By Lobsang Tseten
On May 7, 2016 Leicester City football club was crowned 2016 Barclays Premier League champion for the first time in the club’s history. They started the season with the odds of 5000-1 to lift the trophy. The club was on the verge of relegation last season and if it hadn’t been for Negiel Pearson’s great escape, they would have been languishing in the second tier football league, Premier league being the top league.
I’m writing this piece not because I am awestruck at Leicester City lifting the trophy. Honestly, watching my own team, Manchester United slowly lose their grip of the Champions League spot over the past few years has been like watching Ekta Kapoor remake of Games of Thrones, in short painful. But as a football enthusiast and an activist for the Tibetan Freedom Movement, it is interesting to look at the odds of winning against the so called “powerful group”.
There are many ways in which Leicester winning the title can be related to the Tibetan Freedom Movement. The Tibetan movement faces heavy criticism from some people who have, for their own reasons, configured that the Tibetans will never achieve their goal. In this essay I argue to the contrary – why I believe the Tibetan freedom movement has all the elements to realize its goals.
As a Tibetan activist, one question that I hear all too often is “But China is so powerful, how are you going to free Tibet?” which then usually follows with a statement along the lines of “The odds are against your movement”. Sure, the odds have always been against us. The odds were against us when our people marched the streets of Lhasa in 1959 against China’s People’s Liberation Army. The odds were against us when the brave Chushi Gangdruk (Tibetan Resistance Army) warriors took up weapons and decided to fight the Chinese army. The odds were also against us when Chushi Gangdruk planned and successfully executed His Holiness’s escape from Lhasa. The odds continued to be against us when the Tibetan warriors set up their base camp in Mustang (Nepal) and raided a heavily armed Chinese convoy in Tibet. But even with all the mounting odds, we continued to resist. When have the odds ever stopped us from trying to achieve our goal? Had Leicester City succumbed to the odds of winning the title and given up to the ‘Big Four’ at the start of the season, we would not be calling them the champions of 2016 today. Would we?
I believe in the idea of challenging the odds and know that a strong will to resist any authoritarian regime will lead to victory. My belief is grounded in examples from history itself. The one element that non-violent movements have in common, for example, the Civil Rights movement in the US, Anti Apartheid movement in South Africa or India’s Freedom Struggle, is the fact that the odds were heavily against the people. It was the people’s will to oppose and their capacity to resist, their discipline in refusing to do what they were ordered to, which eventually led them to victory.
Gene Sharp accurately said “the determination of the subject to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them will determine the fate of dictatorship.” When Gandhi was mobilizing his people to fight for freedom from the British imperial rule or when Martin Luther King was rallying people for equality in the US, the odds were astounding.
The odds were against the African American community when they launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott campaign in Alabama in December of 1955. Rosa Parks’ stubbornness in refusing to give up her seat in a segregated bus sparked the whole campaign. Her courage and resilience to challenge the racial segregation law on public transit in Montgomery, Alabama gave birth to what we know today as the “Civil Rights Movement”.
Taking it closer to home, the Indian Freedom Movement remains one of the most successful examples of having challenged the odds and overthrown the 200-year British colonial rule. Within the Indian freedom movement, the Salt Act policy which prohibited the Indians from collecting or selling salt was challenged by one man’s act of defiance, which then led to mass civil disobedience. Under the Salt Act, Indians were forced to buy the vital mineral from the British who not only enjoyed monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt but also imposed a heavy salt tax. Defying the Salt Act, Gandhi in March of 1930 set off from his Sabarmati Ashram to the coastal town of Dandi to take ownership of the salt from the sea water. Gandhi led thousands in the 240-mile walk to the coastal town of Dandi which shook the British Empire to its core. Civil disobedience then broke across India like a wild fire resulting in millions of Indians defying the imperial Salt Act. British authorities arrested more than 50,000 people but the struggle continued. With widespread non-cooperation and consistent political defiance, the British Empire surrendered to the people’s will. In August of 1947, India achieved its Independence.
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It is of no surprise that, we Tibetans and our culture have been on the verge of extinction since our country was occupied. The large number of Chinese settlers in Tibet today has made Tibetans a minority in our own land. The Chinese regime may have succeeded in the physical subjugation of Tibetans for over 50 years but they have utterly failed to destroy the spirit of the Tibetan people. The 2008 Uprising showed us very clearly the manner in which Tibetans inside Tibet are defying the odds and challenging the regime through many new forms of resistance, like the Lhakar movement. Lhakar is a homegrown, non-cooperation movement celebrating Tibetan culture and engaging in civil resistance. This powerful movement is truly an inspiration because despite the heavy repression Tibetans within Tibet and outside continue to resist by celebrating our culture; by wearing Tibetan clothing, speaking Tibetan language, eating Tibetan food, supporting Tibetan businesses and ultimately celebrating Tibetan Identity. Tibetans have begun to use art, poetry, literature and music as tools to resist the Chinese regime.
Leicester City came out victorious this season simply because they defied all the odds and dared to dream. Their rise to top of the Premier League table is a bold indication that the so called super power can be challenged. The failure of the big teams to cope with the challenge and Leicester’s stubborn resilience has catapulted the team to top of the league.
So, despite all these successful non-violent movements around the world, why some people fail to see the possibilities of Tibet overcoming all her odds and perceive Tibetans achieving Independence as “non-feasible” is beyond me. From where I stand, despite the torture and killings, Tibetans within and outside Tibet have continued to oppose Chinese rule through non-violent direct actions and will continue to do so.
The author is a Tibetan activist currently working with the Students for a Free Tibet, India.
[OPINION-DISCLAIMER]
