Tibet, China and Buddhism
Recent violence in Tibet has paralleled that in the past. It is organized and led by Buddhist monks intent on regaining political control of Tibet and its people. The militant history of Buddhism is well documented, the most readable are Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, East Asia, The Great Tradition (1958) and Ryusaku Tsunoda and W.T. de Bary's Sources of Japanese Tradition (1964). In both China and Japan secular forces eventually intervened against warring sects, or to end corruption and violent dissension.
The Dalai Lama is the international agent of propaganda of this effort and he has perverted history in his attempt to gain world recognition for his "government in exile" as the legitimate government of the Tibetan people. This claim should not be allowed to go without challenge. People should recall that the Lamaist governments were theocracies and that their rule was characterized by a regime that held Tibet’s people as their property. The people were serfs and had no rights. They were brutally treated and exploited.
In terms of history, the indigenous religion of Tibet was Bonpo, a shamanistic animism. A Mongol army installed Buddhism as the state religion banning Bonpo and exiling its priests. In this reflection one can see how the present situation is a kind of divine retribution, with the Lamaists now in exile. We should also acknowledge that Tibet has only once been independent of China in the past 2,000 years. Most popular histories of Tibet have been written by devotees of Buddhism. An unbiased history is by Helmut Hoffman, The Religions of Tibet (1961).
The image of a peaceful, independent kingdom of Tibet ruled by benevolent Lamas was the product of western novelists. It supported British ambitions on Tibet and British efforts were supplied from China (after the Boxer Rebellion), India and Burma prior to WWII. Then in the 1950s when China began to assert her traditional claims on Tibet, the propaganda of an idyllic Shangri-la led by kindly priest kings played an important role to frustrate her. Goldstein is one of the best informed scholars and the most balanced on Tibet.
Opposed to my view here one might refer to Dawa Norbu's article "The 1959 Tibetan Rebellion" in The China Quarterly, n. 77, 1979:74-93. Norbu argues that the interests of Russia, Britain and China created a sort of detente over Tibet that left the Lamaist Theocracy in power and kept penetration of modernization and Christianity at bay. The Buddhists supported this policy and it was only with the collapse of Chinese power that British influence advanced. All this changed, of course, with the Second World War and the triumph of the Communists. Still the replacement of British troops with Chinese had little effect as Mao's policy was only a strategic one versus Indian claims and later Soviet ones. The Chinese called this period, 1951 to 1959 the "Peaceful Liberation." Few attempts were made to change Tibetan economic relations. The 1951 agreement signed between China and Tibet never mentions socialism, only democracy and "various reforms" to be introduced. The agreement, strangely enough recognizes Tibet as having a separate government, but not as a separate nation. This left the majority of ethnic Tibetans outside of the agreement and created two spheres of legality, one where the Tibetan ruling elite controlled wealth and one without. Proselytizing efforts began almost at once across this line by all concerned: the Lamaists, British, Soviets & Chinese. The Chinese were in an impossible situation, if they left the economic conditions of Tibet alone the Lamaists would have a perpetual power base to create unrest on the Chinese side, if they tried to modernize or to democratize in Tibet they risked revolt driven by the Lamaists to protect their position backed by the traditional elite. But one must be careful speaking of "Tibet" for there are ethnically diverse populations of Tibetan extraction (over 5 million) in parts of China, like Amdo, Kham and the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). These were incorporated by Manchu China. Norbu argues that the 1959 rebellion was in response to arbitrary Chinese acts of terror, but the same information and sources he uses contradicts this view. Especially telling is the fact that rebellions broke out in 1956 Kham and other regions after reforms were enacted legally in 1953 to produce land reform and democratic local government. These stripped the Lamaists and local landowning elites of their power and the rebellions ini 1956 began with murders of local Chinese and Chinese officials. There was no Peoples' Army present as Norbu admits. Some of those involved were remnants of the 12, to 30,000 dispersed Kuomintang deserters and escaped army fragments. Nevertheless, Norbu's article and his book provide a good contrast to my analysis.
One of the commentators to Daily Kos recommended the Goldstein & Kapstein edited book, Buddhism in Contemporary China (1998) whose contributors focus on the post 1960s. Goldstein also has produced an interesting discussion of how the Buddhists drove the Bon po out of Tibet and how the Lamaist Buddhists have now suffered the same fate. Goldstein and Beall (1991) have written on the rural communes in the TAR areas and how these affected local institutions. Bauer (2005) has produced a comprehensive summary of the dissolution of the communes and collective farms in Tibet after Deng Xiaoping's reforms. Just as collectivization had proceeded slowly and yet had serious consequences, so the privatization process went on faster. It was as if Xiaoping had no plan for Tibet or the TAR and no understandinig or concern for the results. For this China can be justly criticized and the results of privatization and rampant state capitalism can be seen all over China today. If there is a foundation for protest in Tibet it is to be found here.
