By Topden Tsering
On March 10 every year, Tibetans everywhere commemorate their National Uprising Day. It was on this day in 1959 that China’s People’s Liberation Army brutally crushed the last of popular Tibetan uprisings against Chinese occupation, forcing into exile in India the Dalai Lama and some eighty thousand of his followers.
In exile, the Tibetans now mark the occasion with slogans, speeches, protests and vigils, all amid a flurry of banners and placards, reading “Free Tibet”. While inside Tibet, that memory of forty-six years ago – the massacre, the imprisonment and the torture – still being a living reality, there’s only a familiar twitch of hearts as some four million Tibetans go about their lives, their eyes weary, their smiles contrived, their prayers silent. Chinese soldiers with guns: this image plays out differently both inside the occupied country as well as outside. Inside Tibet, they – Chinese soldiers with guns – walk the streets day and night. In India, in America, in Europe and in Japan, they – Chinese soldiers with guns – push their bayonets in graphic illustrations culled from memory and speculations, on bright banners and colorful placards.
If you were like me, a Tibetan born in India, more precisely in Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives and where an exile Tibetan government causes much heartburn for the Beijing leadership, you’d know there are more things about March 10 than the remembrance in exile, and the reality inside Tibet, of Chinese oppression. You’d see no other day defines as does March 10 your place in time or, for that matter, marks with a greater force your sense of being and that of others like you.
In Dharamsala as a child, I remember we were not big on birthdays. Probably because our parents thought it extravagant to squander away on cakes the money that could fetch us a day’s square meal. Probably because they deemed it scandalous to observe twice what our traditional new year already served for us: our collective birthdays. Witness that a child might be born on our traditional new year’s eve, but two days hence, he’s already a year old. Such is the configuration of our own calendar, which turns the number slot of every Tibetan’s age at about exactly the same time, making them all older by a year than what their dates of birth would make provision for.
Much of the new-year being about revelry, what remains of it in one’s serious contemplation is only a fleeting sense; something like laughter that doesn’t so much register the import of your joy as does sadness, with its tears and heartache, all more palpable and urgent. In about ways just the same, even more hitting, then, March 10 pronounces for us the irrevocable onset of another year. The birthday cake is missing, with its chocolate frosted numbers for years, and what’s visible is a twelve feet-by-five feet white banner – overhanging the courtyard outside the Dalai Lama’s temple where would be gathered hundreds of protestors, placards, banners and all – proclaiming in both Tibetan and English the changing hands of time: What was last year the thirty-fifth anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day is this year the thirty-sixth, and there’s no going back on that!
Standing, or sitting, in the mass of gathered protestors on March 10, during my distant childhood and even now, very often you’d find yourself within the earshot of the all too familiar exchanges between the elders who remembered and who missed: “Tsk, tsk, Another year of not seeing your country! Another year in exile! Will I live long enough to be just able to die there, in our Tibet?”
For the children, for the young not yet burdened by sentiments, even reality, the day brings thrill and humor. Much like birthdays. Or at least it seemed to me and from what I could make of my friends when we were ten or eleven year old boys. In Dharamsala, March 10 begins with a massive function in the courtyard outside the Dalai Lama’s temple and kicks off with a four mile-long procession – trees, rocks, monkeys and beedi-smoking local shepherds for witnesses – through a winding path leading to the main bazaar in the lower plains. It was fun to be walking with pressing bodies, all senses drowned out by shrieking voices, under a canopy of fluttering flags, darting out of the crowd one moment, losing oneself into the maze the next, a Hide and Seek on its own.
“Hamay Kya Chahiye (What do we want)?” a leader would exhort in Hindi; “Aazadi chahiye (We want Freedom)”, the crowd would respond. Occasionally, our perceptive ears would catch an old lady try her best accent: “Aachar Chahiye (We want pickles)” and we would all laugh, pointing fingers and rubbing bellies. Then we would watch the shuffling feet and compare fancy sneakers; and laugh some more over tripping accidents almost averted, or placard poles digging into unsuspecting heads.
The best part was returning home from the main bazaar: the rides on the roofs of buses, illegal by any other day, but an exception on this politically-charged day for Tibetans, and acknowledged thus by the otherwise thuggish Indian policemen. Several hundreds of Tibetans and only two buses plying in between: this was a luxury waiting to happen! Dodging the whipping tree branches, catching mouthfuls of air, hanging for one’s dear life as the bus cut sharp corners over steep cliffs, or dangling from the backside ladders – with monks, their robes flying, and local leaders, their smiles nervous – it was the sort of joyride which could make any mother sick with worry. For all the sadness of the day, our homecoming was at least triumphant, much like those kings in old movies returning from battles on their mighty elephants.
