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By: Shashi Kei
Declassified US Dept Cables showing that the Dalai Lama was ready to embrace Communism had the US failed to meet his conditions for financial aid. Click to enlarge.
There are clear signs that world leaders are losing interest in the Tibetan struggle. For over half a century, it captured the world’s imagination and presented itself as an opportunity for the global community to make a stand for what is right and noble. In any public dialogue, both the Dalai Lama and the Sikyong (President) of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA, based in Dharamsala, India) refer to themselves as guardians of the Buddha’s teachings and portray the Chinese Government as a force that seeks to destroy the Buddhadharma. When asked how the Tibetan leadership intends to deal with China’s rising power, the CTA Sikyong Lobsang Sangay likes to say that Communism is only 100 years old whereas Buddhism is 2500 years old. The inference is clear: the Tibetan leadership has claimed to be synonymic with the religion of Buddhism. And yet, recently declassified US State Department documents reveal that the Dalai Lama is not beholden to any particular ideology apart from what serves him personally, and will lean towards any system or power base that could help him regain his fiefdom.
The Dalai Lama it seems was just as open to his government becoming a part of the Communist bloc had the Americans not agreed to his demands for funding. This came through clearly in a 1969 US Department of State communiqué, which reported a discussion between a US official and Lodi Gyari, who represented the Dalai Lama. The Tibetans were negotiating with the US for financial assistance but at the same time, they were entertaining overtures made by the Soviet Union.
The communiqué read:
“It will be recalled that during a public lecture at the Indian School of International Studies given in October, the Dalai Lama emphasized that he did not oppose communism, or for that matter ‘isms’ in particular. He [Lodi Gyari on behalf of the Dalai Lama] declared that an independent Tibet could have a communist government or any other form supported by the majority of the people”.
In short, the Dalai Lama was making it clear that if the US did not acquiesce to the Tibetan leadership’s demands, he would not hesitate to turn to Moscow for help and willingly embrace Communist principles.
Indeed, the Dalai Lama has never denied his admiration for Marxist and Communist thoughts and codes of governance. On a number of occasions, he has openly criticized Capitalism, which lies at the heart of democratic systems.
In a 2009 interview, the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying, “Communists care most about equality and the rights of the destitute” i.
At a lecture in Kolkata entitled ‘A Human Approach to World Peace’, the Dalai Lama clearly stated his preference for Marxist theories, claiming that Capitalism creates socio-economic inequality. He said, “As far as socioeconomic theory, I am Marxist”. The Tibetan spiritual leader partly blamed Capitalism for inequality and said he regarded Marxism as the answer: “In capitalist countries, there is an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. In Marxism, there is emphasis on equal distribution.” ii
Ironically, one of the crudest displays of social and economic inequality was the feudal system that characterized the reign of the Tibetan spiritual monarchs before Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1959, forcing the 14th Dalai Lama to flee. It is suspicious that the Tibetan leaders only began to display concern for the emancipation of subjugated groups after the ruling class lost its feudalistic control over the people and had to turn to Western liberal nations for support. Their embrace of liberal and democratic values might perhaps be merely a means to an end.
The Tibetan leaders’ campaign would not have gotten far had the Sino-Tibetan conflict been framed correctly as a tussle between a feudal theocracy and a Communist regime over who has authority to oppress the Tibetan people. Sikyong Lobsang Sangay was right about one thing – if Communism is a repressive system, then its draconian laws have been felt for only 100 years. The tyranny of the Tibetan ruling elite that the Dalai Lama belongs to on the other hand has trodden on the Tibetan people for centuries.
However, it was not only Communist and Marxist principles to which the Dalai Lama was drawn. The Tibetan leader also personally admired Mao Zedong. In 1954, the Dalai Lama authored a poem to the Communist leader referring to him as a “cakravarti (universal monarch) born out of boundless fine merits” iii. In essence, the Dalai Lama regarded Mao as the secular counterpart of a Buddha, which is extremely high praise indeed.
The Dalai Lama’s poem to Mao Zedong praising him for ‘liberating’ Tibet.
Click to enlarge.
In sharp contrast, Western nations on which the Dalai Lama has depended for the survival of the Tibetan cause for the past 60 years and whom the Dalai Lama today refers to as friends and allies, were adjudged in the same poem as, “Our foe, the blood-thirsty imperialists, are poisonous snakes, and messengers of the devil furtively crawling”. Some observers may insist that the Dalai Lama was under duress when he wrote the poem praising Mao. However, this places the Dalai Lama at risk of being accused of having no particular loyalties, and as someone that would bend whichever way suits his purpose.
