by John Avedon
In China, the Tibetans had their first look at the modern world, one carefully orchestrated to elicit their approval. Housed in amply staffed bungalows around Peking, high lamas and Cabinet ministers each received a limousine, chauffeur and private cook, lesser officials sharing graded levels of kitchen and transport. Packets of money were handed out on a weekly basis—the higher one’s rank, the more money received—and as winter approached, new warmer clothing was provided for all. Though political meetings were required of senior officials, the majority of the Tibetans spent their time sightseeing, shopping, attending theater, ballet, acrobatic shows and dancing parties. But beneath China’s efficient, industrial facade, they found the human climate unappealing, the submission of self to the state contrary to their own individualistic nature. An even deeper gulf separated the philosophies of the two peoples. While the Communists believed that socialism, properly applied, offered a panacea for life’s ills, as Buddhists, the Tibetans felt that earthly existence in any form could never be satisfactory. Liberation, to them, meant freedom gained by enlightenment from the inevitable sufferings of birth, old age, disease and death. Mere physical well-being had never been an ideal in Tibetan culture.
Returning to Lhasa on June 29, 1955, the Dalai Lama found Tibet’s capital already changed by the new world he had visited. Two roads, one emanating from Xining in the north, the other from Chengdu in the east, had been opened the previous December, bringing with them to Tibet the first trappings of the twentieth century. Military trucks now coursed through Lhasa’s ancient streets, traffic soon becoming so heavy that a concrete island, manned by a white-jacketed policeman, had to be installed at the main intersection. The Tibetans themselves had begun to electrify the city prior to 1950, but the Chinese now extended the work, along with telephones and—to their growing bases in Shigatse, Gyantse and Yatung—telegraph. A pylon-supported bridge extended across the Kyichu River where the Dalai Lama had ridden in a coracle less than a year before. A bank, hospital, movie theater, secondary school, newspaper, youth and women’s leagues were all being founded, but not, ironically, for the masses. The innovations were primarily to win the collaboration of the upper classes or “Patriotic Upper Strata,” as they were known, on whom the CCP hoped to rely for support in the initial stages of its work. Socialist reforms were to be introduced gingerly; the Tibetan government’s own role was to be proportionately decreased. Both were the tasks of PCART, which opened with much fanfare on April 22, 1956, in the newly built Lhasa Hall, holding Tibet’s first auditorium, directly across from the Potala.
Rather than serving as a vehicle for compromise, as the Dalai Lama desired, the preparatory committee directly subverted Tibet’s government. In the manner of political maneuvering to which they were bred, the Communists had tailored the committee to appear indigenous—only five of the fifty-one members being Chinese—while, in fact, dividing the Tibetans against themselves, so that PCART could function solely as a mouthpiece for the CCP working committee, the highest authority in the land. The Dalai Lama was Chairman, the Panchen Lama and General Zhang Guohua Vice-Chairmen, Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, now in open collaboration, Secretary-General. The Tibetan government was permitted only fifteen members. A second group of eleven Tibetans was comprised of prominent monks and laymen picked by the Chinese. The third and fourth Tibetan groups, however, were far more insidious. Containing twenty members between them, they were the so-called Chamdo Liberation Committee, founded in Chamdo after the invasion, and the Panchen Lama’s Committee. As political bodies, they divided Tibet into three regions and directly challenged the authority of the central government in Lhasa. Thus, in the thirteen departments into which PCART was divided to govern Tibet, the country’s own administration was not only displaced but outvoted by a minimum of a two-thirds majority on every issue. “Sometimes it was almost laughable to see how the proceedings were controlled,” wrote the Dalai Lama. “But often I felt embarrassed at these meetings. I saw that the Chinese had only made me Chairman in order to give an added appearance of Tibetan authority to their schemes.”
Inversely, Peking also hoped to erode the Dalai Lama’s prestige by elevating that of the Panchen Lama. Since the 17th century, the elder of the two had served as tutor to the younger. In 1923, however, the Seventh Panchen Lama, convinced that the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was persecuting him for complicity with China during the 1910 invasion, fled his ancestral seat—Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse—for Peking. The Panchen Lama never returned home, dying in Jyekundo in eastern Tibet in 1937. Finding the breach advantageous, the Nationalists influenced the selection of the new Panchen Lama themselves, certifying him in Xining in 1949 without the approval of the National Assembly in Lhasa. Soon after, the then eleven-year-old boy fell into Communist hands, from which time he was utilized as the PRC’s principal Tibetan collaborator. His claim to the position was validated by Lhasa only under duress as part of the Seventeen-Point Agreement. Given virtually equal status with the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama came, through PCART, to embody the cutting edge of Peking’s subversion. But elsewhere an even greater threat emerged.
