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Last Vestige of Old Tibetan Culture Clings on in Remote Indian State
Last Vestige of Old Tibetan Culture Clings on in Remote Indian State
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/116788.html
Beijing insists on claim to territory in runup to President Hu's visit to Delhi.
On the Tawang to Lhasa highway, climbing past a moonscape of craggy mountains and luminous lakes, is a road sign that sums up why this edge of India is bitterly contested. It reads: Lhasa [capital of China's Tibet] 508km, Delhi, [capital of India] 2534km.
This is a land that the rest of the world has all but forgotten. Nestling under the folds of the Himalayas in north-eastern India, the town is shielded by a permit system that curbs mass immigration and international tourism.
Monks pass swathed in maroon and saffron robes, yak bells sound in the streets and chanting echoes around Buddhist gompas (monasteries). Ancient rituals such as river burials, where the dead are chopped into 108 pieces and thrown into the water, persist.
But the position of Tawang, on the flanks of the Tibetan plateau, and its cultural affinity to Lhasa is at the root of a decades-old dispute between India and China. Historically, China says, the region was part of outer Tibet, an area the size of Austria. Today it is known as the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh - but China lays claim to it in its entirety.
Tawang is the repository of perhaps the last vestige of a Tibet submerged by China's rise. The town is home to Tibetan Buddhism's biggest monastery, after the Potala palace in Lhasa. In Tawang's temple is a 25ft (7.6 metre) high golden Buddha. The monastic order, who live in a group of 65 white-walled buildings with distinctive pagoda-like yellow roofs, keeps alive a centuries-old culture and language.
For many it also sustains the dream of returning home for 100,000 Tibetans in exile in India. Under a brilliant white painting of Tsepakmey, the Buddhist god of life, Tengye Rinpoche, the Tibetan abbot of the 17th-century lamasery or monastery, explains that Tawang is special "because the sixth Dalai Lama was born here. It is very close to our hearts".
The abbot says the region cannot now be absorbed into Tibet. "China's hope is an empty one. I have been to Lhasa and found that monks there could not speak freely. There is development there but freedom does not exist in Tibet. Our religion cannot survive there unless we are free."
Expectations were raised that the border dispute would be resolved next week when Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, arrives in India - only the second visit by that country's top leader to Delhi. Trade has eased relations between the two nations, whose booming economies mean that they will exchange $50bn (£30bn) worth of goods and services by 2010.
The putative deal would see a swap of territories: Beijing relinquishes its claim to Arunachal Pradesh and Delhi gives up its demand for 15,000 square miles bordering Kashmir.
However, those hopes have been dashed by aggressive volleys of claim and counter-claim ahead of the historic meeting. China's ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, told Indian television last week: "In our position the whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory and Tawang is only one place in it and we are claiming all of that. That's our position."
In Delhi, India's foreign minister tersely responded by reiterating that Arunachal Pradesh was an "integral part of India". Sonia Gandhi, president of India's ruling Congress party, visited Tawang recently to emphasise India's grip on the town.
Although Beijing and Delhi have resolved to talk their way out of this dispute, the roads to Tawang are pitted with army camps. Heavily armed soldiers patrol the streets, part of an estimated 100,000-strong Indian force keeping a cold peace at the top of the world.
The last time China and India clashed was in 1962. It was a short, bloody war that claimed more than 40,000 lives. China's troops scattered Indian soldiers and occupied Tawang before retreating back into Tibet.
In the hillside village of Lhou, a group of ramshackle homes covered in orange chrysanthemums, Pema Gombu says he has lived under three flags: Tibetan, Chinese and Indian. Although his living room is decked with pictures of the current Dalai Lama, the 81-year-old says the Tibetan administration in the early 20th century was the worst.
"The [Tibetan] officials in that time were corrupt and cruel. I am sure his holiness did not know this. In those days if a Tibetan stopped you they could ask you to work for them like a slave. They forced us to pay taxes. Poor farmers like me had to give over a quarter of our crops to them. We had to carry the loads 40km [25 miles] to a Tibetan town as tribute every year."
It was this treatment that turned Tawang away from Tibet. Mr Gombu said he helped guide Indian soldiers into the town in 1950 who carried papers signed by the Tibetan government which transferred Arunachal's 35,000 square miles to India. "It was the happiest day of my life."
The retired farmer also remembers the Chinese occupation. "[Chinese soldiers] said you should know you are not Indian, just look at your face. They said I looked Chinese. But I preferred to be an Indian."
Although many in Tawang have heard of breathtaking advances taking place in Tibet, symbolised by the world's highest railway connecting the Himalayan plateau with the rest of China, there are few takers for that kind of pell-mell rush to modernity.
