Multiple modernities and the Tibetan diaspora

Abstract

In response to Chinese claims that Tibet has been liberated from feudal power structures and is undergoing a process of modernization, members of Tibet’s Government‐in‐Exile are developing a discourse of Tibetan modernity to counter China’s version. For the Dalai Lama, Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives Geshe Lhakdor, and Prime Minister of Tibet’s Government‐in‐Exile Samdhong Rinpoche, ‘modernity’ is not just a triumph of innovation over tradition. As the government of Tibet’s Government‐in‐Exile cannot exert itself within the Chinese borders that now contain Tibet, the discourse is intimately linked to the diasporic migration of Tibetans into countries such as India, Nepal and Bhutan. This modernization is part of a broad cultural survival strategy in which the main actors must alter tradition in order to preserve it.

Keywords:

• Exile
• multiple modernities
• diaspora
• Tibet

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bill Mihalopoulos, Andrea M. Pinkney, Rajesh Rai and Chitra Sankaran for suggestions with this article.

Notes

1. In ‘Multiple Modernities’ (2000), the introductory essay to a collection of essays popularizing this concept, S.N. Eisenstadt argues that the plural notion of modernity goes against the ‘classical’ theories of modernization that drew on the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber and which held sway through the 1950s. Until the Second World War historical conditions supported a unified conception of modernity in which ‘the cultural program of modernity … developed in modern Europe … and would ultimately take over in all modernizing and modern societies’ (p. 1), but then, Eisenstadt argues, things changed: ‘the actual developments in modernizing societies have refuted the homogenizing and hegemonic assumptions of this Western program of modernity’ (p. 1). Calling attention to patterns which were ‘distinctively modern, though greatly influenced by specific cultural premises, traditions, and historical experiences’, these forms of modernization ‘developed distinctly modern dynamics and modes of interpretation, for which the original Western project constituted the crucial (and usually ambivalent) reference point’ (p. 1). Even though many of the defining features of what we call ‘modernity’ arose in Europe, the modernities that developed in non‐Western societies have ‘articulated strong anti‐Western or even antimodern themes’, and so Eisenstadt and other proponents of multiple modernities believe that the story of modernity is best told as a ‘continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs’ (p. 2). Eisenstadt sees this project as a conscious effort carried out ‘by specific social actors in close connection with social, political, and intellectual activists’ (p. 2), along with various social movements and programs that are not necessarily aligned in their specific goals.

The project of ‘multiple modernities’ is an attempt to recognize forms of modernization as adaptations to particular conditions without assuming at the outset that Western, European modernity is the only measure of what modernity might be. Nilüfer Göle, in ‘Snapshots of Islamic Modernities,’ makes this point explicitly: ‘… I will try to highlight some of the patterns that carry a potentiality through which modernity is not simply rejected or readopted but critically and creatively reappropriated by new religious discursive and social practices in non‐Western contexts’ (2000, p. 93).

2. Although ethnic Tibetan populations have a considerable presence in other Chinese provinces, ‘Tibet’ in this paper shall refer to the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).

3. Warren Smith cites a letter from the former abbot of Gyantse monastery and governor of the Gyantse district Thupten Nyenjik that was sent to The Statesmen newspaper in New Delhi, the Indian and Pakistan premiers, and to President Eisenhower and other officials in the USA: ‘To us Tibetans the phrase the ‘liberation of Tibet,’ in its moral and spiritual implications, is viewed as deadly mockery. The country of a free people was invaded and occupied under the pretext of Liberation. Liberation from whom and what? Ours was a happy country with a solvent government and a contented people till the Chinese invasion in 1950 since when we have been so exploited that we have been reduced to a state of intellectual, spiritual, and economic bankruptcy’ (Smith 1996, p. 410).

The letter, dated 20 July 1956, also mentioned the bombing of temples, the importation of ‘large numbers of Chinese settlers’ and the plan – attributed to Mao Tse Tung – to increase the population from ‘two–three million’ to over ten million. To Thupten Nyenjik, ‘this can only mean genocide, the complete disappearance of an ancient culture and people through the importation of Chinese on a gigantic scale. Such is the meaning of Chinese autonomy for Tibet’ (411).

As Buruma (2008) points out, more than population is at stake: ‘The Chinese have exported their version of modern development to Tibet not only in terms of architecture and infrastructure, but also people – wave after wave of them: businessmen from Sichuan, prostitutes from Hunan, technocrats from Beijing, party officials from Shanghai and shopkeepers from Yunnan. The majority of Lhasa’s population today is no longer Tibetan. Most people in rural areas are Tibetan, but their way of life is not likely to survive Chinese modernization any more than the Apaches’ way of life survived in the United States.’

4. BBC, ‘Tibetan People “Put Through Hell”’, 9 March 2009. In this report, the Dalai Lama reiterates his complaint that, owing to sinicization policies, Tibet’s religion, culture, language and identity were ‘nearing extinction’.

