Limping to the Centre of the World. A Journey to Mount Kailas.

INTO TIBET

I do have a sense of moral unease at being on Tibetan soil, especially as I have friends who wear ‘Free Tibet’ badges, and I agree with their sentiments. Another friend, a Tibetan American, cannot enter his motherland. Sadly, slogans are mere mantras against bullets and jackboots. China’s interest in Tibet dates back to the early days of the Manchu dynasty (1644-1911) when it sent in a huge army to free that country from the Tartars. Although the then Dalai Lama remained the ruler of Tibet, the Chinese appointed an Amban (High Commissioner) to Lhasa to ‘advise’ the Dalai Lama in political affairs. Centuries of invasions and internecine warfare left little time for an Indian army to invade another country, until the British came. But thirty years after Napoleon’s debacle in Russia, a Dogra General, Zorawar Singh, commanding the Maharaja of Jammu Gulab Singh’s army, marched into Tibet. I may now even be sitting at the very pass that his 6,000 troops poured through down to the plain. Unfortunately, news of Napoleon’s defeat by General Winter had not yet reached Zorawar Singh. He had some early successes and then Tibet’s General Winter, and the high altitude, decimated the invading army. The Sino-Tibetan army had 12,000 men, warmly clad, who didn’t have to lift even a weapon, as Zorawar’s men retreated and died in the freezing weather. Zorawar was also killed in the final battle. Yet, strangely, China did nothing when the British, uneasy with a mysterious kingdom directly north of India and growing paranoid in their ‘great game’ with Russia, sent an expedition (army) under the command of Colonel Sir Francis Younghusband to invade Tibet. The invasion and conquest had taken place in the year of the Wood-Dragon and had been predicted many years previously by an oracle. The Tibetan army, in heavy armour, with bows and arrows and muzzle-loaders, was no match for the Indian soldiers armed with Gatling guns. Photographs show robed monks too, fumbling with antique rifles and hoes, dying in the hail of bullets. Younghusband reached Lhasa in August 1904—the Dalai Lama fled to Mongolia—and concluded a generous treaty (the 1914 Simla Agreement) with the regent Ganden Rimpoche. According to the treaty, Tibet recognized Sikkim as a British protectorate, agreed to free trade with India and, in Clause 9, stated in no uncertain terms: ‘Without the consent of Great Britain no Tibetan territory shall be sold, leased or mortgaged to any foreign power whatsoever; no foreign power whatsoever shall be permitted to concern itself with the administration of the government of Tibet, or any other affairs therewith connected; no foreign power shall be permitted to send either official or non-official persons to Tibet – no matter in what pursuit they may be engaged – to assist in the conduct Tibetan affairs; no foreign power shall be permitted to construct roads or railways or erect telegraphs or open mines anywhere in Tibet…’
       Younghusband then returned to India, but as a changed man for the rest of his life. In Lhasa, it is said, a strong impulse made him climb a hill above the city and he sat on a boulder. There, he had a very powerful spiritual experience and entered a state of mystical ecstasy, that serenity seeped into his very soul. He felt himself enter a state of nothingness.
       The British closed the passes and any traveller needed the government’s permission to enter Tibet. This was always denied and even the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, a friend of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, couldn’t get into Tibet from India. Tibet once again became the forbidden and unreachable kingdom.
       Three months after the birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Radio Peking announced on New Year’s Day 1950 that ‘the tasks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for 1950 are to liberate Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet.’ Tibet had only 8,500 troops to guard its long border with China and, knowing it didn’t stand a chance against the PLA, appealed to Nepal, Great Britain and the United States for support. The Dalai Lama also appealed for help to the only country which had close ties with Tibet – India. Tibet and a colonised India had signed the 1914 Simla agreement. When the sun sets, empires leave behind the legacy of their arrogance (‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works ye Mighty and despair.’) for those colonised nations to disentangle themselves from imperial machinations. Our then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was required to deny Chinese suzerainty over Tibet until China recognized Tibet’s autonomy. Nehru spoke of this suzerainty as ‘vague and shadowy’ which signalled to China that India accepted China’s claim over Tibet. China in turn warned India that receiving ‘an illegal delegation (from Tibet)’ would mean ‘entertaining hostile intentions against the Chinese People’s Republic.
       So, on 9 September 1950 three thousand soldiers of the 18th Route army marched into Lhasa, followed by another 30,000 two months later. The Tibetans lined the streets to greet the invaders by spitting and clapping, their ancient practice for driving out evil, and children threw stones. To no avail. In 1951, the PLA forced the Tibetan representative of the Dalai Lama to sign an agreement affirming China’s sovereignity over Tibet. (Neither the PRC nor the Republic of China have ever proven this sovereignity).
