Geopolitical Exotica, page 24
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[31] An example of this can be seen in Lonely Planet's (2002) introduction to Tibet: "Locked away in its Himalayan fortress, Tibet has long exercised a unique hold on the imagination of the West: 'Shangri-La,' 'the Land of Snows,' 'the Rooftop of the World,' Tibet is mysterious in a way that few other places are. Tibet's strategic importance, straddling the Himalayas between China and the Indian subcontinent, made it irresistible to China who invaded in 1950." No mention is made of the British imperial invasion to "open" Tibet.
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[32] Within the Orientalist frame of thinking, expertise in cultures of the Other lies with the imperialists, not the natives of the culture. Younghusband's mission had "scientific" staff consisting of surveyors, naturalists, geologists, anthropologists (Younghusband in Hayden 1927, vii); their military and scientific roles overlapped. For instance, Waddell was an authority on Tibetan Buddhism, a medical officer, as well as a collector of texts, plants, and birds. Waddell, along with Captain Walton, is credited with "discovering" the Lhasa poppy (see Fletcher 1975, xxi). Similarly, the blue poppy's scientific name is Meconopsis baileyi, after its "discoverer," Lieutenant Colonel F. M. Bailey; the wild sheep argali and Tibet antelope chiru are Ovis ammon hodgsoni and Pantholops hodgsoni after Brian Hodgson, the British resident at the Nepalese court. This practice reflects the view of the Orient as a passive object to be discovered and appropriated by the West. Tibetans (and maybe many non -Tibetans too) were of course familiar with the poppy. But it required a Western man to name it, taxonomize it in a "universal" scheme of things, and thus become its discoverer. Interestingly, in the movie The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), the eponymous villain learns how to distill a vicious poison from the "Black Hill poppy" of Tibet thanks to the papers of the Younghusband expedition, where the complete secret of the plant is meticulously laid down. In some instances scientific names of Tibetan flora and fauna are hybrids, such as Ovis ammon dalailamae przevalskii (1888) (named after the Dalai Lama and the Russian explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky) for one variant of argali, the wild sheep.
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[33] In fact, after his Lhasa expedition Younghusband involved himself in nonconventional mystical activities. In an obituary for Younghusband, the New York Times merged the man who had led the British invasion with the Hollywood myth: "If as James Hilton strongly suggests in Lost Horizon, Shangri-La is somewhere in Tibet rather than merely somewhere- anywhere… then Sir Francis Younghusband probably came closer than anyone else to being Robert Conway" (French 1995, 202).
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[34] Missionaries had their own romantic vision of Tibet, often emphasizing the darker aspects of Tibetan culture in order to highlight the country's need for Christian enlightenment. Petrus and Susie Rijnhart expressed the goal of their missionary travel as "perpetuating and deepening the widespread interest in the evangelization of Tibet" for "much has [been] written of the heathen in other countries… but the Tibetans with their monstrous butter Buddha occupy a unique place in the world's idolatry" (1901, 1, 119). After all, Lhasa is not "only a city of metaphysical mysteries and the mummery of idol-worship; it is a secret chamber of crime; its rock and its road, its silken flags and its scented altars, are all stained with blood" (Carey 1902, 58). Monastic rapacity and domination along with criticisms of Tibetan sexual morality were common themes in missionary writings. Missionaries saw themselves as "soldiers of Christ" and Tibet as a citadel under siege (Bray 2001, 28). However, by the late twentieth century, missionary accounts show much greater empathy and sometimes a deep cultural understanding.
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[35] Though Tibet is mainly associated with a variant of Buddhism or "Lamaism," there were quite a few practicing Muslims living in Lhasa. In most of the studies on Tibetan culture, the contribution of Tibetan Muslims is largely ignored. For exceptions, see Sheikh 1991; Siddiqui 1991; Tibet Journal 1995.
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[36] Waddell even purchased a "Lamaist temple with its fittings; and prevailed on the officiating priests to explain… in full detail the symbolism and the rites as they proceeded" (1972, viii).
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[37] Yet the lama is not totally convinced about British control over knowledge, for he says that there are still things that Western scholars do not know, have not sought-things relating to spiritual wisdom. Later, the lama introduces Kim to new art forms and says, chuckling, "The Sahibs have not all this world's wisdom" (Kipling 1976, 209; emphasis in original).
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[38] Wilson surmises why Kipling used the character of a Tibetan lama and not any other Indian religious figure: it was essential to the spiritual relation that was to develop between the lama and Kim that, for Kim, his master be an exotic novelty, for the boy's curiosity about everything new is what marks him out as someone who is likely to learn from life (Wilson 1987, 53). The lama provides exactly this. His simplicity and novelty allowed Kim to claim that "the lama was his trove, and he proposed to take possession" (Kipling 1976, 19). And it was also necessary that the master should be entirely dependent upon Kim for guidance in the real world. The Tibetan lama symbolized radical "otherworldliness."