The changes China pursued by stealth in Central Tibet it chose to impose by force in Kham and Amdo. Within a year of the invasion the transformation of Tibetan society began. Progressing gradually at first, it gained an implacable momentum until early in 1955 PLA contingents, accompanied by party workers and small numbers of newly recruited beggars—ironically entitled hurtsun chenpos or “diligent ones”—fanned out across the countryside to disarm the population, relieve them of their personal possessions and execute the first stages of collectivization, leading eventually to full-fledged communes. The culmination of five years of softening up, the Democratic Reforms, as they were called, were met by stiff resistance in virtually every village. The PLA responded by singling out prominent families, bringing them bound to the center of their community and, before the full population assembled at gunpoint, conducting thamzing or “struggle session.” It was the duty of the hurtsun chenpos to carry out this facet of the Democratic Reforms, in which they beat and denounced their “oppressors,” who, if unable to render a suitable confession of “crimes against the people,” were forthwith executed. Violent intimidation and enforced socialization were abetted by the abduction of thousands of young children to be raised, not as Tibetans in their own homes, but as wards of the state in a newly created network of minority schools. Simultaneously, China began infiltrating the first of what it hoped would eventually be millions of settlers to colonize the “Roof of the World.”
The Khampas’ reaction was unequivocal. Following their clan leaders, they assembled by the thousands, mounted their sturdy ponies and, swords and rifles in hand, descended on PLA camps throughout the east. Overwhelmed by the onslaught, Chinese garrisons in Dergé, Kanzé, Nyarong, Po, Lithang and many of Kham’s lesser districts were forced to retreat, suffering massive losses. Yet until the Chinese committed a further indiscretion the majority of the Khampas’ senior pons or tribal chieftains remained at peace.
Six months after the fighting broke out, early in the summer of 1956, General Wang Jimei, Chamdo’s PLA commander, summoned 350 prominent men to the city and asked for their endorsement of the Democratic Reforms. “No reforms” was the overwhelming vote. Four subsequent meetings yielded the same result until 210 leaders from Dergé, the largest region in Kham, were convened at the local fortress of Jomdha Dzong, forty miles east of Chamdo. When they were all inside, 5,000 Chinese troops surrounded the fort. For two weeks the Tibetans were held prisoner. On the fifteenth day of detention, they finally assented. After three more days Jomdha Dzong’s guard was relaxed and that same night all 210 men escaped into the mountains. In this manner, Tibet’s formal guerrilla resistance was born, the Chinese themselves having turned much of the Khampa establishment into outlaws.
In Lhasa, news of the revolt placed the Dalai Lama in an irreconcilable dilemma. His six-year effort at compromise thwarted, his own people no longer under his control, Te
nzin Gyatso considered withdrawing from political office. During June of 1956, however, the Crown Prince of Sikkim brought an invitation to the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha’s birth, to be celebrated in India. With it, the Dalai Lama found a new source of hope. Not only was India the Holy Land from which Tibet’s higher culture had come; more recently it had given birth to Mahatma Gandhi, who was deeply revered by all Tibetans for his nonviolent precepts. In the company of Gandhi’s associates, Tenzin Gyatso hoped for advice on Tibet’s predicament. Under the British at least, India had been Tibet’s most powerful ally, a role, perhaps, it could be relied on once more to fulfill.
For “reasons of security,” China denied the Dalai Lama permission to attend the celebration. On October 1, Prime Minister Nehru himself telegraphed Peking, resubmitting the invitation, this time revised to include the Panchen Lama. It became clear that a second denial would severely damage the facade of Sino-Tibetan cooperation, making it appear as though the Dalai Lama was being held against his will. Nevertheless, a full month passed until, on November 1, following queries pressed by the Indian consul general in Lhasa, China conceded to the Dalai Lama that a second invitation had been sent, which he would now be permitted to accept. Tenzin Gyatso quickly prepared to go, viewing the trip as “a lifeline to the world of tolerance and freedom.”
