Tibetan Foothold (3 page)

The Save the Children Fund runs two Tibetan Homes at Simla – ‘Stirling Castle’, on Elysium Hill, and ‘The Manor’, on Summer Hill – each caring for about 150 children under the age of eight. At Chota Simla there is an Indian Government-run boarding-school for some 500 boys and girls, and to this establishment the children are
transferred
from the SCF nurseries.

Our first stop in Simla was at ‘Stirling Castle’. As Arabella ascended the perilously steep drive we overtook a group of neatly dressed, spotlessly clean children being shepherded home from their afternoon walk by two equally clean and neat Tibetan ayahs. The contrast with the ill-clad, unhealthy Kasauli toddlers was marked; yet these Simla children, though obviously contented and cheerful, were also noticeably more subdued and disciplined – no doubt along kind but firm Western lines. And soon I realised that this difference presented a microcosm of the whole Tibetan problem.

The kernel of the problem is the extent to which these refugees should be encouraged to conform to the world in which they now lived – a question on which I soon found myself hopelessly split. My reason told me that Tibetans, as Tibetans, were doomed, while my instinct fiercely opposed every move which might hasten the process of absorbing them into any other culture. To live among these people is a lesson in the uses of courage, and the destruction of their unique way of life is one of the greatest tragedies of this century. However, it is now a
fait accompli
and, though one must sympathise with official Tibetan efforts to preserve their national integrity, fanaticism on this point seriously hinders the resettlement of the peasants.

For a few years after the establishment of the Tibetan
Government-in
-Exile its policy was based on the assumption that Tibet would soon be liberated and that then all her refugees could return home to live happily ever after in the changeless Tibetan way. Unfortunately this policy made it much more difficult to help the people to adjust to a new way of life and one hopes that the Tibetan Government’s newly displayed realism on the subject will now spread as rapidly as possible among the people.

Many Westerners urge that the unusually adaptable Tibetans should be immediately integrated into other societies – a plan which has the virtues of simplicity and practicality. Yet it is basically defeatist and one would like to believe that with the co-operation of the Tibetan Government some compromise may be achieved between the conflicting policies of preserving Tibetan culture intact and abruptly abandoning it to pursue ‘sensible’ integration.

When Arabella stopped outside Stirling Castle a lean, bearded figure came leaping agilely down the slope, and a moment later we were introducing ourselves to Stuart Menteth, the newly appointed SCF administrator for India. At once I mentally nicknamed him ‘Bertie Wooster’ as his charm and phraseology were of the waffling and slightly archaic Wodehouse vintage; but I soon discovered that this façade concealed qualities which had already infused a great deal of badly needed common-sense into the administration of local SCF projects.
His wife, Pauline, who welcomed us into their little bungalow, was equally capable, being the sort of Englishwoman who tackles the most improbable tasks with an invincible mixture of guts, humour and compassion. Though lacking any previous experience of such work she managed to keep a complex situation tactfully under control and was immensely popular among the Tibetans.

For me the little tea-party which followed in the Menteths’
bed-sitting-
room was quite an historic occasion. We ate English-style cucumber sandwiches and Tibetan-style pastries, baked in the shape of miniature toast-racks, while the Menteths told us about the desperate situation at Dharamsala Nursery.

This camp, the largest of its kind in India, was opened in May 1960 by Mrs Tsiring Dolma, the elder sister of the Dalai Lama, soon after His Holiness moved from Mussoorie to Dharamsala. By June 1963 there were over 1100 children in the camp, which had adequate
accommodation
for about 300, and at this point SCF sent a fully trained nurse – Juliet Maskell, from Birmingham – to cope with the crisis as best she could. Not surprisingly, Juliet collapsed from overwork after six weeks, and was now a patient in Kangra Mission Hospital. The Menteths were in despair about this situation and by the time tea had been cleared away it was obvious that my destination would have to be Dharamsala instead of Kangra.