On the other hand, if democratization and modernization is not what the world wants for Tibet and we want to see the return of the theocracy then we should look to Burma. For Burma Melford E. Spiro has produced a comprehensive work, Buddhism and Society. One has to realize after a study of Buddhism, how many trends appear also in the history of Christianity, they are both evangelical and militant state builders.
If the Dalai Lama wishes the world to believe that he and the Lamaist party do not wish to return to power and rule over the Tibetan people, let them renounce their history and all claims to power. It is long overdue.
Presently the conflict in Burma (Myanmar) has been represented in rather stark black and white terms. An evil military and a freedom-loving Buddhist movement. The situation is much less clear and the origins of this conflict are to be found in the Second World War and British colonialism. The British invaded Burma from India 1852, but only seized the country in the Third Anglo-Burmese War which lasted one month in 1885. The country was then subjugated by the British Army over 4 years in a horrific series of massacres which did not end in the Kachin hill areas until 1896.
Resistance continued, especially provoked by the use of Burmese as slave labor in British tea companies and Teak logging, but also by what the Buddhist monks saw as daily insults over violations of religious shrines. By the 1930s thousands of Burmese rebels fought colonial forces. Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, was one of the leaders of a group called the Thirty Comrades and founded the Burmese Independence Army in 1940 with the aid of the Japanese. While he was a nationalist, he was a founding member of the Burmese Communist Party, later renamed the Socialist Party after the WWII. With the help of the Japanese Army, Aung San's forces defeated British colonial forces and drove the British out of Burma, seizing Rangoon in March of 1942. Burma declared its independence on August 1, 1943. Always a nationalist, Aung San decided to switch sides as Allied victories showed the Japanese were vulnerable. Aung San's forces were instrumental in the defeat of the Japanese in Burma, but after the war the British attempted to isolate him. This was especially due to British commercial interests in logging, oil, tea and other natural resources, who saw him as a potent impediment to development. He was accused of repressing the Karen people who had rebelled against the Japanese during the war. Winston Churchill called Aung San a "traitor rebel leader" for refusing to accept partial independence under the Commonwealth system. Fearing he might lead another insurgency it was widely suspected the British engineered his assassination on July 19, 1947. In one way Aung San won, for on January 4th 1948 Burma became an independent nation outside of the Commonwealth, but the repression of Aung San's associates, the Communists and Socialists and many nationalists at the hands of British anti-insurgent forces created the foundations of the brutal military rule Burma has suffered under to this day. However, the Buddhists, always supreme since the conquest of the Mon capital and the domination of the Burmese. Suppression of native animism as well as attempts of Islam and Christianity to gain footholds, religious persecution and a theocratic state have gone hand in hand. The British played on ethnic rivalries for a time in the 1950s but eventually lent support to the Burmese finding the other minorities’ leaders susceptible to either anti-British nationalism or brands of socialism. Buddhism was one means of social control and has benefited from the dictatorships fearing also the socialist tendencies of rebels like Aung San. Wen Wu played with the idea of limiting the power and control of the monasteries in the early 1960s and paid dearly for it by their riots. Currently the army is in the unpleasant position of being pressed to open the economy and democratize the country at a time when international resource corporations are reaping vast profits from their secret contracts with them. Any change in the current status quo is also seen by the Buddhist community as a threat to their control over the people, especially the spectre of religious freedom.
In many ways modern Burma is a creature of the British colonial system, but its current structure is organized around indigenous actors who have little to gain from change, and we should reflect on this as we view current events unfolding.
We should consider who benefits from actions. In the present case of Real Politics we have to realize that China, like the oil producing countries of OPEC have a tremednous amount of Western currency, especially dollars. Their "sovereign funds" have been buying up Western economic assets including banks and other financial institutions. Recently this has produced calls to halt these purchases as they are believed by some to compromise capitalism and national states as well as the "way business is done in the West." As some believe that all is fair in war, and economic war is simply war without shooting in some eyes, supporting rebellions within their territory is good "business." The British have applied this strategy for over two centuries, their support for Native American tribes was one one way of conducting silent disruption as was their interference in India to the result that its textile industry collapsed under British pressure.
Niccolo Caldararo
Dept. of Anthropology
San Francisco State University