"I do not understand this race to be modern. We have to be careful to strike a balance between economic growth and cultural erosion. We have to limit outside influences and control to some extent," said Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, a high-ranking lama who is also an elected local politician. "Our society can easily fall apart otherwise. In Tibet these things are happening. Buddhism is dying there."
Despite these concerns India is pressing ahead with its own plans to build dams in Arunachal Pradesh to generate hydropower for energy-starved India and blast tunnels through the Himalayas for a motorway network. This would be a step change for Arunachal Pradesh, which does not even have an airport.
Experts say that China covets the Tawang region not just for the picturesque monastery but for economic and strategic reasons. Many point out that China has plans to divert the Brahmaputra river, which begins in Tibet but passes through Arunachal Pradesh, to feed its arid northern and western regions and generate power.
Srikanth Kondapalli, an associate professor of East Asian studies in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, points out that the fertile Tawang tract could support a third of Tibet's economy. "It has tremendous potential in terms of minerals, forests, fisheries, grain stocks. The Chinese army has published numerous articles saying that the Tawang valley, if it becomes part of China, would be able to sustain Tibet. That is what really interests them."
Backstory
When Henry McMahon, the British Raj's foreign minister in India, took a red pencil to a map of the fragmenting empires run by Lhasa
Beijing and Delhi in 1914, it is doubtful he would have envisaged the events that would haunt the region decades later. After the British left India and the Communist takeover of China, the McMahon Line became a de facto boundary. Then China swallowed Tibet in 1950, leaving Delhi and Beijing to claim swaths of each other's territory along the Himalayan border. The result was war in 1962. India integrated Arunachal Pradesh as a fully fledged state in the late 80s. India accepted Tibet as part of China in 2003, although it allowed the Dalai Lama to remain in India in exile. Last year "guiding principles" were agreed to resolve all border disputes.
By Guardian Unlimited © Copyright Guardian Newspapers 2006
Published: 11/19/2006
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/116788.html
Beijing insists on claim to territory in runup to President Hu's visit to Delhi.
On the Tawang to Lhasa highway, climbing past a moonscape of craggy mountains and luminous lakes, is a road sign that sums up why this edge of India is bitterly contested. It reads: Lhasa [capital of China's Tibet] 508km, Delhi, [capital of India] 2534km.
This is a land that the rest of the world has all but forgotten. Nestling under the folds of the Himalayas in north-eastern India, the town is shielded by a permit system that curbs mass immigration and international tourism.
Monks pass swathed in maroon and saffron robes, yak bells sound in the streets and chanting echoes around Buddhist gompas (monasteries). Ancient rituals such as river burials, where the dead are chopped into 108 pieces and thrown into the water, persist.
But the position of Tawang, on the flanks of the Tibetan plateau, and its cultural affinity to Lhasa is at the root of a decades-old dispute between India and China. Historically, China says, the region was part of outer Tibet, an area the size of Austria. Today it is known as the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh - but China lays claim to it in its entirety.
Tawang is the repository of perhaps the last vestige of a Tibet submerged by China's rise. The town is home to Tibetan Buddhism's biggest monastery, after the Potala palace in Lhasa. In Tawang's temple is a 25ft (7.6 metre) high golden Buddha. The monastic order, who live in a group of 65 white-walled buildings with distinctive pagoda-like yellow roofs, keeps alive a centuries-old culture and language.
For many it also sustains the dream of returning home for 100,000 Tibetans in exile in India. Under a brilliant white painting of Tsepakmey, the Buddhist god of life, Tengye Rinpoche, the Tibetan abbot of the 17th-century lamasery or monastery, explains that Tawang is special "because the sixth Dalai Lama was born here. It is very close to our hearts".
The abbot says the region cannot now be absorbed into Tibet. "China's hope is an empty one. I have been to Lhasa and found that monks there could not speak freely. There is development there but freedom does not exist in Tibet. Our religion cannot survive there unless we are free."
Expectations were raised that the border dispute would be resolved next week when Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, arrives in India - only the second visit by that country's top leader to Delhi. Trade has eased relations between the two nations, whose booming economies mean that they will exchange $50bn (£30bn) worth of goods and services by 2010.
The putative deal would see a swap of territories: Beijing relinquishes its claim to Arunachal Pradesh and Delhi gives up its demand for 15,000 square miles bordering Kashmir.
However, those hopes have been dashed by aggressive volleys of claim and counter-claim ahead of the historic meeting. China's ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, told Indian television last week: "In our position the whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory and Tawang is only one place in it and we are claiming all of that. That's our position."
In Delhi, India's foreign minister tersely responded by reiterating that Arunachal Pradesh was an "integral part of India". Sonia Gandhi, president of India's ruling Congress party, visited Tawang recently to emphasise India's grip on the town.
