I remember watching the press video of the Lhasa Express sometime back....another industrial leap everyone seemed very proud of... milling faces..all smiling.. and all chinese. I remember my heart sinking and wishing for the camera to lay bare the tibetan face in this as well... but considering all those press releases were monitored by the chinese govt, not much chance of that....
I'm back to that thought again today after reading about the Tibetan activist, Tenzing tsundue being given an order of restraint on movement prior to the arrival of the Chinese President in town... this man is wholly responsible for making me view tibet as a 'nation' ... to be aware of its politics.. the Chinese propaganda... and what it's really like to be revolutionary against the biggest communist country in the world.
It gets you thinking on what it would really be like to be without a country? We all have these avant-garde ideas about democracy and public opinion and equal opportunity and are suitably incensed on any inkling of an infringement... but what if you have no one to fight against?
No government... no policing... up against a country the whole world is shit scared of ... living in a place where you're considered a foreigner after residing for more than 80 years.. and still not freaking out... still no suicide bombers... no violence... because amazingly the millions of tibetans scattered all over the world are still sane enough to listen to the Dalai Lama....
Lhasa ground reality
Nuns raped,illegal to have a buddha figurine or picture,the only way of income for tibetan girls is to become whores for chinese police or to escape to india,no job unless you learn chinese,no tibetan learning in any school in lhasa,immediate imprisonment for uttering the name of the lama,4000 chinese enter lhasa everyday through various means...which is a systematic chinese plan to eventually promulgate the area free of any tibetan influence, industrialisation which is unprecended and which the sensitive tibetan ecology can clearly not handle,police atrocities which make indian 'fake encounters' seem like a joke, no press release of these atrocities is allowed, anyone can be picked up from anywhere anytime on any plausible ground,mental torture where you're forced to curse tibet in order to show your allegiance to china,the trek to india through nepal takes several months and most die in between,most of the tibetan kids come to dharamsala as it's the only place where they're likely to be aware of their nationality in some way when they grow, most of them have their parents and families back in lhasa...mostly with no way of communication, china has already forced google earth to show tibet as a part of chinese territory,and if today anyone searches on lhasa politics on the internet.. there's a systematic cleaning-up happening in china itself before anything can appear on your screens....
Out of sight..out of mind.. it's that simple and it's working.
India will of course do nothing because we have to save our ass first. But what pisses me off is that when the Indian Government was responsible for staving off the fate of the Tibetans in the Tashkent Agreement without consulting anyone... then why the hell are they being chicken now and playing out this drone of Sino-Indian friendship...how can they not get involved now after they were a party in fucking up the tibetans in the first place?
The chinese ambassador has already claimed arunachal as a part of their territory in a recent interview, which is not a new development.. it's obvious that in the upcoming short visit , no one is going to discuss this sensitive issue. But if the chinese stand is so abundantly clear, what the hell is the NDA going to do?
Give it off? Because duh, the rest of 'shining india' doesn't give two hoots about the north east anyways.. how much will it really take for someone to be that scared of china to actually fight back?
Fight for the illegitimate people... of a make-believe politica in 2006.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
says:
5 comments:
very nice and astute post...
wish I had some answers for you... keep writing.
cheers...
very well written,very relevant
"it gets you thinking on what it would really be like to be without a country?"--- very well said,
the govt unfortunately cannot defend its own territory against claims of other nations be it arunachal pradesh,kashmir or the bits and prices of n/e states that bangaldesh is simply occupying.
small factual error - the upa is in power and not the nda so the (dis)honour of selling our country lies with them.
though i think it really does not matter these politicians are of no good
ir: My apologies. Was quite pissed off while writing this and so well..errors galore!
It's true that the government seems defenceless...I really don't know how much of it will get shared before we cease to exist altogether...and although, all politicina are the same for me too, I somehow hate the UPA currently as their minority politics gets me riled up...
Dude: Thanks! Wish there were some answers at all...Period.
You know, I was in McLeodganj recently and some things I saw there vwere quite fascinating - at one level, the Tibetans are milking the issue - they get funding and forigners come to adopt them. I'm not saying that they're not a people who don't need it but the way the milk it - the blatant commercialisation of the movement quite sad. The irony of seeing Israeli's joing a march for a free Tibet was a bit weird. Anyway... In India what will happen - we need gas from Burma and the commies who sold us over in 1962 hold power even today. We claim to be a democracy but we support autocracy everywhere we go..
PS : I inadvertently posted as anonymous a few posts ago...
I know k.. but any money is good money and that's what I always believe. Considering our country is clearly NOT gonna help them out of this now, maybe the Israelis and American are a good thing..
Post a Comment