Is it just crass insensitivity or is it rather extreme vindictiveness that has led the Chinese to try to persuade a Spanish climbing team to climb Mount Kailash? Probably it doesn't matter, either way it is just more evidence -- as if any more were really needed -- of the contempt and disdain for others' beliefs and values for which the tyrants in Beijing are already infamous.
If our indignation at China's latest outrage puzzles some, consider this. Kailash, situated in the far west of Tibet in one of the world's most isolated places, is one of the most venerated places on earth, seen by at least four groups as the center of their cosmic universe. Kailash is sacred to Buddhists for whom it is the dwelling of the deity Chakrasamvara; Hindus, for whom it is the abode of Lord Shiva; Jains, as the place where Rishaba, the first of the twenty-four Tirthankaras, attained liberation; and followers of Tibet's pre-Buddhist religion Bon, for whom it is the seat of the sky goddess Sipaimen. It is hard to think of anywhere else in the world -- Temple Mount in Jerusalem comes closest -- which is quite so sacred to quite so many people.
Oh, and there is one other thing about the 6,714m mountain: It has never been climbed.
To contemplate doing so is to contemplate an act of such sacrilege that we can only recoil in horror. Once again, finding a comparison to put this into perspective for our Western readers is not easy -- urinating in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Bethlehem, perhaps.
One thing that amazes about this is that the team that has been solicited by the thugs in Zhongnanhai to perform this sacrilege apparently wishes to do it as "a collective action aimed at changing [humanity's] self destructive course ... demanding respect for nature and for humanity," or so The Observer newspaper quoted the team leader Jesus Martinez Novas as saying. All of which goes to show that you can care for the environment and nevertheless be as insensitive to other people and ignorant as a dead pig.
It is, of course, difficult to see the quest to desecrate Mount Kailash as anything more than another attack by Beijing on the culture and beliefs of the people of illegally occupied Tibet, just another affront that the Dalai Lama's would-be subjects have to endure, seeing that they have the misfortune not to have lashings of oil like the unpleasant regime in Iraq, nor happen to live in Europe like the Kosovars. But Kailash is not important only to Tibet or even to those religions that consider it sacred, it is important to us all. Diminishing Kailash diminishes something in the human spirit and there is little enough of that left after the unprecedented barbarism and horror of the last century.
As for international reaction to China's plan, expect waves of overwhelming hypocrisy. There was an outcry over the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, but since nobody really has any leverage over the Taliban the statues could not be saved. A lot of countries, especially Europe, the US and Japan, have a lot of influence over China, but mesmerized as they are by the China market myth, expect protest to be minimal.
As for China, what can we say except that any manifestation of the human spirit is obviously anathema to its leaders. The very concept of the sacred must be destroyed if only to show the superiority of the no-longer-dialectical materialism which is the only thing they appreciate. Once again we see the Chinese leadership's vision of the human spirit and what does it resemble but that most sleep-depriving of images from Orwell's 1984 , a boot stamping on a human face for ever.
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