On the following morning Jill and I drove down to Chota Simla School, which introduced me to the squalor of refugee camp life. At that time the buildings were overcrowded, leaking and crawling with bed-bugs; inadequate sanitation made it impossible to control the spread of dysentery and worms, and the hungry children were clad in rags. However, after talking at some length to the Indian headmaster – who showed more imaginative sympathy for the Tibetans than do most of his race – I realised that this was not the worst of it. Housing, feeding and clothing are comparatively simple problems – and since that time conditions have improved enormously at Chota Simla – but no plan for the resettlement of untrained youngsters in an already overpopulated country has yet been suggested.

None of these children had any schooling in Tibet and now they are being taught a smattering of English, Hindi, arithmetic and geography – an educational policy which is both farcical and potentially destructive. As the sons and daughters of illiterate agriculturists and nomad herdspeople they have inherited a fine tradition of
crop-cultivation
and stock-breeding – skills to which Tibetans bring a high degree of natural intelligence. They have also inherited many other talents, such as weaving, dyeing, leather-work and metal-work, and it is generally recognised that Tibetans possess an exceptional sense of colour and design. Yet at the various schools these children are being taught the rudiments of subjects which bear no relation to their natural aptitudes. In Tibet ‘book learning’ was the speciality of Lamas and aristocrats, and its effect on the young refugees is obviously going to be a disastrous discontent with their lot and a contempt for the crafts at which their forefathers excelled.

At present, fortunately for the Tibetans, the Indian Government is building new military roads to the northern frontier and this gives employment to about eighteen thousand refugees of both sexes – an arrangement which also suits India, since at high altitudes one Tibetan can do the work of five Indians. Among these road-workers are hundreds of skilled craftsmen, who now spend their days breaking stones or shifting soil and who are the only remaining link with the artistic splendours of old Tibet. It seemed to me, when I first heard of this situation, that it should be within someone’s power to assemble these craftsmen, provide them with the necessary materials, select the children most likely to profit from their teaching and let them go on from there. However, I soon discovered that nothing is ever as simple as it looks in what a friend of mine calls ‘Tibland’ – the world of Tibetan refugees, Indian Government officials and Western charity organisations. The disheartening thing is that one can never find out why a given project is not considered feasible. Several different reasons may come from several different directions, but the truth, as so often in India, remains forever hidden. If there were a shortage of funds this would not be so unbearable, but money worries are no longer a major problem in Tibland. The fate of Tibet left the governments of the world
callously unmoved when their help was most needed, yet the plight of the refugees so stirred the sympathy of ordinary people everywhere that vast sums of money have been subscribed over the past six years. Now the principal needs are: (
a
) a pooling of resources by the Indian Government and the many organisations involved, (
b
) people of vision and integrity to administer this central fund and (
c
) a generous
discarding
of red tape by both Tibetan and Indian officials. The
resettlement
of the Tibetans bristles with complications – political, social and philosophical – and a satisfactory solution cannot possibly be found amidst the prevailing bureaucratic chaos.

On our way back to Stirling Castle we learned that the direct Simla– Dharamsala road was now impassable, as the monsoon had already broken in the hills, so Jill announced that we would have to return to the plains and follow the Grand Trunk Road westwards for another eighty miles. We left Simla late that evening and, after a glorious moonlit drive through the mountains, stopped again at Kasauli.

Soon after leaving the GT Road at Jullundur, on the following
afternoon,
the countryside again became beautiful in a quiet, green way. But soon the landscape grew wilder and rockier, as Arabella climbed smoothly into the hills that divide the Punjab Plain from the Kangra valley.

We camped after dark near the little town of Dehra, on a cliff high above the Beas river – which made a splendid silver swathe in the moonlight. Within an hour Jill was fast asleep in Arabella and I was almost asleep, wrapped in a blanket on the grass verge of the track. But the night was hot, though dewy, so I threw off the blanket – an action which the local mosquitoes interpreted as an invitation to supper. Having dissuaded them by applying the relevant cream I had just fallen asleep when I was loudly sniffed at by a deputation of astonished dogs, investigating the mystery of the foreign body; then, after their departure, the dew became so heavy that I had to resume my blanket and I spent the remainder of the night restlessly sweating within its shelter.

