By Dhawa Dhondup (Acharya)
In the streets of Bangkok “Free Tibet” is alive and selling – it is on T-shirts, Made in Thailand, for around 150 baht (about Rs 200). The first time I saw them, two years ago, I marvelled at Thai blend of business with fundamental human liberties.
The shops are still here, and the vendors again greet you with the universal Thai Welcome! “Sawat-dii-kha!” One of the latest screen-prints openly displayed on stalls in the busy drags of Pat Pong and Khao San Road is George’s face pasted into Osama’s head-profile, with the caption: “George W. Bush – Wanted for Crimes against Humanity and Planet. Beware if you meet this man!” There are a few variations on the same theme.
Thais have not traded human freedoms for cash, something so easily done in a certain South-East Asian city-state where people are affluent but they never discuss one thing in their entire life – politics! In Thailand, straight after a military coup a simple cab-driver can vent his displeasure at blatant threat to democratic norms, by ramming his taxi into a tank, be applauded for doing so and get a photo-accompanied coverage on the front page of the capital’s major English broadsheet Bangkok Post. From the photograph (see Photo 1) one would observe that these Tibet-related T-shirts are reprints of various campaign outputs from around the world, but some, of course, are of the old Freak Street and Thamel For-tourists production kind. The sight of our native Tibetan scripts – on cloth or on rocks – in an away country has always moved my heart.
India’s national emblem – the Asokan lion pillar head – is housed at the Archaeological Survey of India’s Sarnath Museum. Also housed there is a fine engraving on a rock, in Tibetan script, of the Hundred Syllable mantra. Some fifteen minutes’ walk away from the museum, heading towards Sarnath railway station, in the little woods by the abandoned old Indian Teachers’ College is an ancient rock mortar, half sunk into the ground, with again a very fine engraving, in Tibetan, of Arya Tara Name-mantra, address prayer to the Exalted Liberating Mother.
On the level of patriotic feelings, seeing here in Bangkok, Bod (Boe, Tibet) in Tibetan scripts, on the T-shirts produces no less a love of Tibet I felt way then at Sarnath. This morning I put on a Tibetan shirt and walked around Downtown Bangkok, including Siam Square and Platinum Plaza (the main shopping malls), and revisited the holy Wat Po and Temple of the Emerald Buddha (within the Royal Grand Palace). This is my way of saying Khawp khun khrap ( Thai for Thugjeychey) to the beautiful Thai people from a Tibetan!
Thais are also pragmatic people and it is no coincidence that Tibet T-shirts are stocked only in not more than three obscure stalls, (well, they are all I could find after a long hard search) while merchandises mocking the American President are on display everywhere for all to see and buy!