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[39] Interestingly, Kipling had borrowed the term "Teshoo Lama" from earlier British accounts of the limited interaction with Tibetans at the end of the eighteenth century. George Bogle (see Markham 1876) as well as Samuel Turner (Turner 1971/1800), representatives of the East India Company, had both interacted with Tashi Lama/Teshoo Lama (later known as Panchen Lama).
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[40] Naturalization is another theme that operates within Western representational practices, as "natives" are often associated with nature. Here, nature is opposed to culture and civilization: primitive people live in a state of nature and, similarly, those who live close to nature are primitive, uncivilized. Riencourt contends that the "psychic knowledge of the lamas" is caused by the "awe-inspiring landscape, severity of the climate and remoteness of its valleys, the majestic silence and peace of the roof of the world" (1950, 263).
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[41] For a critical take on David-Neel's travel writing, see Mills 1991. See also Foster and Foster 1987.
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[42] A secret memorandum dated 22 August 1922 mentions her as a "lady of somewhat doubtful antecedents" (IOR: L/P&S/10/1012 1921, 145).
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[43] Lopez, for example, praises Rampa's books as having "brought the plight of Tibet to an otherwise indifferent audience of hundreds of thousands of Westerners, who would remain unconcerned were it not for the trappings of astral travel, spiritualism, and the hope of human evolution to a new age" (1998, 107).
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[44] Fascination with gold has been a part of Western imagination of Tibet since ancient times when the Greeks wrote of gold-digging ants. In the early twentieth century, the British Foreign Office reports: "Even though gold is not produced much in early 20th century, it has little bearing over future possibilities" and approvingly quotes Holdich: 'Tibet is not only rich [in gold] in the ordinary acceptance of the term; she must be enormously rich-possibly richer than any country in the world. For thousands of years gold has been washed out of her surface soil by the very crudest of all processes… From every river which has its source in the Tibetan plateau, gold is washed" (1920, 61).
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[45] Tibet as a mere playground for Westerners' adventure is more clearly visible in Davidson's The Rose of Tibet (1995), originally published in 1962. Its most defining feature is an abundance of sexual motifs. Here we come across priestesses who are not allowed to have sex, but they still do it "like rattlesnakes," often with outsiders, as there are only a hundred monks to "take care" of them (336). We encounter the she-devil who was "not old, and she was not cold; and she was far from being a virgin" (399); instead, she was "delicious and delectable and always unknowable" (407). And she possessed "green tears-emeralds"-half of which she later gives to the hero, an Englishman, Charles Houston, as a sign of her love. Houston not only has sex with her but also insists on her being monogamous. He fails in this as she indulges in the "particularly, vilely horrible" custom of having sex with the main abbot. He now saw her as an object lovely but diseased, a rank thing growing unhealthily on top of a dunghill (441).
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[46] For a comprehensive collection of different perspectives on the Tibet question, see Sautman and Dreyer 2006.
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[47] Focusing on the constructedness of Tibet does not mean that China or any other geopolitical entity is less constructed. For a contested notion of "China," see Gladney 2004; Liu 2004; Shih 2003.
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[48] The reasoning of Bogle, an East India Company official in the 1770s, for the need to establish commercial relations with Tibet (and other states in the cis-Himalayan region) reflects the expansionary imperative within the colonizing regime of the East India Company. He says, "The constant drain of money from these provinces [in the Gangetic plains] is a consequence naturally arising from the relative situation in which this country is placed with respect to Great Britain… It is impossible to prevent this drain-all that can be done, is to endeavor to supply it by opening new channels of commerce" (IOR: H/219 1768-84, 375).
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[49] As Shaumian points out, "Russian authorities never contemplated direct military intervention in Tibet, nor did they nurture plans to conquer India, but skilfully and often successfully exploited the Tibetan question to exert pressure on Great Britain and thereby obtain concessions in other regions that were more germane to their military-strategic and other political interests" (2000, viii).
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[50] Curzon's fear of Russia in the Great Game was now seen as unimportant in comparison to the bigger game being played in Europe with shifting alliances. "Tibet was a pawn to be manipulated according to the requirements of big power politics. The Game, a strategic one rather than a tactical one, was suddenly being played in the chanceries of Europe, not in the deserts of trans-Himalaya" (MacGregor 1970, 351).
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[51] A protest by an unknown bureaucrat is prescient: "To omit the line is of course the line of least resistance; but it leaves an ambiguity just when we were striving for precision-and a dangerous ambiguity of wh. the Chinese will continue to avail themselves" (IOR: L/P&S/10/265 1912, 47).
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[52] Formally known as the "Agreement of the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet," it was signed in Beijing on 23 May 1951.
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[53] Even though religion and politics did not exist as separate categories, a genre of open political and social criticism existed in the form of "street songs" (see Goldstein 1982).
