In Exile From the Land of Snows (11 page)

The Dalai Lama’s reaction to Mao was not unfavorable. He found him forthright, kind and dedicated. Among other details he observed that the leader of the revolution and Chairman of the Party never wore polished shoes, dressed in frayed cuffs, smoked incessantly and panted a lot. He seemed to be in poor health, but when he spoke, his unusual powers of analysis shone through. “Chairman Mao did not look too intelligent,” noted the Dalai Lama. “Something like an old farmer from the countryside. Yet his bearing indicated a real leader. His self-confidence was firm, he had a sincere feeling for the nation and people, and also, I believe, he demonstrated genuine concern for myself.”

Mao, in fact, was quite taken with the young leader. He spent long hours offering advice on how to govern, going so far as to admit that Buddhism was a good religion—the Buddha having cared considerably for the common people. Invariably, though, political conviction outweighed personal taste. On one occasion, in the middle of an intimate talk, Mao leaned over and whispered in the Dalai Lama’s ear, “I understand you very well, but of course religion is poison.” During a New Year’s celebration given by the Tibetans, he watched his hosts throw small pieces of pastry in the air as an offering to the Buddha, whereupon, taking two pinches
himself, he threw one upward and then, with a mischievous smile, dropped the other onto the floor.

In their first private meeting together, Chairman Mao informed the Dalai Lama that a new committee was to govern Tibet. Known as PCART—Preparatory Committee for the Autonomous Region of Tibet—it would be comprised of five groups—four Tibetan, one Chinese—whose task it was to prepare the country for assimilation into the administrative framework of the People’s Republic. Ironically, the news came as a blessing. As Mao disclosed, until meeting the Dalai Lama he had intended to govern Tibet directly from Peking. The Tibetan’s conciliatory attitude, he indicated, had softened his stance. This had been Tenzin Gyatso’s prime goal: creating sufficient trust in himself to deflect unconditional Chinese rule. “We had to realize that our country was backward, it needed progress,” related the Dalai Lama. “The Chinese claimed that the very purpose of their coming to Tibet was to develop it. So here, you see, there was no need for argument; we enjoyed a common principle.”

During his remaining seven months in China, the Dalai Lama’s optimism was dampened by what he learned of Peking’s deeper intent. Taking copious notes at political meetings, touring factories and schools, he and his Cabinet finally comprehended the full array of motives underlying the invasion of Tibet.

China’s foremost objective was strategic. Since the days of the Tibetan invasions a millennia and a half before, all Chinese governments had looked warily to their western border. The Communists, fearful of losing their newly acquired hold on the country, saw, in the 1904 British incursion to Lhasa and its resulting ties, the basis of a new threat. Despite New Delhi’s apparent refusal to fulfill the terms of the 1914 Simla Convention, the spirit of which clearly placed it as broker in relations between China and Tibet, Peking was convinced of an “imperialist” menace in the west. Defensively then, China, by annexing Tibet, desired to permanently shut its “back door.” But no less important were offensive considerations. In possession of the Tibetan Plateau the People’s Republic stood at the apex of the Orient. In the event of conflict with either of Asia’s other giants—India and the Soviet Union—Tibet, as the central and highest ground, would prove an invaluable platform from which to launch an assault. Economically, the outlook was no less inviting. Known in Chinese as
Xizang
or “The Western Treasure House,” Tibet possessed everything China lacked: vast, underpopulated tracts of land, their mineral, forest and animal reserves virtually unexploited. Politically, still in the first ideological flush of victory, the Chinese Communist Party felt mandated to “liberate” all “oppressed” peoples, its historical justification for absorbing not
only Tibet but fifty-three other so-called Minority Nationalities occupying 60 percent of its territory but comprising only 6 percent of the Republic’s population. It was the CCP’s ultimate aim, through its long-held Minorities Policy, to meld the disparate groups—despite talk of “regional autonomy”—both politically and culturally into the Han mold. And it was this policy which both the Dalai Lama and the vast entourage accompanying him found most daunting.