Departing Lhasa in late November, the Dalai Lama drove south to Yatung. Leaving their Chinese escorts for the first time in years, the Tibetans rode upward through thick forests of fir and rhododendron to the 15,500-foot Nathu-la Pass. Before a giant cairn surmounted by scores of weather-beaten prayer flags, they paused in a low cloud to throw stones, crying with traditional high spirits, “Lha Gyal Lo!” (“The Gods are victorious!”) At the border of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, the Tibetans were greeted by a guard of honor and a small group of dignitaries bearing scarves and garlands, huddled together in the mist. Then, as night fell and a heavy snow descended, they rode down the mountainside, the bells of their horses tingling in the dark, and halted at a group of tents and bungalows beside a frozen lake. The following day, the Choegyal of Sikkim met his revered guest outside Gangtok, the capital, from where the Dalai Lama proceeded to Bagdogra Airfield inside the Indian border. After flying by special plane to New Delhi, the Dalai Lama was met on the tarmac of Palam Airport by Prime Minister Nehru and much of the capital’s diplomatic corps. Believing that now he could best serve his people by remaining in the free world to promote their cause, Tenzin Gyatso broached the topic to Nehru at their first meeting alone.
The Prime Minister’s response was emphatic: he must return to Tibet and once more seek compromise within the much-despoiled Seventeen-Point Agreement. Before 1950, Nehru pointed out, not a single nation had formally recognized Tibet’s independence; it was out of the question for India to give the appearance of doing so now. Its relations with China were strictly governed by the spirit of Panch Sheel, the five principles of mutual coexistence, articulated in the preamble to a 1954 trade pact between the two new republics. Though strongly criticized by Indian opposition leaders as an act of appeasement, Panch Sheel was, for Nehru, the expression of one of his highest and most cherished ideals: the peace and unity of the world’s two largest emerging nations and therein Asia. As such, it not only evinced Nehru’s admiration for Chinese anticolonialism, but served as a crucial safeguard for the limitations of India’s army, which was already committed against Pakistan. Although Nehru refused to lend the Dalai Lama substantial support, he did agree to represent the Tibetan position to Zhou Enlai, who en route to Europe stopped off in New Delhi on a sudden visit. In a subsequent meeting with the Dalai Lama, Nehru—as he later reported to the Indian Parliament—assured the Tibetan leader that Zhou Enlai had personally told him that it was “absurd for anyone to imagine that China was going to force Communism on Tibet.”
In his own discussions with China’s premier, the Dalai Lama forcefully detailed the PLA’s repressive actions in Kham. In return, he received a pledge—as did two of his brothers at a later meeting—that inequities, if they existed, would be corrected and that Mao himself would be apprised of all the Tibetans’ complaints. Strangely, Zhou Enlai seemed unaware of the Democratic Reforms in eastern Tibet, though well informed about the uprising, which had been their result. The meeting ended on cordial terms. A few weeks later, though, Zhou was back in Delhi, greatly concerned about the Dalai Lama’s plans. At a tense second conference, he made clear the PRC’s willingness to use the utmost force in suppressing the first significant challenge to its seven-year-old rule. He then bluntly asked Tenzin Gyatso if it was true that he was planning not to return home. “It was a bit dirty,” stated the Dalai Lama. “Zhou Enlai tried to manipulate me but I also manipulated him. We each feigned sincerity, in reality not meaning the words we spoke. When he asked if I was planning to remain in India I indicated that nothing of the sort was going on—that things were absolutely normal. He threatened and warned but in the end, despite this and the indecisiveness among our own people, I decided to go back. Thus my discussions with the Prime Minister turned out true after all.”
In the first week of February 1957, while the Dalai Lama was still in New Delhi, Mao Zedong publicly stated that Tibet was not yet ready for reforms: they were to be postponed for a minimum of six years. Subsequently, cadres in Tibet assured the people that if they themselves did not request them, reforms would not be imposed for a further “fifteen or even fifty years.” It was also announced that a number of Han personnel would be withdrawn, and PCART’s departments reduced by half. Bolstered by the initial of these Chinese concessions, given out of fear of losing him and the veneer of Tibetan compliance, Tenzin Gyatso returned to Lhasa on April 1, seeking once more to stave off the erosion of Tibet’s freedom.
During his absence, the situation had greatly deteriorated. In the aftermath of the Khampas’ first victories, Chushi Gangdruk had been formed: “Four Rivers, Six Ranges”—a traditional epithet for Kham and Amdo, now used by the newly allied Tibetan chieftains as the name of their joint guerrilla organization. Gompo Tashi Angdrugtsang, an important trader from Lithang, took charge in the field, while Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, who lived in Darjeeling, upgraded an intelligence-gathering operation he had established with the CIA in 1951. A small number of guerrillas were smuggled to Guam via India and Thailand, where they were introduced to modern weaponry and commando techniques. Parachuting back into Tibet at night, they took up the task of organizing the resistance on a more efficient course, aided by periodic airdrops of light arms. By then, however, the fighting had escalated, the PLA having counterattacked with a full fourteen divisions—over 150,000 troops.
