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Is it true the Dalai Lama was a slave owner before China invaded?
TheEccentric
Hampshire, UK Veteran
I hasve read many posts on the internet claiming that Tibetans before The Chinese invaded were abused by the Dalai Lama, not only kept them as slaves but gave them horrific punishments if they tried to escape, I have even seen some pictures of it/
Is this true or just some propaganda? Please tell me this is not true.
Is this true or just some propaganda? Please tell me this is not true.
0
Comments
http://rense.com/general81/faeeof.htm
I have seen many other people post about that on the internet as well
Some temples supposedly used slaves. I never once read where that extended to the central court or the Dalai Lama personally. But remember, he was only a boy when he fled. It's not like he actually ran anything or was capable of giving the country orders. His role was still fairly ceremonial and an entire class of administrative monks actually ran things.
Unfortunately, it's hard to know what's true and what's exagerated since both the government in exile and China have a vested interest in getting public opinion on their side. There's a poster here whose parents actually came from Tibet that might have more first hand info, but I forget his handle. Maybve he'll notice and post something.
It's quite a mainstream idea. The issue has been covered by Penn and Teller, amongst others. Christopher Hitchens, alongside other noted atheists, would take side with the Chinese. It's now new, either.
There is an old Bertrand Russell quote in which he states, "The Buddha was amiable and enlightened; on his deathbed he laughed at his disciples for supposing that he was immortal. But the Buddhist priesthood --- as it exists, for example, in Tibet --- has been obscurantist, tyrannous, and cruel in the highest degree."
I guess it hinders on how you define slavery. A theocratic serfdom, which Tibet effectively was, is very much a society of slavery - as far as I'm concerned.
Here's more on the issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy
(The fact that something is used as propaganda doesn't make it any less true, either. The Soviets used to highlight the American mistreatment of black citizens as part of their propaganda.)
Even those that fall for a lie can help spread it even further
Do not believe everything you see or hear on the internet...i think there is a quote associated with the Buddha that would be good to -insert here- :P
What i have seen enough of are the horrific acts the Chinese have done to the Tibetan people and their country
And then there is corvee labor.
And then (as in historical Thailand) people could sell themselves into labor...pretty close to indentured servitude.
Which are we actually talking about here?
Welcome to the real world of the kali yuga. :rarr:
Work on freeing slaves, supporting good teachings and promoting life enhancing projects.
:thumbup:
Dont blame the Chinese for propaganda, if anything, the Western Govts and their press are worse transgressors. Think WMD in Iraq.
The Chinese Govt of the day also killed a lot of Chinese so to speak, so theres no racial bias to it. Also remember Britain fought many wars with Tibet before the Chinese. The British Raj was on a mission to conquer the Indian sub-continent and South East Asia and anywhere else they could get their gunboats near.
It's true. The Potala palace and all monasteries owned huge tracts of land with serfs to work them and provide food and an income. The 14th Dalai Lama "inherited" this system. The Dalai Lama was interested in introducing reforms, but never got the chance. He's said from his place in Dharamsala that if the Chinese had just waited, reforms would have happened. I think the question of whether or not he would have been able to pull that off is debatable, but it's a moot point.
-Highly debatable, if only thingy!
My point that the founding fathers had slaves indicates that people may simply notquestion things. So the founding fathers are not entirely awful people despite having an awful practice going on. This could explain why the Da lai lama can have his good side and also the awful slavery of his mother nation.
I know what you mean about that. I used to live in Virginia, and one day I went down to one of the Civil War Battlefields in Fredericksburg, and one of the places I visited was one of the cemeteries. It happened to be a Union cemetery. Across the street and separate was a Confederate burial ground, and there was a family putting flowers on a grave. I had to stop and think that it must have been a very long distant relative since the war had ended 120 years before, but it also made me stop and think that slave owners were still good family people...except for one major aspect of their life...but that also I had to try to put myself in their place, in a culture where slavery was normal life. How they justified it, I still can't figure out, but we today cannot understand different times and/or different cultures. I think I became much more open-minded about cultural mores when I began traveling in SE Asia and saw such different lives being lived and thriving (or in many cases not thriving). But I sure learned a lot.
Unfortunately it hasn't been translated into English, that I have found, and has been deleted from many sites, but you can still read a version here.
His main point is that the evidence doesn't support the theory of Tibet as a socially unique culture - i.e. Tibet's social structure was no better, worse, odder, more magical, less magical, than any other culture at the time. He looks a lot at the economic activity of Tibet and the surrounding region pre-1949, and concludes that it cannot be accounted for by the "slavery and serfdom" the Chinese government claims. It can however be accounted for by the social structure one would expect, and which evidence supports, made up of salt traders, tea and medicine traders, farmers, nomads, etc.
He picks apart rather exhaustively the official government population figures for Tibet and shows some of the ways in which these numbers were Frankensteined over the years to serve propaganda needs on various issues in addition to the slaves and serfs bit.