By 10 a.m. the following morning we were viewing from the south the long, east-to-west Kangra valley, with its tremendous northern backdrop of the Dhauladhur spur of the Himalayas. High on the side
of one of these mountains, 4000 feet above the valley floor, I was to live during the next four months. As it happened, this was the last of the sunshine before the monsoon broke – had we come a day later I would have had to wait five weeks to see the snowy ridges above Dharamsala.

Kangra town, overlooking the Ban Ganga torrent, is cobbled, hilly and smelly. Many of its streets are closed to motor-traffic so we walked to the Tibetan Boys’ School, run by the Tibetan Ministry for Education, in the town centre. Passing through the violently coloured bazaar, where flies swarm in millions, I studied the pale-skinned, cheerful faces of the locals and realised that they were as different from the people ‘down-country’ as their valley is different from the plains. Most of them are semi-nomad herdspeople who take their flocks to high summer pastures in the Himalayas and, though there is little wealth in this valley, they are sturdy and contented. Kangra is only 2000 feet above sea-level and is reputed to be one of the unhealthiest spots in India; it would be difficult to choose an area less suited to refugees from the ‘Roof of the World’.

Approaching the school we heard the boys chanting lessons from the Buddhist scriptures, as they sat crossed-legged in tidy rows on the parched earth of the playground. Conditions here were much the same as at Chota Simla. This place was then being run by a Rimpoche, or Incarnate Lama, named Khantoul – a young man of twenty-five, dressed, most disappointingly, in slacks and a cotton shirt – who showed us round the dilapidated, rat-infested building. Then came the inevitable tea and biscuits in his tiny office, followed by a PT display for our entertainment. Wherever one encounters groups of Tibetan children in India PT, for some mysterious reason, ranks high on the list of their accomplishments. So far as I know there is nothing in their national tradition to account for this phenomenon and the only explanation I have ever heard is that each child is regarded by the Tibetan authorities as a future member of Tibet’s Liberation Army and that the PT cult is part of their military training.

From the boys’ school we walked up hundreds of stone steps to the Canadian Mission Hospital. Here Dr Haslem – a remarkable woman who has been running this hospital for the past thirty years – told us
that Juliet could return to Dharamsala on the following day, if she avoided overwork for another week. (It was, I noted, accepted that she would have to overwork once her convalescence had ended.) Then Juliet joined us; she looked pale and tired, but was obviously determined to persuade all concerned that she was again in perfect health. When we had been introduced Jill explained that I was coming to Dharamsala to work under her. I had been slightly apprehensive about this moment, in view of my total ignorance of medicine, but Juliet’s welcome at once reassured me.

During the next four months Juliet and I were to share the small SCF bungalow which had just been built at the edge of the Nursery compound. It was clear from the start that we had absolutely nothing in common. I am incurably untidy; Juliet is miserable if any object strays a millimetre to right or left of its appointed place. I work until midnight but Juliet retires early. I fail to get on well with Indians and Juliet – who previously worked for eighteen months at Darjeeling and Delhi – is completely at home with them. Even our attitudes to the Tibetans were opposed; Juliet regarded them as so many patients to be nursed back to health and affirmed that she saw no difference between English, Tibetans and Indians – except that the lamentably uncivilised Tibetans needed lessons in hygiene rather more urgently than anyone else. I, on the other hand, had most unprofessionally fallen in love with all my patients and to me the Tibetans represented what Fosco Maraini describes as ‘Perhaps the only civilisation of another age to have survived intact into our own time’.

At first sight it seemed lunatic to enclose two such dissimilar women in a confined space and expect them both to survive. And yet, miraculously, we never quarrelled. Juliet’s patience and thoughtfulness were monumental. She tolerated the nauseating clouds of cigarette smoke with which I filled our little bedroom and the piles of reference books and sheaves of manuscript that wandered all over our cramped floor space, apparently of their own volition. She never interrupted when I was writing and I soon acquired the knack of not hearing her transistor. Inevitably I felt the strain of never being alone, yet by the end of our four months together Juliet and I had developed a sincere mutual affection.