By mid-1957, a ruthless pattern of attack and reprisal developed, turning much of Kham into a wasteland. The guerrillas, clad in shirts of parachute silk, wearing heavy charm boxes to protect against bullets and living on dried meat and tsampa or parched barley, operated on horseback from mountain strongholds, ambushing—with flintlocks, swords and the occasional grenade—small PLA outposts and convoys coursing between the large, heavily garrisoned towns. China responded by attempting to cut off Chushi Gangdruk’s base of popular support. From their fields in Kanzé and Chengdu waves of Ilyushin-28 bombers flew sorties across Kham, while huge mechanized columns moved overland shelling into rubble scores of villages, inhabited mainly by old men, women and children. Though by some accounts the Chinese lost 40,000 soldiers between 1956 and 1958, their own campaign in Kham, as attested to in two reports (issued in 1959 and 1960) by the International Commission of Jurists, a Geneva-based human rights monitoring group comprised of lawyers and judges from fifty nations, let loose a series of atrocities unparalleled in Tibet’s history. The obliteration of entire villages was compounded by hundreds of public executions, carried out to intimidate the surviving population. The methods employed included crucifixion, dismemberment, vivisection, beheading, burying, burning and scalding alive, dragging the victims to death behind galloping horses and pu
shing them from airplanes; children were forced to shoot their parents, disciples their religious teachers. Everywhere monasteries were prime targets. Monks were compelled to publicly copulate with nuns and desecrate sacred images before being sent to a growing string of labor camps in Amdo and Gansu. In the face of such acts, the guerrillas found their ranks swollen by thousands of dependents, bringing with them triple or more their number in livestock. So enlarged, they became easy targets for Chinese air strikes. Simultaneously, the PLA threw wide loops around Tibetan-held districts, attempting to bottle them up and annihilate one pocket at a time. The tide of battle turning against them, a mass exodus comprised of hundreds of scattered bands fled westward, seeking respite within the precincts of the Dalai Lama.
Soon after the Tibetan leader’s return to Lhasa, the Holy City was engulfed by the tents of over 10,000 refugees. Aware now that Mao’s promises of respite had been disingenuous, Tenzin Gyatso witnessed the inevitable result when, on June 16, 1958, the revolt finally penetrated to Central Tibet with the founding of the Tensung Tangla Magar or National Volunteer Defense Army. A natural union of Chushi Gangdruk and the original Mimang Tsongdu, Central Tibet’s own resistance group, the NVDA first raised its flag to the cheers of 5,000 cavalry drawn up on an open plain before an incense-shrouded portrait of the Dalai Lama, less than a hundred miles from Lhasa. Establishing a secretariat, a finance department and a twenty-seven-point code of conduct, the new force received support from Tibetan government officials throughout the central district of Lhoka, thus directly compromising the Cabinet. Under Chinese pressure the government sent a five-man delegation to the guerrillas to offer a promise of no reprisals if they laid down their arms. Instead, the mission joined the resistance. Fighting now reached—with an estimated 80,000 Khampa horsemen in U-Tsang alone—to within thirty miles of Lhasa, where, in the autumn of 1958, the 3,000-man PLA garrison at Tsethang was overrun. While hastily reinforcing their central Tibetan troops, the Chinese ordered the Tibetan army itself to put down the uprising. The Dalai Lama’s Cabinet promptly refused, citing the obvious fact that Tibet’s army, though loosely integrated with the PLA, was only waiting for an opportunity to join the guerrillas. Thwarted, the PLA deployed special detachments, disguised in Khampa garb, to pillage local villages, hoping in this way to arouse Central Tibetans’ age-old fear of Khampa banditry and turn them against the freedom fighters. Concurrently, the Dalai Lama found that virtually every effort at mediation had been exhausted. “There was a particular room in the Norbulingka used for meeting the Chinese generals,” he recounted. “It got to the point where I was reluctant even to enter that room. I just became tired and fed up. It was a sad experience. Their attitude, you see, was one full of contradiction. One day they would say, ‘This is white,’ the next, ‘It’s black.’ It was mad, and actually foolish. If you have to lie, you should at least do so in a manner that won’t be exposed too soon. But they didn’t even bother about that. And when you disagreed they resorted immediately to force to impose their argument.”