Although Beijing and Delhi have resolved to talk their way out of this dispute, the roads to Tawang are pitted with army camps. Heavily armed soldiers patrol the streets, part of an estimated 100,000-strong Indian force keeping a cold peace at the top of the world.
The last time China and India clashed was in 1962. It was a short, bloody war that claimed more than 40,000 lives. China's troops scattered Indian soldiers and occupied Tawang before retreating back into Tibet.
In the hillside village of Lhou, a group of ramshackle homes covered in orange chrysanthemums, Pema Gombu says he has lived under three flags: Tibetan, Chinese and Indian. Although his living room is decked with pictures of the current Dalai Lama, the 81-year-old says the Tibetan administration in the early 20th century was the worst.
"The [Tibetan] officials in that time were corrupt and cruel. I am sure his holiness did not know this. In those days if a Tibetan stopped you they could ask you to work for them like a slave. They forced us to pay taxes. Poor farmers like me had to give over a quarter of our crops to them. We had to carry the loads 40km [25 miles] to a Tibetan town as tribute every year."
It was this treatment that turned Tawang away from Tibet. Mr Gombu said he helped guide Indian soldiers into the town in 1950 who carried papers signed by the Tibetan government which transferred Arunachal's 35,000 square miles to India. "It was the happiest day of my life."
The retired farmer also remembers the Chinese occupation. "[Chinese soldiers] said you should know you are not Indian, just look at your face. They said I looked Chinese. But I preferred to be an Indian."
Although many in Tawang have heard of breathtaking advances taking place in Tibet, symbolised by the world's highest railway connecting the Himalayan plateau with the rest of China, there are few takers for that kind of pell-mell rush to modernity.
"I do not understand this race to be modern. We have to be careful to strike a balance between economic growth and cultural erosion. We have to limit outside influences and control to some extent," said Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, a high-ranking lama who is also an elected local politician. "Our society can easily fall apart otherwise. In Tibet these things are happening. Buddhism is dying there."
Despite these concerns India is pressing ahead with its own plans to build dams in Arunachal Pradesh to generate hydropower for energy-starved India and blast tunnels through the Himalayas for a motorway network. This would be a step change for Arunachal Pradesh, which does not even have an airport.
Experts say that China covets the Tawang region not just for the picturesque monastery but for economic and strategic reasons. Many point out that China has plans to divert the Brahmaputra river, which begins in Tibet but passes through Arunachal Pradesh, to feed its arid northern and western regions and generate power.
Srikanth Kondapalli, an associate professor of East Asian studies in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, points out that the fertile Tawang tract could support a third of Tibet's economy. "It has tremendous potential in terms of minerals, forests, fisheries, grain stocks. The Chinese army has published numerous articles saying that the Tawang valley, if it becomes part of China, would be able to sustain Tibet. That is what really interests them."
Backstory
When Henry McMahon, the British Raj's foreign minister in India, took a red pencil to a map of the fragmenting empires run by Lhasa
Beijing and Delhi in 1914, it is doubtful he would have envisaged the events that would haunt the region decades later. After the British left India and the Communist takeover of China, the McMahon Line became a de facto boundary. Then China swallowed Tibet in 1950, leaving Delhi and Beijing to claim swaths of each other's territory along the Himalayan border. The result was war in 1962. India integrated Arunachal Pradesh as a fully fledged state in the late 80s. India accepted Tibet as part of China in 2003, although it allowed the Dalai Lama to remain in India in exile. Last year "guiding principles" were agreed to resolve all border disputes.
By Guardian Unlimited © Copyright Guardian Newspapers 2006
Published: 11/19/2006
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Comments
Additionally, the industrialisation of this part of the world is a very mixed blessing. It has many advantages, of course, and the end of the corruption prior to 1950 is to be welcomed. Perhaps the two go together, as many an imperialist has argued: modernisation brings the possibility of stemming corrupt practices somewhat more effectively than feudalism, although it does not guarantee it.
We may be watching yet another ancient culture fall under the wheels of the juggernaut called 'progress' and the 'free market': twin children of Mara. And the truth is that we have no believable or coherent way of stopping the process. We may weep to see so beautiful a way of life disappear, just as it has in our own countryside but we are incapable of resisting the urge to "take up the white man's burden" and bring the benefits of 'civilisation'.
Alas, we have absolutely no moral authority to condemn any other nation for using genocide as a tactic to acquire new territory. Nobody needs to be reminded of the genocide of the Native Americans because it stopped less than a century ago but the English crown attempted much the same in Wales, rather longer ago.
And let us not forget that there may be evidence, and there are long-held theories, that Homo sapiens gained ascendancy in the human species by genocidal wiping out the Neanderthal. We may all be descended from and have our place in the sun as a result of a prehistoric "Final Solution".