I got myself into hot water again the other day. We were at
a meeting at Harvard - about 10 Tibetans, four Chinese scholars
and a few of us pale skins, arranged by the redoubtable lawyer
Lobsang Sangay and his colleague, the sociologist Hu Xiaojiang,
who once spent a year doing research in Lhasa. As the sessions
wore on and the interventions became more heated, my mouth switched
to overdrive, and was soon attracting public offers of physical
violence from distinguished speakers belonging to the exile
community. This was something of an achievement, I guess, since
Tibetan leaders rather pride themselves on their pacifism. Luckily
for me, they were too polite to carry through on the offers,
and my jaw is still intact. But it was pretty clear I had gone
too far, and I had to back down rapidly.
It was all about two innocent-looking words, “we”
and “Tibetans”. I am one of those who thinks it’s
childish when a Chinese leader declares that “the Chinese
people are all happy”. So how many Chinese has that leader
met, I wonder, and how did he (it’s always a he) measure
their happiness? Did he use a sliderule to calibrate their smiles?
Has he set a number of minutes per month a person can cry before
he or she counts as unhappy? And how did he know their happiness
was a result of his policies? This would be like you assuming
that, because I am English, I am gentlemanly and polite, which
sadly I am not. It seems to me about as intellectually honest
as the Indian journalist three months ago who wrote that Tibetans
no longer respected the Dalai Lama; he hadn’t seen photographs
of the Dalai Lama during a visit to Tibet, and chose to overlook
the fact that the display of such photographs is banned.
One of the Tibetan speakers the day that I went into verbal
warp mode had been using a similar manoeuvre. He hadn’t
repeated that old favourite of the exiles the claim that all
Tibetans were happy before the Chinese came. That one has rather
gone out of fashion in the last few years; it couldn’t
be measured, it could be easily disproved, and it shifted the
debate from whether Tibetans should run their own lives to whether
they should feel good. He had another idea - that Tibetans believe
in universal enlightenment, and want to help all others achieve
nirvana too. I certainly think the Dalai Lama believes in that,
and carries it out as best one can, and I know some Tibetans
who emulate that too. But it’s unlikely to be true of
all of them. It would be like saying that all Tibetans are Buddhists,
or all Tibetans are religious, or all Tibetans are nice, or
smart, or beautiful. Well, a lot are all of those, as far as
I can tell. But I haven’t met all of them, and nor has
anyone else, let alone checked their commitment to universal
enlightenment. So it’s pretty hard to substantiate. And
because it is basically impossible, it makes the speakers sound
stupid.
So my worry about this kind of talk isn’t about being
picky about statistics, which really don’t matter all
that much. It isn’t even because making blanket statements
is the same as what academics call essentializing, which is
what result in racism. My concern is strategic. It’s my
guess that, if Tibetan leaders say such things, serious people
in their audiences will laugh at them. These listeners might
not do it openly, and they might not even be aware of it themselves.
They will put their brains into sleep mode and think, how quaint,
how exotic, how positively charming these people are. But, if
these listeners have the power to influence real-world decisions,
they would be unlikely, in my guess, to think “I must
make sure that the political process of running Tibet is handed
over to those people” because they won’t be inclined
to think of them as serious, pragmatic types who are likely
to be good at running countries. They’ll think of them,
understandably, as dreamers. That’s a shame, because some
Tibetan leaders are serious, pragmatic, super-smart types and
likely to be better than most at running their own country.
And my guess is that this may be a reason why Tibetans don’t
always get support from hard-thinking, more influential people
in other communities - China, to name but one. They tend instead
to attract the type that I call softies, like me, who, frankly,
don’t count for much. So I just think that blanket talk
about “we Tibetans” is not a smart manoeuvre.
I take the same view of saying that Tibetans are non-violent.
This is usually presented as if Tibetans have become religiously
or constitutionally incapable of doing nasty things. But the
reason non-violence is worth other politicians in the world
taking note of is not its moral sententiousness, which politicians
don’t give a damn for, but because it is an intelligent
political choice something certain Tibetans have decided to
do sometimes for coherent reasons, despite their option and
wish to go out and beat up others, a point which was eloquently
made at the meeting by Sonam Tenzin, the former archaeologist
from Lhasa. Tibetans like him describing the exercise of an
intelligent choice, because they can see it produces better
results, sound and look intelligent; Tibetans being innately
peaceful only look charming and politically irrelevant. Which
is another reason why I think the Dalai Lama is so impressive
for never saying that he rules out violence or is incapable
of doing it? As he always says, he chooses not to use it in
particular cases because he has considered the long-term consequences
and rates it as ineffective. That’s a smart move when
you are facing the world’s largest army, not a retreat
into spiritual vacuity.
What really got me into trouble at the meeting, though, was
my overcharged response o a more specific claim — that
Tibetans had always supported the Dalai Lamas over the 400 years
or so since they became the effective rulers of Tibet. Actually
it’s probably true that there has been more support for
him than most rulers of most countries, or at least that seems
to be the case now. But it isn’t the case that there has
been no opposition. We know this from the aggressive but legitimate
activities of those westerners who followed Kelsang Gyatso in
the campaign on the Shugden issue in the 1990s, from the murders
in Dharamsala in 1997, from the anonymous “Mongoose Canine”
circular in 1995, the occasional diatribes from Shamar Rinpoche
in the Hindustan Times, the disputes with the 13 settlements
in the 1960s, and so on. We can also deduce that there was opposition
in earlier history because of the fact that several of the Dalai
Lamas, about a third, never lived beyond their teens and are
widely considered to have been murdered: most historians guess
that the elite around the Regents at the time were not quite
as non-violent as some of their successors aim to be. There
were at least two attempts to kill the 13th, if I remember rightly.
Lobsang Sangay has pointed out to me that some of these coups
might have been stirred up by Ambans, but even so, it means
that nasty business was prevalent around the Dalai Lamas. And
that had to indicate opposition of some sort.
Now I happen to think that opposition is a healthy thing in
a democratic society, and an inevitable thing in other types
of society and that healthy political process is all about admitting
difference and finding ways to include it. Denying its existence,
even as a flourish of rhetoric, doesn’t seem smart to
me because it makes the leaders who use such tropes look like
they regard their Tibetan constituents as cuddly teddy bears
who all think the same. And it makes those leaders look to outsiders
as if they don’t have or wish to deal with serious issues
or negotiate difficult compromises, neither of which is true.
It also has distinct, presumably unintended, resonances with
totalitarian rhetoric.
As it happens, I drastically overstated my case at the Harvard
meeting and had to beat a full retreat with my tail between
my legs. But still, I think the general point is worth airing:
difference among peoples is better admitted because that suggest
that ways exist for it to be discussed and to be included, and
because dealing with difference looks to others like evidence
of skilful political ability. So, while I am being simmered
in hot water, I propose a toast to difference, variety and an
end to blanket statements. Now, like all Englishmen, I am going
home to keep quiet, drink tea, eat fish and chips, and be like
the polite gentleman I really ought to be...
