This week, the world looked on with a mix of admiration and skepticism as the Chinese government rushed troops to its outposts throughout Tibet to suppress what it claimed was a revolt instigated by the absentee Buddhist leader it had forced to flee a half-century ago. The admiration was for this unique individual who could continue to inspire the allegiance of people to whom he had been denied access for all these years. The skepticism was that Beijing's leaders could expect the world to believe that he had been able to engineer these revolts in widely scattered areas over which they have exerted constant rigid security controls throughout this period.
Moreover, this alleged absentee instigator was threatening to retire as their leader if the protesters persisted in using violence.
If the present chapter of this rich Orwellian concoction finally includes a meeting between the Buddhist leader and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, it will be a tribute to the tenacious and skillful statesmanship of the Dalai Lama matched by the stubborn loyalty of his supporters. Above all, it will be a vivid manifestation of the unique power of this personality whose honorific title Kundun (meaning presence) is, in this case, a lasting one. This has meant moving beyond accepting ritualistic obeisance from his supporters to taking active measures to ensure both the welfare of his adherents and the beliefs that bind them to him and to each other.
Early in this saga, the Dalai Lama had sent his elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, to New York in October, 1959, to petition the United Nations to pass a resolution supporting the independence of his nation. The international attention and the expressions of support that his flight into exile from his occupied capital had received that spring had given the Dalai Lama reason to hope for such recognition. His brother, however, soon learned the limitations of these commitments as he made his rounds seeking the support of delegations that could be expected to favour his country's cause. Many in the “Free World” refused to support anything that recognized the independence of Tibet, fearing it might set an unwanted example for the colonial holdings they still maintained.
The Dalai Lama's primary champion, the United States, while not burdened with this colonial albatross, had Tibet's former, now absentee, landlord Chiang Kai-shek, looking over its shoulder. Despite this, Washington eventually recognized Tibet's right of “self-determination.” Although this was significant – it was code for “independence” – it remains an unfulfilled pledge.
The Dalai Lama learned two lessons. He recognized that Tibet's traditional system of governing was ill-equipped to deal with the demands of the modern world. He also noted that the countries whose support Tibet hoped to attain were open societies with representative governments, albeit with frequent imperfections. He set out, therefore, to draft a like system that would both prepare his people who were with him in exile to carry out such self-governance in their search for a return to their homeland, and provide a model for those who had been left behind under Chinese control.
The rebel movement that was conducting resistance operations against the Chinese when he was forced to flee from Lhasa in 1959 provided an active training ground for the beginnings of this kind of open, more representative government. When the rebel fighters and their families and supporters fled to India, they continued this collective self-rule in their resettlement camps in India. While Gyalo Thondup was in New York soliciting international support for the Tibetan cause, the rebels were holding meetings to discuss their own futures and that of the Dalai Lama and their now completely occupied country. Thirteen persons were elected representing the geographical and tribal areas in eastern Tibet, from where most of the resistance fighters came, and from central and western Tibet. They were to be a channel of communication to the Dalai Lama, with whom they met that winter, and were to continue transmitting their needs and desires to him at the base the Indian government had granted him in northern India. In this way, a representative government in exile was created and, on the second anniversary of the Tibetan revolt, the Dalai Lama announced it was time to draft a new constitution. It would embody the principles of representative self-government he would serve.
Three months later, the blueprint was ready and it has been functioning ever since.
In London, a member of the British Foreign Office derided the constitution drafting and the establishment of a representative refugee government as “romantic moonshine,” but almost a half-century later, it continues to serve not only as an organizational linchpin of the diaspora but as a model of what the autonomous government the Dalai Lama is asking the Chinese to grant his people could deliver. The vitality of these values was demonstrated this week, as the monks and people of Lhasa's three main monasteries, as well as the one at Labrang on the Chinese-Tibetan border, who had welcomed Mao's troops in 1950, spontaneously revolted against their current successors.
Although it may well be the fear of spoiling China's long-sought role as hosts of the Olympic Games, rather than a sudden conversion to the equity of the Tibetans' position, that has caused Mr. Wen to agree to meet with the Tibetan leader, it is unlikely that it would have become a possibility without this half-century of mutual loyalty and service between an unusually gifted political leader and his dedicated supporters.
John Kenneth Knaus, author of Orphans of the Cold War , spent four decades as a CIA operations officer, providing covertassistance to the Tibetan resistance