High Peaks Pure Earth has translated some thought-provoking personal reflections by the Tibetan author Woeser on this issue:
http://highpeakspureearth.com/2011/replaying-the-film-serf-wont-brainwash-anyone-by-woeser/
"Goldstein's narrative of serfdom, which is fundamentally jural in nature, is untenable in light of recent scholarship that reveals the flexibility of traditional Tibet's legal system, and that the theoretical underpinnings of this narrative, grounded in the classical western understanding of feudalism, collapse under the critical eye of deconstructive analysis."
I used to doubt Chinese propaganda of Tibet's past. But now I believe what they say maybe true.
I totally believe Chinese Communists repressed and destroyed Buddhist culture in Tibet, because... THEY DID THE SAME THING TO CHINESE BUDDHISM! It's not some racist thing directed at Tibet, because Communism likes to force their athiest views on others so they oppressed all religions during that time.
However, I also believe Tibet's old culture is medieval and feudlistic. Not to mention corrupted forms of sexual practices... Hell, they built Pagodas in specific locations in Tibet to control demonic forces in the country during the introduction of Buddhism to there!
Communist by name, but not nature. They can call themselves what they want, but they're no more a legitimate communist nation than North Korea is a democracy.
You'd probably be right however that the anti-religious Chinese behaviour was driven by communist ideas.
My grandparents lived in both Tibet and China; the hyped up version of both countries, in practice, gives way under scrutiny to normal, everyday people living normal, everyday lives of farming, trading, herding, etc. The only bullets my grandparents experienced came from three separate bandit attacks during their journey from Shanghai to Lanzhou, and there are criminals in every nation, so one can't blame it on Chinese culture.
If we must make comparisons, at the time of Chinese invasion, foot-binding (never practiced in Tibet) was still being inflicted by the liberating nation on its own daughters. My grandmother had to treat the aches, pains, fractures and infections of many a purposely-crippled girl during her tenure in China. For a culture practicing this type of thing to say that their neighbors must be invaded due to "medievalism" is just ridiculous.
Nations and cultures overall, though, really aren't that different from one another. When cultures do go through periods of unusual, exceptional violence, it's quite simple to tell this is happening: refugees stream out of the area. If Tibet had been a feudalistic "hell on earth," refugees would have streamed out. Refugees always do - and under far more restrictive circumstances than the vast, largely unguarded borders of pre-1949 provided. The reality is that refugees began streaming out of Tibet post-1949, not pre-1949.
According to Heinrich Harrer, a group of lamas that were members of the government and had veto power over any measures the gov't wanted to pass, opposed modernization. He said the monks in power deliberately perpetuated a lot of superstition to maintain a certain control over the people. He said he was surprised his and Aufschnaiter's presence was tolerated for so long, because their mountain-climbing and other successful endeavors of various sorts showed that the spirits wouldn't harm anyone climbing mountains, digging in the earth, and so on.
Tibet has offered formal women's education since about the 1400s - centuries before England.
At the time of Chinese invasion, Tibet had formal education for children of both sexes, a functioning government, a postal system, passports, regional (and occasionally statewide) radio broadcasts, and a solid system of national and international trade.
Suggestions that Tibet was somehow more medieval (whatever that means) than any other Himalayan culture are unfounded. My grandparents lived there. Tibet was physically and psychologically healthier, and had a more vibrant human outlook, than many regions of China and India at the time (1930s - 1950).
Tibet as some kind of mythical Shangrila is a myth, and Tibet as some kind of medieval holdout is a myth. Other nations co-opt both myths to serve their needs.
There are numerous poems dating back hundreds of years singing praises for the '3 inch lotus bud' as they were known. Young ladies must have bound feet to get a good marriage, it also signifies that the lady is from good stock, and need not work (cause you cant )
Not that I agree with it one iota, but it was just a cultural thing. Looking at it from any other angle is pure speculation.
The practice died out with the Ching dynasty, early 20th century. Even the Manchus adopted shoes which made them look as if they had bound feet, such was the fashion of the day!!
My grandma always said that they stank like hell......
As to what the Tibet life was like before the invasion, according to the government officials and travelers of the time, it was neither a hell hole nor enlightened. Theocracies are always ultraconservative, authoritarian, and paranoid about change. Tibet would have been no different. Add to that the natural isolation of geography. It was a third world country with a rich ruling class, a whole lot of struggling poor with almost no rights, and almost no middle class. Just about what the entire world was like before the industrial revolution. Like a lot of nations today.
Footbinding was an agonizing, sustained fracturing and refracturing of the child's bones, accompanied by other aspects--designed to make the foot as small as possible--that I can't really stomach putting into print. The history is available online, or you can find more detailed experiences in the missionary record.
Many, many girls died as the result of footbinding and the chronic infections which ensued.