In China, the Tibetans had their first look at the modern world, one carefully orchestrated to elicit their approval. Housed in amply staffed bungalows around Peking, high lamas and Cabinet ministers each received a limousine, chauffeur and private cook, lesser officials sharing graded levels of kitchen and transport. Packets of money were handed out on a weekly basis—the higher one’s rank, the more money received—and as winter approached, new warmer clothing was provided for all. Though political meetings were required of senior officials, the majority of the Tibetans spent their time sightseeing, shopping, attending theater, ballet, acrobatic shows and dancing parties. But beneath China’s efficient, industrial facade, they found the human climate unappealing, the submission of self to the state contrary to their own individualistic nature. An even deeper gulf separated the philosophies of the two peoples. While the Communists believed that socialism, properly applied, offered a panacea for life’s ills, as Buddhists, the Tibetans felt that earthly existence in any form could never be satisfactory. Liberation, to them, meant freedom gained by enlightenment from the inevitable sufferings of birth, old age, disease and death. Mere physical well-being had never been an ideal in Tibetan culture.

Returning to Lhasa on June 29, 1955, the Dalai Lama found Tibet’s capital already changed by the new world he had visited. Two roads, one emanating from Xining in the north, the other from Chengdu in the east, had been opened the previous December, bringing with them to Tibet the first trappings of the twentieth century. Military trucks now coursed through Lhasa’s ancient streets, traffic soon becoming so heavy that a concrete island, manned by a white-jacketed policeman, had to be installed at the main intersection. The Tibetans themselves had begun to electrify the city prior to 1950, but the Chinese now extended the work, along with telephones and—to their growing bases in Shigatse, Gyantse and Yatung—telegraph. A pylon-supported bridge extended across the Kyichu River where the Dalai Lama had ridden in a coracle less than a year before. A bank, hospital, movie theater, secondary school, newspaper, youth and women’s leagues were all being founded, but not, ironically, for the masses. The innovations were primarily to win the collaboration of the upper
classes or “Patriotic Upper Strata,” as they were known, on whom the CCP hoped to rely for support in the initial stages of its work. Socialist reforms were to be introduced gingerly; the Tibetan government’s own role was to be proportionately decreased. Both were the tasks of PCART, which opened with much fanfare on April 22, 1956, in the newly built Lhasa Hall, holding Tibet’s first auditorium, directly across from the Potala.

Rather than serving as a vehicle for compromise, as the Dalai Lama desired, the preparatory committee directly subverted Tibet’s government. In the manner of political maneuvering to which they were bred, the Communists had tailored the committee to appear indigenous—only five of the fifty-one members being Chinese—while, in fact, dividing the Tibetans against themselves, so that PCART could function solely as a mouthpiece for the CCP working committee, the highest authority in the land. The Dalai Lama was Chairman, the Panchen Lama and General Zhang Guohua Vice-Chairmen, Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, now in open collaboration, Secretary-General. The Tibetan government was permitted only fifteen members. A second group of eleven Tibetans was comprised of prominent monks and laymen picked by the Chinese. The third and fourth Tibetan groups, however, were far more insidious. Containing twenty members between them, they were the so-called Chamdo Liberation Committee, founded in Chamdo after the invasion, and the Panchen Lama’s Committee. As political bodies, they divided Tibet into three regions and directly challenged the authority of the central government in Lhasa. Thus, in the thirteen departments into which PCART was divided to govern Tibet, the country’s own administration was not only displaced but outvoted by a minimum of a two-thirds majority on every issue. “Sometimes it was almost laughable to see how the proceedings were controlled,” wrote the Dalai Lama. “But often I felt embarrassed at these meetings. I saw that the Chinese had only made me Chairman in order to give an added appearance of Tibetan authority to their schemes.”

Inversely, Peking also hoped to erode the Dalai Lama’s prestige by elevating that of the Panchen Lama. Since the 17th century, the elder of the two had served as tutor to the younger. In 1923, however, the Seventh Panchen Lama, convinced that the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was persecuting him for complicity with China during the 1910 invasion, fled his ancestral seat—Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse—for Peking. The Panchen Lama never returned home, dying in Jyekundo in eastern Tibet in 1937. Finding the breach advantageous, the Nationalists influenced the selection of the new Panchen Lama themselves, certifying him in Xining in 1949 without the approval of the National Assembly in Lhasa. Soon after, the then eleven-year-old boy fell into Communist hands, from which time he
was utilized as the PRC’s principal Tibetan collaborator. His claim to the position was validated by Lhasa only under duress as part of the Seventeen-Point Agreement. Given virtually equal status with the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama came, through PCART, to embody the cutting edge of Peking’s subversion. But elsewhere an even greater threat emerged.