Free bus rides seem to be somehow related to March 10. Now as an adult in San Francisco, somehow responsible locally for the event’s organization, making speeches from the City Hall steps and leading pickets outside the Chinese embassy, I notice that most of us, the Tibetan protestors, make our way back on the Geary L 28 buses, our fingers narrowly escaping being snapped by the automatic doors, and our transfer fare saved us on account of our rear-door entry, illegal by any other day, but an exception on this politically-charged day for the Tibetans, and acknowledged thus by some Chinese driver in Kentucky Chicken-stained uniform.
There were several faces already old that I’d see on March 10 of early years: weather beaten faces with small Tibetan flags and ancient rosaries, faces that would contort dramatically whenever the eyes fell upon the Dalai Lama speaking from a dais at the function; eyes which would then remain shut in deep devotion as long as the Tibetan leader spoke, eyes which would almost always shed some tears; eyes that belonged to these old faces which I’d always see on March 10, with their flags and rosaries. These were the faces which on other times I’d see soaking up the sun at the market place, flashing toothless grins; or chatting among themselves along the circumambulation path around the temple; or just staring into the distance, blank eyes, blank expression.
One such face belonged to this old woman who lived behind my house. My family was not well off by any standard, but she seemed to be much poorer. She made her living collecting wood, scavenging bottles, tins and suchlike, which she then, I imagine, sold off to whoever for some Indian rupees. The doorway to her ramshackle of a house was disarrayed with these metal and wood scrapes. Every so often, from inside her house would emit mournful wail, causing a minor stir in the neighborhood: tell-all signs that she was in the thick of her regular fights with her daughter, who, rumor had it, was selling sex to local taxi drivers.
She lived a pained, desperate, impoverished life, this old woman. But on March 10, she appeared strong. It was as if on this day all her personal sufferings and shame were mitigated by the profundity of her people’s history, her nation’s fate; she claimed her country and her country claimed her. Her diminutive self looked composed, in her tidy though patch-worked Chuba, with her small flag, before she too would break into sobs, listening to the Dalai Lama deliver his March 10 statement. And throughout the procession down the winding path, she’d shout slogans as if there were no tomorrow, unabashedly mispronouncing freedom in Hindi for pickles, and giving us her squinted eyes when I, and my friends, pointed fingers and rubbed bellies.
I had not seen her for little less than ten years. Just the other day, I saw her again in a picture on the Internet taken during this year’s March 10 commemoration in Dharamsala. If she had aged during these ten years I wouldn’t have known because she was already old, poor and leathery-faced when I last saw her. She was clasping a small Tibetan flag, perhaps the same flag with which I associate her memory of many years ago; and she still looked strong. It was a miracle that I should stumble upon her picture on the Internet, and it was a greater miracle that she should still be alive. I am sure she must have shed tears when her eyes fell upon the Dalai Lama, out of pure devotion, when the Tibetan leader – more clearly this year – pressed further his offer to Beijing of downright exile capitulation.
I wonder if she cried any more – summoning by default an army of neighborhood counsel – from the strains of anguished lives she shared with her daughter, from her personal shame? For all I could imagine, her daughter – who was good three years or so older than me – must by now be married, if not irrevocably consumed by the downward spiral of a life she was rumored to be leading at that time. If married, I imagine, she must now be herself a mother of one or two children. Given the ill luck she seemed so prone to, I also wonder if she too – this daughter who made her old mother cry so very often – is not a captive today of some drunkard abusive husband and wayward children, forever condemned to crying out her share of a pained, desperate and impoverished life?
But does she ever appear strong and if her country claims her and she her country on March 10? That I wouldn’t know.
I’ve learnt to look at different things on March 10, beyond slogans, beyond banners, beyond speeches, beyond protestors. For example I look at how much a toddler, who only last year I caught sleeping in her stroller pushed by her mother, has this year grown so big that she’s in fact walking, darting out of the crowd one moment and losing herself into the maze the next, a Hide and Seek of her own. I look at this family of three sons, all of them thoroughbreds in Tibetan music and community service, and notice how over this past one year, the elder two, not yet even twenty-five, have taken on Tibetan brides of similar background, one girl in fact a graduate from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala: the handiwork of ageing parents desperate to bequeath some integrity to their children’s identity before it was their time to pass away on some American hospital death beds.
This time something more startling happened. Every year in San Francisco, we gather outside the City Hall, an imposing structure in gilded domes, and from its lofty steps a line of different speakers talk about Tibet, freedom, justice and all, on mike systems connected to the nearest power supplier inside. Like every year, Bay Area Friends of Tibet’s Giovanni Vassallo had dutifully sought the required permits and, like every year, things were supposed to go without any incident. However, a little commotion revealed an Asian City official, in business suit and a walkie-talkie in hand, demanding more sound permits than we already had; to all purposes, the man was hell-bent on making our little function a no-show.