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[54] Knaus further points out that the Americans operated with a frontier mentality, assuming the Tibetan situation to be the theatrical scene of a "frontier drama with the good guys trying to get rid of bad guys" (1999, 61). According to him, "The CIA men viewed their Tibetan pupils as Oriental versions of self-reliant, straight-shooting American frontiersmen who were under attack and seeking only the means to fight for their own way of life" (216). Ironically, this sentiment ignored that while in the American case frontiersmen were the invaders, in the Tibetan case the "Oriental frontiersmen" were the ones who suffered from Chinese invasion.
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[55] This approach is exemplified in Ekvall's (i960) pioneering work in which he identified five common cultural traits through which Tibetans define themselves: religion, folkways, language, race (human lineage), and land.
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[56] While most commentators consider Tibetans to be victims of forces of modernization and Chinese oppression, scholars like Lopez (1998) consider them victims of the Western perception of Tibetans as inherently religious, peaceful, and spiritual. In contrast, this chapter recognizes the need to consider Tibetans as agents in their own right. Interestingly, Neilson even argues that the Shangri-la myth itself is significant for facilitating "a critical utopianism that allows a reassessment of the Tibetan question outside the politics of territory" (2000, 95).
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[57] Anderson's categorization of nations as imagined communities (1983) does not fully convey the sense of continuous imagination that goes into the making and existence of a nation, so I prefer to use "imagining." In the next chapter, I retheorize this as "re-imag(in)ing community."
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[58] None of the prominent experts on nationalism speaks about Tibet, except Hobsbawm, who mentions Tibet only in passing as a possible exception to his theory: "It is difficult to judge how far purely divine authority may have nation-making possibilities. The question must be left to the experts in the history of Mongols and Tibetans" (1990, 72).
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[59] Their role may be seen as that of the disgruntled traditional intelligentsia described by Gellner (1983, 14).
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[60] Though some observers such as Grunfeld are of the opinion that "independence is an abstract notion which most Tibetans do not seem to think about very much" (quoted in Sperling 2004), others have provided a convincing rebuttal of such views (see Schwartz 1996; see also Barnett and Akiner i996).
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[61] Tibetans have been successful in avoiding assimilation with the host society by following a policy of limited acculturation. In Nepal and in parts of north India, Tibetans contribute substantially to the tourism industry, especially in the regions in which they live. Elsewhere, they concentrate more on specialized craft industries (see Methfessel 1996). Rather than competing with local Indians or Nepalese over scarce resources, they have established new enterprises, which also benefit locals with their spill-over effects. This does not mean that the relationship between refugees and locals is totally harmonious. As 1999 riots against Tibetans in Manali (India) show, there are potential trouble spots that need to be addressed by community leaders as well as the Indian establishment. Since isolation is hardly a viable choice for most migrant communities (and individuals) when faced with the problems of adjusting in the host society, the Tibetan establishment opted for a policy of limited acculturation as opposed to assimilation. While influences of popular Indian cultures including Bollywood are marked among the lay Tibetans, a sense of separate and distinct identity is prevalent (see Diehl 2002). Both in rhetoric as well as in practice, the Tibetan refugee community has largely avoided the assimilative process of sanskritisation that affects most minority groups in India.
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[62] A particular space-time projection of "homeland" is another constitutive factor in fostering Tibetan identity in the diaspora. Diasporic longing for the homeland is reflected in material as well as artistic production among exile communities. Images of Tibet, such as the Potala Palace, are favorite motifs. This nostalgia for space is complemented by nostalgia for time. It is not contemporary Tibet but pre-1959 Tibet, frozen in time, that defines the longing. As Harris points out, many Tibetan refugee craftspeople and artists are involved in "a nostalgic recreation of temps perdus; an inevitable process of conscious archaism" (1993, 112; see also Ahmed 2006). In the diaspora, the role of memory is central to imagining Tibet as a nation, since re-creating and preserving the memories of Tibet is crucial for maintaining the vision of "Free Tibet" as a common cause. These memories also provide the tools of expression, the language and the idioms of Tibetan unity and identity.
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[63] "The Tibet cause has attracted an exceptionally diverse group of people, some of whom see their activities on behalf of the cause as connected with Buddhist belief and practice, while others are concerned with human rights, opposing communism, and a range of other motivations" (Powers 2000, 3). Among this range of other motivations, New Age Orientalism is prominent. Though often New Age and Western Buddhism are conflated, mostly by their critics, they are quite distinct. Even when criticizing the Western states for betraying Tibet, some supporters adopt a haughty view of a superior Western way of being. For example, Berkin in his book "about a lost state" mentions British imperial policy and weak and market-hungry Western states as part of the cause, but then talks about how the question of Tibet is also about "a clash of values; between western democracy and oriental absolutism" (2000, xv).