       During the 1950s, the Chinese cracked down on the lamas, who realized that their political power would be broken by Communist rule. According to the Chinese version of Tibetan history, over 700,000 Tibetans, out of a population of 1.2 million, were serfs who were treated very harshly. Those who tried to escape their serfdom were imprisoned, tortured and executed. The Dalai Lama denies this brutal past, though he admits that it was a feudal society in which some head lamas were corrupt and dictatorial. For the most part, he says, the Tibetans were a happy race.
       In 1959, China then created the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) which included the Tibetan plateau, the highest region on earth, and Lhasa to be administered jointly by Tibet and the PRC. The Tibetan government in exile insists TAR is an independent nation while the PRC maintains it’s a self-governing region within China.
       In the same year, the PRC treated the Dalai Lama with ‘disrespect’ and, by establishing communes, sparked a rebellion against their rule. It began first as a riot in Lhasa, and then spread into open rebellion. The marriage between Tibet and the PRC was immediately dissolved.
       ‘The following order is hereby proclaimed. Most of the kalons of the Tibet local government and the upper-strata reactionary clique colluded with imperialism, assembled rebellious bandits, carried out rebellion, ravaged the people, put the dalai lama under duress carried out rebellion, tore up the Seventeen-Point Agreement on Measures for the peaceful liberation of Tibet and on the night of March 19 directed the Tibetan local army and rebellious clements to launch a general offensive against the People’s Liberation Army garrison in Lhasa. Such acts which betray the motherland and disrupt unification are not allowed by law. In order to safeguard the unification of the country and national unity, the decision is that from this day the Tibet local government is dissolved.’ -Order of the State Council of the Chinese People’s Republic, March 28, 1959
       The uprising was also fuelled by the CIA. About 1,000 rebels, between 1962 and 1964, were flown to the U.S. and trained in intelligence gathering and handling armaments at Camp Halle in Colorado. When they returned to fight the good fight, they were each given one pistol! Later on, the CIA financed a training base in Mustang on the Nepal border and spent around $2 million a year on the operation, providing the rebels with sophisticated weapons and communication systems. India was a reluctant partner in this programme and did not want any trouble on the border with China. However, in 1969, just before Henry Kissinger’s visit to China, the Americans pulled out the rug from beneath the rebels. (Now where have I heard that story before?) By this time the Dalai Lama had fled to India and set up a Tibetan government-in-exile at Dharamsala.
       The PRC broke up the monastic estates and, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards, Tibetans among them, destroyed thousands of monasteries and thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns were imprisoned or killed. The number of Tibetans killed during the Cultural Revolution varies between 200,000 and 400,000. In their later census, the PRC claimed that 300,000 Tibetans were ‘missing’. Today the population of Greater Tibet (and I have no idea what this is) is 7.3 million, of which 5 million are ethnic Tibetans. There have been some economic reforms in Tibet but, like the rest of the PRC, no political ones. Since 1950, the PRC claims, the GDP of Tibet has risen 30 per cent; from no roads there are now 22,500 miles of roads; infant mortality has dropped from 43 per cent to 0.6 per cent; life expectancy has risen from thirty-five to sixty-seven; and there are twenty-five scientific research institutes against none in 1950. Since 1980, 300 million Renminbi has been spent maintaining and protecting Tibetan monasteries.
       Almost immediately after the 1950 invasion, the Chinese built a highway to Lhasa from Chengdu(from where?), and then roads to the Indian (I’m looking at one), Nepali and Pakistani borders. Warmed by the sun and still waiting at the pass, I reflect that Tibet will never be free.

LATER IN TAKALAKOT

After dinner, comforted by our filled bellies, Menon and I decide to explore Takalakot. There’s more to explore, at least a longer stretch of this road, when we turn left, passing the sizzling bar-b-q. I feel as if I’ve landed in the ‘Twilight Zone’, an old science fiction television series. We’re in that black and white age – the black of the dusty plain and silhouetted mountains in the distance, and the white of this place. I can’t call it a village, it doesn’t have that enclosed feel of neighbourliness, nor a town as it’s not big enough. It’s just been beamed down here, a long chain of shops dropped with a thud from a passing spaceship. The sky is still tantalising clear and reachable, a space ship would have no problem navigating down.
