live in exile could be considered “privileged.” I have a feeling the rest of what Tenzing has to say will stick with me forever.
Tenzing’s next example of the privilege she feels is from her childhood. Her parents were not able to finish their educations because they had to work to support their families, while Tenzing not only got to finish her education but always had a roof over her head, clothes on her back, and food in her belly. In her home, Tenzing was the most privileged person. In contrast, at school she was one of 3 Tibetan students in a school of 4,000, where she spent everyday living with something Tibetans here call “The Big R” on her forehead, referring to the label ‘refugee.’ (Read this short poem by Tenzin Tsundue: https://www.tenzintsundue.com/poems/refugee/.) These opposing experiences left Tenzing in limbo, still trying today to find the answer to the question of just how privileged she is. As someone who is still reeling from last week’s realizations of just how lucky and privileged I am to have come here on a plane with a whole closet in tow, Tenzing’s questioning of her privilege is impossible for me to comprehend.
The second question of her identity that Tenzing poses to us is “am I Tibetan enough?” This part of the evening she begins with a heartbreaking testimony. Growing up, she learned about Tibetan culture from her great-grandparents, but learned nothing about the lives her great-grandparents had led, about who they had been, before coming to India. She could not understand them when they spoke to her because they spoke a different dialect of Tibetan than she did, and no one could translate for her. To this day, their lives pre-exile remain a mystery to her, and one she will likely never be able to solve. As someone who considers my grandparents to be some of my favorite people, some of the people I treasure more than anything in my life, I cannot begin to imagine the pain of not being able to sit and have a conversation with them because we do not speak the same language, and being unable to learn anything about their lives and who they are. While it's sad enough that Tenzing was not able to get to know her great-grandparents due to a language barrier, what’s harder to stomach is that her experience is one Tibetans are having to actively work to prevent from becoming the status quo.
One of the ways China is destroying Tibetan culture is by placing Tibetan children in residential schools and ensuring that the children are not able to access their own language. Tibetans in exile (like Tenzing and her great-grandparents) speak a variety of Tibetan dialects and, as a result of 60+ years in exile without access to Tibetan-language resources, are at risk of certain dialects of Tibetan dying out and elders not being able to share their wisdom and experiences. To protect and preserve their language, Tibetans are creating a virtual database of different dialects and ensuring that Tibetans raised in exile learn their language at TCV schools.
As an aside, to emphasize the gravity of Tenzing’s experience, language death is a global phenomenon affecting primarily indigenous peoples as English and other widely spoken languages become the lingua franca. There are many ongoing projects to preserve and re-teach these languages, which are crucial to preserving cultures. In the simplest terms, this is important because language shapes the way we think and interact with the world around us (for fun, read more about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/linguistic relativity). There are over 7,000 languages in the world and consequently a similar number of cognitive universes. It is important to preserve each one as a cultural artifact and as a way of life. Losing a language is a massive hit to a culture and to the morale of a people already losing so many other parts of their culture...something that China is exploiting to maximize erasure of the Tibetan identity.
With all this in mind, we revisit Tenzing’s question for herself: am I Tibetan enough? She understands her culture, but after generations in exile knowledge of the Tibetan language is scattered, with members of her household disagreeing on meanings of words. Does this make her less Tibetan? Did growing up privileged make her less Tibetan than Tibetans who had to make the trek across the Himalayas? Tenzing says that regardless of the answer, here in India she has the freedom and ability to speak up for Tibetans, so she will. It is her duty.
Tuesday was less exciting. We spent the day editing citations for our recommendations to the CTA to update the POCSO guidelines...and that is all. The rest of the week, though, was very engaging. We started researching the legal status of Tibetans in India, which involved reading India’s Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy (https://sardfund.org/wp-content/uploads/tibetan-rehab-policy-2014.pdf), and several works from the office of His Holiness, such as the 5 Point Peace Plan from a 1987 address to U.S. Congress (https://www.dalailama.com/messages/tibet/five-point-peace-plan) and the Middle Way Approach (https://www.dalailama.com/messages/tibet/middle-way-approach), which is His Holiness’ proposal for a peaceful resolution of the issue of Tibet that would allow Tibetans to preserve their identity and way of life while still allowing China to...well, China has yet to respect a single agreement made with Tibet, so who can say what China will do. But, the point of the Middle Way is to compromise, pleading with China to simply allow Tibetans to exist.