5. See Buruma (2008): ‘The Chinese have much to answer for, but the fate of Tibet is not just a matter of semi‐colonial oppression. It is often forgotten that many Tibetans, especially educated people in the larger towns, were so keen to modernize their society in the mid‐twentieth century that they saw the Chinese Communists as allies against rule by holy monks and serf‐owning landlords. In the early 1950s, the young Dalai Lama himself was impressed by Chinese reforms and wrote poems praising Chairman Mao.’

6. In Education in Tibet: Policy and Practice since 1950 Catriona Bass traces the development of China’s educational policies and practices from 1950 to 1998. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) ‘all aspects of Tibetan culture in the curriculum came under attack, including the Tibetan language’ (1998, p. 3).

7. Grunfeld includes an appendix on the population of Tibet with estimates between 50,000 and 12,000,000 Han Chinese civilians within the Tibet Autonomous Region. Andrew M. Fischer agrees that ‘it is difficult to come to an exact agreement about the numbers of Chinese in Tibetan areas’ but adds that ‘it is as much a political battle over the representation of the crisis as a more straightforward statistical procedure’ (Blondeau and Buffetrille 2008, pp. 145–146). Fischer points out that many Han Chinese leave Tibet in the winter and that tourism inflates the Han population during the summer months. Even if the Han population is small in the rural parts of Tibet, Fischer believes an accurate ‘appraisal of the Han population of the TAR’ would probably surpass ‘50 percent in the cities year around’ (p. 151).

8. The Office of the Planning Commission projects this number based on its 2007 estimates, figuring in average estimated population growth.

9. Bass writes that the thirteenth Dalai Lama attempted unsuccessfully to introduce ‘a modern secular education system in Tibet’, but ‘these foreign secular establishments had faced considerable opposition from traditional conservative groups among the clergy and aristocracy’ since ‘it was believed that the schools would be vehicles for introducing Western ideas into Tibet, and would undermine Tibet’s cultural and religious traditions’ (1998, p. 2).

10. From this point onward, ‘Tibetan’ shall refer to Tibetans‐in‐exile unless otherwise stated.

11. This means that he was found to be, at age five, the reincarnation of a highly realized teacher and that he was the ‘5th Samdhung Rinpoche’ tells us that this succession of rebirths had gone back five generations. The current Dalai Lama, the fourteenth, is thus the reincarnation of the thirteenth, and so on.

12. This language carries over from another document, from the ‘Charter of Tibetans in Exile’, which is described in this way by the web page of the Office of the Dalai Lama: ‘In 1963 His Holiness presented a draft democratic constitution for Tibet that was followed by a number of reforms to democratize our administrative set‐up. The new democratic constitution promulgated as a result of this reform was named “The Charter of Tibetans in Exile”. The charter enshrines freedom of speech, belief, assembly and movement. It also provides detailed guidelines on the functioning of the Tibetan government with respect to those living in exile’ (A Brief Biography, nd).

13. For a modern translation of the ‘mind‐training’ genre of Buddhist teachings, see Jinpa (2005). Jinpa’s introduction provides an in‐depth historical framework for understanding the cognitive psychology of a thousand years ago. A recognized reincarnation of this sort is usually called a ‘tulku’ and that word is sometimes included as a formal title.

14. It would be instructive to compare the Tibetan and English versions of this document to see whether modernization is characterized in roughly the same ways for English and Tibetan speakers.

15. Goldstein writes that the thirteenth Dalai Lama’s attempts at self‐modernization ‘sent shock waves through the monastic and aristocratic elites who held most of the land in Tibet in the form of feudal estates’ (1997, p. 35). New tax levies were required ‘to support military buildup’ and educational practices were felt to be a threat to Buddhism. Conservative officials convinced the Dalai Lama that modernization was a threat to Buddhism and to his authority. Goldstein presents this resistance to modernization as a complete disaster: ‘By the mid‐1920s their efforts had succeeded, and in one of the pivotal policy decisions of modern Tibetan history, the thirteenth Dalai Lama gutted the heart of the reform program by demoting the entire group of promodernization officers and closing the English school. Overnight, Tibet lost its best chance to create a modern polity capable of coordinating international support for its independent status and defending its territory.’

16. See Lopez (2007) for the fullest account of the ‘mad monk’.

17. See for example, Begley (2007) and Hayward and Varela (1987). For more academic exchanges between university researchers and the Dalai Lama, see Harrington and Zajonc (2006).

18. When Geshe Tsewang Dorje, who is currently the gekü (chief disciplinarian; akin to Dean or Provost) at Sera Je Monastery in Bylakuppe, Indian, proposed to the Dalai Lama to start a small monastic school in his home village of Saboo, Ladakh, the Dalai Lama strongly urged Geshe Dorje to mix secular and religious education. From an appeal letter sent out by the school‐building project: ‘There are plans for a secular school to educate children who otherwise would not have access to education; the Ngari Institute will also train monks and nuns, but the monastic education will be combined with social service (e.g. teaching); and, finally, the institute will create avenues for inter‐cultural exchange based on educational sharing rather than mere tourism‐based consumption.’