British writer, Patrick French, has earned a reputation as a brilliant historian for his books on the Indian partition and the biography of Arthur Younghusband. He has also led a second life as an idealist-activist for the Tibetan cause. But readers hitherto may not have come across any of his writings on his pet passion, apart from an obituary to a Tibetan martyr, Thupten Ngodrup, the Tibetan who burned himself to death protesting against what French calls the "poor and useless United Nations" in New Delhi in 1998.
In Tibet, Tibet: Dreams and Memories of a Lost Land, French treats the self-immolation of Ngodrup as an allegory of Tibet's struggle for survival. French, who knew Ngodrup during his student days in India, calls it a "very Buddhist death, a suicide bomber who turned his violence inwards, killing only himself, protecting others."
Combining memoir, travelogue and fine historical research, the book reads more like an account of French's own personal odyssey into Tibetan culture, religion and history over the past two decades, than as a revisionist history of Tibet. French's disenchantment with Tibet's struggle for self-determination shows throughout as he laments the speed with which the campaign for the Tibetan struggle is proceeding.
Thanks to his long association with exiled Tibetans, French writes fluently and confidently on the plight of the Tibetan nation, and the best part of the book lies in his deep observations of Tibetan history (some of which may even take Tibetans by surprise). Particularly valuable are his long travels into the heart of the Chinese-controlled country and his interviews with the Tibetans living there. He talks to Tibetan Muslims, untouchables, prostitutes and even Tibetan ex-red guards, who have lived through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, providing readers with a peek into how Maoism once drove people to such destructive madness.
"What has disappeared for those inside Tibet is the link between the past and the present. This link has been broken systematically by the imposition of an alien political ideology, exported from industrial Europe, and the physical destruction of texts and objects. The effect of the mental cleansing has been to kill the processes of thought and memory that define a society. This rupture has left those in Tibet, both Tibetans and Chinese, in a state of something like atrophy," he concludes.
For French and his predecessors, travelers who endured immense hardship visiting the highly isolated region, Tibet was once a Shangri-La: the land of flying lamas, singing nuns, of rocky snow-clad mountains, lush green valleys and ancient mystics. French's fascination with Tibet began very early on, when the Dalai Lama paid a visit to his Catholic school in England. French says he was captivated by the Tibetan leader's charisma, which finally led him to the study of Tibetan Buddhism.
While he flags off the virtues of the religion, French avoids the accusation of being an enthusiast by noting that Tibetan Buddhism is also marked by many shortcomings -- like any ecclesiastical system. Among others, it has produced a best-selling lama who has earned a sexual harassment lawsuit and another who has recognized Hollywood's hard-kicking Steven Seagal as a reincarnation of a medieval Tibetan master.)
Nonetheless, French's respect for the Dalai Lama's towering morality remains unshaken, even though he feels that Tibetan philosophy, a great tool for the development of spiritual peace, has turned out to be woefully inadequate when it comes to the matters of statecraft and diplomacy. He calls for sensible international action and believes that the current sympathy for the Tibetan cause has failed to translate into concrete action for change.
The book is well researched and his scholarship shows throughout, though he carries his erudition lightly -- the book is full of lively insights and humor. Some chapters can be unbalanced, as in one chapter in which he combines a conversation with a Tibetan untouchable, a Rakyabpa, with an interview with an exiled freedom fighter.
French relies on sources in exile and within Tibet, and takes pride in the fact he is able to avoid using "the usual contacts." His intimacy with the exiled Tibetans is put to good use in close interviews with independent writers and intellectuals based in India. On several occasions, he quotes from the Tibetan Review, an oft-ignored but authoritative and incisive monthly, published out of Delhi by the Tibetan exiles.
While he thinks the current Tibetan movement is getting nowhere, French ends the book with a weak and jittery conclusion. Despite his criticisms over the passivity of the current leadership, French's own proposition for the future of Tibet turns out to be almost a mirror image of the "middle way approach" -- no independence, but genuine autonomy -- that the current exiled Tibetan government is adopting.
"My sense was that the only realistic hope for the future was for Tibetans to work within the Chinese system, to try to get as many of their countrymen as possible into good positions, and wait for the day when there was reform in Beijing, in the hope that Tibet would then be permitted genuine autonomy and a reassertion of its own identity," he writes.
By linking the hope for the future of Tibet with that great variable -- autonomy -- French, like most observers, has resorted to the laziest and most common tool in the analysis of East Asian politics: putting all the hopes on a possible change in the minds of the leaders in Beijing. And this is the weakest portion of this otherwise superb book of history and travelogue on Tibet.
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