       Taklakot is skinny; it only has length, with scarcely any breadth at all, and seems only frontages, like a Universal studios movie set. The shops are dimly lit, throwing faint patches of light onto the pavement. Every block or so, the continuous row is punctuated by gates, similar to the entrance to our guest house, that open on to inner courtyards. There are a few PLA soldiers wandering around or sitting in restaurants, starring out into the void, no doubt dreaming of their distance homes. Chinese women, with overweight kids, straggle past us, avoiding us pointedly. Tibetans wander too, aimless as ghosts searching for a final resting place. They’re shabbily dressed for the most part, not in traditional costumes but western clothes, and the women wear white nose/mouth masks as a protection against the swirling dust. I intend to buy one too, the wind and the dust are constant and my nostrils feel blocked. The brightest lit shops are hair-dressing salons. As we walk, I start counting them. By the end of the road I’ve counted eight. Why eight for a visible population that couldn’t number even five hundred? They’re open to the street, cheerfully furnished, with painted walls and wall-hangings, and stylish reclining chairs and wash basins. Pretty women in their early twenties, like nightingales in an open cage, await their customers, gossiping or flicking through glossy magazines. They look Chinese, or even fair Nepali, and they all wear brand-name jeans and silken tops, chic as any fashion-conscious woman in Manhattan. Only a couple of the salons are patronised by the PLA, at the moment, and at least there’s laughter between the soldiers and the women fussing over them. In every one of the establishments are narrow stairs at the rear, leading up to the floor above. And from above come the faint strains of music.
       Menon has been more observant. ‘You can get massages here too,’ he says with joy in his voice. ‘I must find out how much they cost and get one. I need it, my muscles still ache. What about you?’
       ‘You check them out first,’ and add with no sense of prudery but amusement. ‘But I doubt the massages are for those kinds of muscles.’
       ‘There must be a large PLA garrison here,’ the admiral conjectures. ‘Though there aren’t that many of them on the street. They’re probably somewhere behind those hills when we Yatris are in town.’
       London, New York, Paris, every city has ‘massage’ parlours but I’m sure in proportion to their inhabitants they can’t match Taklakot. Soldiers, many as Menon guesses, need to be entertained, rocks need to be released. The saloons couldn’t be patronised by the Tibetan men, they’re hanging around the street wearing crumpled sports jackets and baggy trousers or else playing pool on worn-out tables in the open, off the pavement. They look as if they don’t have a Yuan between them. And while I’m counting as we walk, I also notice five discotheques, always above the saloons with frosted windows and shadowy figures behind them. There are two side streets of not more than a 100 metres long. The one that runs east is a dirt lane with mud and stone homes, the simple architecture similar to the homes in the Kumaon. The lane is cluttered with garbage and narrow streams of black sewage, Tibetan children in very grubby clothes play in the lane with a bicycle tyre. The children run out to say ‘Hello’ in English, giggling, and I hand out the boiled sweets stuffed in my pocket, wishing I had my biscuits as I don’t want to rot their teeth. The street to the west is cemented, wide as the one we’re on too, and lined with brick and concrete buildings. At the end of it, they’re constructing a large one, four floors and a half block long.
       We wander in and out of the stores, the mini-departmental ones have the same clutter of consumer goods and, if they’d had the space, probably jammed in a couple of Land Cruisers and a truck to complete their inventory. I spoke too soon. In the next mini-department store there’s a massive, glittering red and chrome Kawasaki. Like the Land Cruisers it’s ideal for this menacing landscape which isn’t for the faint-hearted scooters or compacts. These mini-department stores all have Chinese women behind their counters. And they all have their televisions running, on mute or a low volume, showing Chinese programmes, of course. I’m told that these women, and their families, have come from all over China to populate Tibet. They’re as imported as their goods, and no doubt the cause of their sour miens. The other shops along this long mall are smaller, dimly lit, selling the basic items – fresh fruits, vegetables, rice, barley, flour - have Tibetan women sitting patiently on their stools waiting for customers. No counters in these shops. And even when we do enter to buy apples, they gaze past us as if we don’t exist until we hold out our purchases. Menon is a seasoned shopper, he knows how to bargain. I pay for whatever they ‘quote’ and this is done with a calculator. They punch out a number, Menon punches out his number. The price lies in-between. In the somewhat centre of this road, a pivotal point, is the sprawl of the China Agricultural Bank, where we’ll change our dollars. It’s very firmly shut, and barred, and there’s a sign in Chinese on the wall beside the entrance. It looks as if it opens from 8-12 each morning. Or so we presume. Further along, in one of the courtyards is the fresh vegetable market, closing down for the day, and in the next courtyard is the Indian market. The goods are ‘Made in India’ but there isn’t an Indian in sight, which is strange as I’ve met my fellow-countrymen in outlandish and unexpected places, from the banks of the Orinoco River (Menen’s Restaurant) and the Texas badlands to the Canadian backwoods. Towards the end of the main street, a third road leads west, cemented too, passes a large parade ground, with a reviewing stand, and ends at a four floor building, the possible barracks of the PLA. The main street also ends very abruptly here, even as it had begun, and a dirt road meanders into the darkness towards the mountains.
       We turn, and trudge back up. Menon looks up at one of the masts spiking the skyline to the south, his military senses alert. ‘That’s a missile guidance system, I’ve seen enough of those.’ The mast has three dishes, one below the other.
       ‘Where do you think their silos are located?’