“He must be a Chinese, asshole!” grunted a Tibetan lady besides me. The man was Chinese alright, and the City in-charge of Entertainment and Audio Section, a position which made him all too powerful for our liking on this day of our national reckoning, especially when he seemed to be capable of less sympathy than we could have evoked from somebody else in his shoes; especially because – from the way he called the police at our harmless imploring, from the way his tone carried pure scoff – it seemed the sight of anti-China Tibetan gathering had touched a nerve deep inside him, forcing open some old wounds perhaps. From his accent, it was clear he was from the mainland, and not American Chinese like the bus driver who – four hours or so into the protest, after the last slogans had been chanted – would overlook our hopping inside the bus through the rear door, and take us home from the Chinese consulate, free of charge; his emotions seemingly unaffected. (The program however went on as scheduled, with expert handling by Giovanni and intervention by a district supervisor).
The humor of March 10 has left me long ago. From some place unknown, a strange anger has crept into my heart.
This anger saw me fuming red only a year ago when, during the heat of Kashag restraint circular against anti-China protest, our co-organizers proposed to censor “Free Tibet” from our usual sloganeering: “how about we make genuine autonomy the only catchphrase?” In my mind I found it jarring to imagine the new slogan entering our protest lexicon (“What do we want?” the leader exhorting. “We want Genuine Autonomy:” the crowd responding). But I was more horrified that, even if for one year, even if on the only March 10 day, “Free Tibet” wouldn’t ring in the San Francisco streets, and that this slogan – to be able to enunciate which is the ultimate dream of Tibetans inside Tibet – would be suppressed by the discretion of our own very leaders.
I felt like Hunter S. Thompson’s character which Johny Depp so deftly played in the movie rendition of the recently-departed author’s book: “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. There’s a scene in which the writer’s dope-fiend version ducks under an imagined cloud of shrieking bats, waving a fly swatter and hurling the choicest curses at the object of his hallucination. Similarly, I felt paranoid if unbeknown to me, these co-organizers, especially the Tibetan association leader who meant well by all accounts, had not been revealed a divine insight through the Kashag circular which had somehow escaped my comprehension, for one reason or the other? Was there not a Chinese magnanimity, or even the proven potential of it, which, because of the anger that had crept into my heart, I was not able to see?
Even when delivering my staple speeches, overlooking dwindling-by-the-year crowd of Tibetans and supporters, mustering all tones of passion, some of them self-consciously affected, I can’t help but feeling like the angry fool.
The debate over independence and autonomy is absolutely irrelevant. Talking about it any further is like beating the proverbial dead horse; only in this case, the carcass has been beaten so many times that one more pat, and the dead might just spring into life and gallop away: such is the earnest measure of our naivety. Irrelevant also is whether or not China might in any way agree to and, even if it did in million years, if it’d at all honor the codes of Genuine Autonomy as outlined by the Dalai Lama. And to believe that sealing a pact with the Devil – a regime whose communist constitution already enshrines all forms of rights and freedoms for its people but which it tramples on ever so freely, without remorse, without accountability – would spell the survival of the righteous, in this case our very distinct culture, is to believe in the impossible.
Freedom at least is possible. So it has been proven a million times, as long as the conviction for it is not corrupted, as long as the fight is kept alive.
My personal recollection of March 10 in 1959 comes from a rare picture taken on one of the tense days leading up to the final popular uprising in Lhasa. It’s taken from inside the Norbulingka Palace and in the frame you’d see hundreds of Tibetans, men and women, who’d gathered to protect the Dalai Lama against Chinese harm and to defend their country’s freedom, thousand hands pushing into the sky, some holding swords, some knives, some rocks, some bunched into fists. It’s not hard to imagine these hundreds of Tibetans, and many hundreds more outside the canvas, shot to death or scarred for lives in the bloody crackdown that would soon swoop over their lot: the flames, the smell of gunpowder, and the pool of blood.
But that picture speaks to me. It tells me that at least we, these Tibetans, didn’t go out without a fight; that they didn’t simply let the Chinese take us over. It shows me that these Tibetans marked their towns and their cities and sanctified their right over these territories, their own, with blood: that final signature of their convictions.
Here in the free lands, in India, in America, in Europe and elsewhere, the site of dwindling-by-the-year Tibetan and non-Tibetan protestors, are we up to claiming the surrogate homes of our cities, our towns, and sanctifying these territories with at least the voices of our conviction: that slogan for a Free Tibet, with such force and creativity that we would really move mountains?
Now that remains to be seen.
The writer can be reached at
Gyanakc@yahoo.com.