The changes China pursued by stealth in Central Tibet it chose to impose by force in Kham and Amdo. Within a year of the invasion the transformation of Tibetan society began. Progressing gradually at first, it gained an implacable momentum until early in 1955 PLA contingents, accompanied by party workers and small numbers of newly recruited beggars—ironically entitled
hurtsun chenpos
or “diligent ones”—fanned out across the countryside to disarm the population, relieve them of their personal possessions and execute the first stages of collectivization, leading eventually to full-fledged communes. The culmination of five years of softening up, the Democratic Reforms, as they were called, were met by stiff resistance in virtually every village. The PLA responded by singling out prominent families, bringing them bound to the center of their community and, before the full population assembled at gunpoint, conducting
thamzing
or “struggle session.” It was the duty of the
hurtsun chenpos
to carry out this facet of the Democratic Reforms, in which they beat and denounced their “oppressors,” who, if unable to render a suitable confession of “crimes against the people,” were forthwith executed. Violent intimidation and enforced socialization were abetted by the abduction of thousands of young children to be raised, not as Tibetans in their own homes, but as wards of the state in a newly created network of minority schools. Simultaneously, China began infiltrating the first of what it hoped would eventually be millions of settlers to colonize the “Roof of the World.”

The Khampas’ reaction was unequivocal. Following their clan leaders, they assembled by the thousands, mounted their sturdy ponies and, swords and rifles in hand, descended on PLA camps throughout the east. Overwhelmed by the onslaught, Chinese garrisons in Dergé, Kanzé, Nyarong, Po, Lithang and many of Kham’s lesser districts were forced to retreat, suffering massive losses. Yet until the Chinese committed a further indiscretion the majority of the Khampas’ senior
pons
or tribal chieftains remained at peace.

Six months after the fighting broke out, early in the summer of 1956, General Wang Jimei, Chamdo’s PLA commander, summoned 350 prominent men to the city and asked for their endorsement of the Democratic Reforms. “No reforms” was the overwhelming vote. Four subsequent meetings yielded the same result until 210 leaders from Dergé, the largest
region in Kham, were convened at the local fortress of Jomdha Dzong, forty miles east of Chamdo. When they were all inside, 5,000 Chinese troops surrounded the fort. For two weeks the Tibetans were held prisoner. On the fifteenth day of detention, they finally assented. After three more days Jomdha Dzong’s guard was relaxed and that same night all 210 men escaped into the mountains. In this manner, Tibet’s formal guerrilla resistance was born, the Chinese themselves having turned much of the Khampa establishment into outlaws.

In Lhasa, news of the revolt placed the Dalai Lama in an irreconcilable dilemma. His six-year effort at compromise thwarted, his own people no longer under his control, Tenzin Gyatso considered withdrawing from political office. During June of 1956, however, the Crown Prince of Sikkim brought an invitation to the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha’s birth, to be celebrated in India. With it, the Dalai Lama found a new source of hope. Not only was India the Holy Land from which Tibet’s higher culture had come; more recently it had given birth to Mahatma Gandhi, who was deeply revered by all Tibetans for his nonviolent precepts. In the company of Gandhi’s associates, Tenzin Gyatso hoped for advice on Tibet’s predicament. Under the British at least, India had been Tibet’s most powerful ally, a role, perhaps, it could be relied on once more to fulfill.

For “reasons of security,” China denied the Dalai Lama permission to attend the celebration. On October 1, Prime Minister Nehru himself telegraphed Peking, resubmitting the invitation, this time revised to include the Panchen Lama. It became clear that a second denial would severely damage the facade of Sino-Tibetan cooperation, making it appear as though the Dalai Lama was being held against his will. Nevertheless, a full month passed until, on November 1, following queries pressed by the Indian consul general in Lhasa, China conceded to the Dalai Lama that a second invitation had been sent, which he would now be permitted to accept. Tenzin Gyatso quickly prepared to go, viewing the trip as “a lifeline to the world of tolerance and freedom.”