       ‘In those hills.’ He sighs loudly. ‘I guess we’re the target for those missiles.’
       I’m not at all surprised, though I would not have recognised a missile guidance mast from a wireless communication one. Way back in 1950, the New York Times had reported on a massive influx of Chinese troops into Tibet and of a huge garrison near Lake Mansarovar. This probably explains why wandering pilgrims are barred from their parikrama of the lake. In 1954, after months of hostile negotiations, Jawaharlal Nehru signed a non-aggression pact on Tibet with the PRC. With the command of such a height we’ve had a dangling Damocles sword north of us for decades, and it’s been a constant threat. And yet, I remember back in school, when Chou en Lai, the PRC Prime Minister, visited India, we were taught to chant “China-India bhai, bhai.” That brotherly feeling ended abruptly in the 1962 war when all the passes between India and Tibet slammed shut. Maybe it’s because of India and China’s antiquity that we have grown tired of each other’s company over the millenniums. India exported Buddhism to China and, though we weren’t exactly friends in that first millennium A.D., we exchanged scholars who studied Sanskrit, Buddhism, mathematics, architecture, medicine, music, linguistics and science. Buddhism didn’t last long in China, a few centuries, as Confucius ousted it. An Indian scientist, Gautama Siddhartha, even became the president of the China’s Board of Astronomy in the eighth century. Chinese scholars such as Faxian, Xuanzang and Yi Ling travelled in India, between the fifth and seventh century A.D., to study Buddhism and the other subjects. At that time, China considered India the western kingdom, it being the middle one, but Faxan, because of his belief in Buddhism, on his return home referred to India as the ‘middle kingdom’, and China as a frontier country. No doubt this upset the insular Chinese. In Amartya Sen’s essay, he also mentions that the first printed book in the world, 868.A.D. was a Chinese translation of the Sanskrit treaties ‘Diamond Sutra’ which was for free distribution. No doubt exhausted by such intellectual exchanges, India and China had little contact in the second millennium.
       On our way back up the road, two cop cars, Land Cruisers marked with ‘Police’, cruise past us. We merit scarcely a glance from the uniforms, who are definitely Tibetan, and even two cars for this strip of a place seems excessive security.
       ‘You notice there are no beggars around,’ Menon remarks in a pleased tone of voice.
       ‘Probably begging’s against the law in China,’ I reply and look up at the pock-marked hill, barely visible now, and wonder how those cave dwellers earn a livelihood in this place.
       Apart from the shops there’s not much industry around. But at least, those who have some spare cash, gamble. There’s a game of dice on, off the pavement, behind some bushes. The dice are large as bricks and made of wood. The ‘table’ is L-shaped and large enough for the dice to roll down from the top of the vertical line of ‘L’, which has a gate operated by the croupier. He’s a young Tibetan, smiling at his suckers, wearing an open-necked shirt and jeans, with a folded, beaten-up leather jacket beside him. He looks foot-loose and fancy free, blown in with the wind, and has a few gamblers around him. The sides of the dice have Tibetan animals painted on them – a horse, leopard, yak, bird, bear, rabbit, deer, wolf. He places the dice above the gate and when he opens it, two dice tumble down onto the table, and the bet is that both will have the same animal face up. In this fading light, the animals are barely visible, the dice are well used indeed. Probably, loaded too. The stakes aren’t high, a few one Yuan notes lie on the table. As a high roller I delight the croupier by dropping a whole five yuan on the table. It’s big enough to swell the ranks of the gamblers and watchers who smile encouraging at me. Go for broke. I choose the discoloured leopard to bet on, probably an already extinct species. I haven’t gambled since I lost a week’s salary playing poker in a Canadian logging camp during my college days. The croupier loads the dice behind the gate, smiles and opens it. The dice roll down and crash against each other. A yak and a wolf come faces up. The money vanishes from the table as fast as the eye can follow the young man’s hand. No one’s going to get rich, or get poor, quick at this table, it’s just a way of passing time together, a brotherhood of losers finding solace in their conquered land.
       I sense the Chinese don’t actually see the Tibetans; the Tibetans look through the Chinese, as if they’re passing spirits in a nightmare. Through history, there must be the same sense of separateness, in any country, between the conqueror and the conquered. No conquest is ever a benign one, including that of Britain and India. We too lived separate lives and Indians suffered under colonial rule. If China killed a few hundred thousand Tibetans, under British rule between 12 and 29 million Indians were deliberately allowed to die during the 1877/78 famine. Under orders from the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, grain merchants exported 320,000 tons of grain to Europe during these years. We were also economically suppressed. In the eighteenth century an Indian labourer earned more than his counterpart in England. But between 1757 and 1947 there was no increase in India’s per capita income and we became a poor, third world country. Conquest is exploitation and enrichment for the conquerors. Still, there was an upside- we learned cricket, the English language and practice democracy.