Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the Native Americans? Will they be reduced to nothing more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of a once-great culture? 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 were so keen to modernise their society in the mid-20th century that they saw the Chinese communists as allies against rule by monks and landlords. In the early ’50s, the young Dalai Lama himself wrote poems praising Chairman Mao. Alas, instead of reforming Tibetan society and culture, the Chinese communists ended up wrecking it. None of this was peculiar to Tibet. The wrecking of tradition and cultural regimentation took place everywhere in China. In some respects, the Tibetans were treated less ruthlessly than the majority of Chinese. Nor was the challenge to Tibetan uniqueness typical of the communists. Chiang Kai-shek declared in 1946 that the Tibetans were Chinese, and he certainly would not have granted them independence if his Kuomintang party had won the civil war. After decades of destruction and neglect, Tibet has benefited from enormous amounts of Chinese money and energy to modernise the country. The Tibetans cannot complain that they have been left behind in China’s transformation to a marvel of supercharged urban development. But the price in Tibet has been higher. Regional identity, cultural diversity, and arts and customs have been buried under concrete, steel, and glass all over China. Outside Tibet, however, it is a different story. If the Chinese are responsible for extinguishing the old way of life inside Tibet, they may be unintentionally responsible for keeping it alive outside. By forcing the Dalai Lama into exile, they have ensured the establishment of a Tibetan diaspora society, which might well survive in a more traditional form than would have been likely even in an independent Tibet. Excerpted from Ian Buruma’s ‘Tibet’s last stand’ in The Guardian, April 14