An approach like the Middle Way is desperately needed. Tibet has been under not just Chinese occupation but martial law since 2008 (Tibet was annexed in 1951). Since 2009, 160+ Tibetans have self-immolated. It is the strongest way to protest, to declare that Tibetans have no future under China. How can they, when hundreds of Tibetans may be shot together in a field and buried by locals who are then forced to dance on their shared grave until they, too, are shot? Under these conditions, I find it admirable that Tibetans continue to advocate only for non-violent protest, of which self-immolation is the highest form. It is the giving of oneself to others, like Buddha giving of his blood, I was told.
The first person to self-immolate since martial law began was a young monk, Tapey. As part of China’s policy of eradicating what it means to be Tibetan, Tapey was publicly humiliated and forced to denounce His Holiness the Dalai Lama, an act akin to denouncing his religion. In protest, Tapey lit himself on fire in the streets. He was shot multiple times by Chinese police while he burned, not even allowed the dignity to die in his chosen way. Two years later, a monk from the same monastery, Rigzin Phuntsog, self-immolated and was beaten by police while he burned. Months later, Palden Choetso, a nun and the second woman to self-immolate, stood perfectly still while she burned, shouting her prayers with her hands clasped tightly until her lungs gave out. A grandfather who self-immolated was given a funeral with honors usually reserved for the highest-ranking monks. In the following year, 11 more Tibetans self-immolated, adding many young faces to those now lost. Tsering Kyi told her friends before she doused herself in five liters of gasoline and struck a match that “life is meaningless if we don’t do something for Tibet.”
Survivors of self-immolation are not allowed to receive medical care unless they speak in favor of China and denounce His Holiness. One young monk survived and spent the following days in fleshless agony, continuing to speak as best he could in support of his act and a free Tibet. Today, when someone decides to self-immolate, people on the street will surround the person to protect them from Chinese police so that they may die on the spot as intended and not be shot, beaten, or arrested. White scarves are thrown onto their figure as they scream and burn. The scarves are an offering of good will, a display of support and hope that the protestor will be allowed to die on their own terms.
We watched videos of these self-immolations on Friday evening, in Hope Café again for a screening of “Fire in the Land of Snow,” a documentary on self-immolation in Tibet. While it’s difficult to watch, I cannot praise this documentary enough. It is very well put together and tells in all the graphic details why self-immolation is such a prominent form of protest in Tibet. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/5no82rrdv8k?feature=shared. If you were in Tibet, you would be arrested for watching this documentary.
Most Han Chinese do not know of the self-immolations in Tibet. One Tibetan activist living in China retweeted, in Japanese, to try to be safe, information about a self-immolation and was visited by “security people” to ensure he would never again attempt to share information of that sort. China will not allow information about self-immolation to circulate because the act undermines the peaceful, serene picture of Tibet that China has painted since invading and ensuring any disruptors of the “peace” find themselves disappeared into labor camps and prisons.
On a more positive note, Saturday (July 6th) was His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 89th birthday. Businesses closed all through town, and everyone made their way down Temple Road to the Dalai Lama Temple to celebrate and pray for his long life. Students from Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) schools across India came to perform in His honor, putting on elaborate displays of Tibetan songs and dances while in traditional dress. The entire day was something indescribable. Witnessing such a celebration by Indians and Tibetans of one man’s birthday all together in one place while singing, dancing, praying, and making offerings of sweets felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience (though, I guess for everyone here, it’s once a year). Next year, after his 90th, His Holiness is expected to announce his plan for what will happen when he passes. I will touch on this and China’s insidious plans to interrupt the search for the next Dalai Lama more in the following weeks.