While there is no question that Buddhism has been an inextricable part of Tibetan culture, it is also indisputable that religion has been leveraged for centuries as a tool to keep the ruling elite in power. Before the 1959 Chinese invasion of Tibet that led to the Dalai Lama’s escape to India, Tibet was a feudal theocracy where the majority of its people languished in serfdom and slavery. The tool of that oppression was none other than Buddhism or, more accurately, Buddhism as wielded by the Tibetan ruling class, at the top of which was the Dalai Lama himself. The political author Michael Parenti wrote in his 2003 essay “Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth” that:
“The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation — including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation — were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs.”
The Dalai Lama admired Mao Zedong and regarded the architect of the disastrous Cultural Revolution, as a father.
The Dalai Lama’s Tibet was surely not the Shangrila that the West has fantasized.
Convincing the world that the Sino-Tibetan conflict is a battle between Buddhism represented by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, and Communism, as represented by the Chinese government, has been a supremely deft maneuver by the Tibetan leadership. It glosses over the Tibetan people’s brutally forced servitude under the country’s leadership; it sidesteps the fact that there is not a single true liberal element in the CTA’s governance behind its façade of democracy (the CTA remains a single-party government that does not tolerate opposition and the Dalai Lama’s word is still arbitrary law that overrides even the Tibetan Constitution); and it ignores the fact that the Tibetan leadership uses Buddhism as a weapon much the same way that medieval Popes wielded Christianity to enforce the supremacy of spiritual authority over temporal power and even the law. The religious apartheid that the Dalai Lama and CTA imposed on Dorje Shugden Buddhists is one apt example.
In truth, the Dalai Lama and his government are neither duty nor honor-bound to Buddhism, neither to Capitalism nor indeed to Democracy, Marxism and Socialism. Neither are they loyal to the principles of Communism or any other “ism”. The only thing that steers the Tibetan leadership is whatever opportunity they can muster to keep mesmerizing the world populace and keep the Dalai Lama and Lobsang Sangay in power. And herein lies the paradox and one of the biggest miscalculations by the people of the Western liberal world. In their zest to oppose Communism, they have provided all the necessary means and justifications for the latest ruler from a line of theocrats to remain in power.
In fact, in the modern-day scenario, there is little significant difference between a Marxist-Communist regime and a Capitalist-Democratic government that justifies the condemnation of China. The Communist government is shaped by Party ideology while the interests of big corporates steer policies of the so-called Democratic government. In both cases, it is not the interests of the people that are served primarily.
Nevertheless, both Communism and Democracy have certain built-in checks and balances. The Communist leader is accountable to his Party. The head of the Democratic nation has to be watchful of Opposition parties who act as watchdogs making sure that the government does not stray too much out of line.
The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, has no such encumbrances. No other leader of State today comes close to wielding the same amount of whimsical power over his people as the Dalai Lama does. Yet the lord of what was a very brutal regime has somehow bewitched the world into regarding him as the personification of peace and morality. Since 1959 when the Dalai Lama burst into the world scene, there have been 12 different US Presidents, 5 changes of guard in the now-defunct Soviet Union followed by 2 different Russian Presidents, 15 Indian Prime Ministers and even China has seen 6 changes to its ‘absolute leadership’ in that period. And all that time, the Dalai Lama has remained in power unelected, unchallenged and unaccountable. Having successfully sold the world the idea that he is the merely a “simple Buddhist monk” who is the supreme sentinel of Shangrila, he continues to rule with an iron fist of an autocrat. Publicly, this immense and hard power is cloaked by the soft image of Buddhism. The reality is somewhat different.
Tibetan Buddhism lies severely fractured today courtesy of a series of conflicts instigated by the Dalai Lama to keep the Tibetan people divided and throw their attention away from the failure of his governance. The Two Karmapa Controversy and the Dorje Shugden Conflict are two that continue to ravage the fabric of Tibetan Buddhist communities worldwide. The Dalai Lama likes to quote the Buddha’s teachings that state among other things that nothing is permanent. This sadly is true, especially of his allegiance and steadfastness to any political ideology, system, philosophy and movement apart from his own.
- i. https://journeyonline.com.au/queensland-synod-news/dalai-lama-praises-aspects-of-communism-and-marxism
- ii. https://www.newsweek.com/i-am-marxist-says-dalai-lama-299598
- iii. https://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/the-controversy/my-friend-mao/
