High Hopes for the New Tibetan Prime Minister- in-Exile
It was a long, hard trip to visit the new Tibetan government-in-exile - but it was worth it.
I left Tokyo September 22 to visit the village of Ganchen Kyisong, the home of the Tibetan government-in-exile in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradeshi. My aim was to discuss the present needs and future development of Tibet. The trip was a research project of the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (JINF), a private Tokyo think tank which I head.
Two Diet members of Japan’s main opposition Liberal Democratic Party - Hirofumi Shimomura and Ms Eriko Yamatani - came along. They were visiting India under an India-Japan personnel interchange program co-sponsored by JINF and the Indian Council of World Affairs, respected as India’s most traditional think tank.
After an hour-long flight from Delhi’s Indira Ghandi International Airport, we arrived in Dharamsala for a 40-minute drive up a steep and bumpy country road to our destination at some 2,000 meters above sea level, the village where the Tibetan government-in-exile was set up in 1959.
We had an audience with the fourteenth Dalai Lama and conferred with Lobsang Sangay, the new 43-year-old prime minister-in-exile, who was sworn in August 8.
The Dalai Lama had a healthy complexion and talked open-heartedly, as he always does, for about 90 minutes. He said he slept soundly for the first time in a long time on August 8 - the day he formally delegated all his political authority to the new Kalon Tripa (equivalent to prime minister). Asked about the future of Tibet, the spiritual leader had this to say:
“You know, I have completely retired from politics. I am not a Deng Xiaoping, so certainly will not lay down cloistered rules after retirement. If you have difficult questions, I suggest you please ask the new prime minister.”
Open-heartedness, cheerfulness, and a great sense of humor have always been his great charm.
On the day of our arrival, the Tibetan National Parliament-in-exile, which meets every six months, was in session. The new prime minister is a second-generation exile Tibetan, born in Darjeeling in 1968 to a Tibetan couple who followed in the Dalai Lama’s footsteps to flee to India. He attended the Tibetan Refugee School in his home town;his parents had to sell one of their three cows in order to send their son to elementary school.
After graduating from the University of Delhi on a scholarship from the Tibetan government-in-exile, Sangay went on to study at Harvard University on a Fulbright scholarship, completing a master’s and doctorate to land a position as a senior fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at the Harvard Law School. He and his wife have a daughter, but when he was elected prime minister last April, Sangay decided to forgo his blessed life in the United States, at least for the time being, and returned alone to India to assume a position with a five-year tenure.
Sixty Years of the Failure of China
A special feature of the new government-in-exile came after the Dalai Lama decided last March to relinquish his political leadership role. As a result, theTibetan government-in-exile shifted from a union of church and state to their separation. It is now marked by youthfulness and internationalism.
The leadership is quite young; the new prime minister, as mentioned earlier, is just 43, the speaker of the National Parliament is 44, and the foreign minister is just 42 and female. Prime Minister Sangay is an expert in international human rights law, competent not only in Tibetan and English but also in various Indian dialects, as well as Nepalese. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ms Dicki Chhoyang, born and raised in Quebec, Canada, is fluent in English and French and once served as an executive of a corporation with gross annual sales of close to $3 billion. On top of that, she speaks Chinese like a native, having once lived in China for some ten years on a research mission.
Prime Minister Sangay met us a little past 5 p.m. after the National Parliament’s session. His executive office was simple, decorated only by the Tibetan national flag and a ceremonial white woven cloth called kata, with only one desk-top computer in sight in terms of office equipment. Seated in a corner of his office, the young leader began:
“The Dalai Lama has graciously devoted all his life to a fight to win autonomy for Tibet, protect our indigenous religion (Buddhism), language, and culture, as well as open the path for the Tibetans to live in ways that we genuinely are entitled to. Now, those of us younger generation Tibetans must carry the torch of his centrist line and do our very best to preserve the spiritual culture of us Tibetans.”
Even so, exileTibetans number approximately 120,000, and Tibetans living in the whole of Tibet are barely more than 6 million - a small number when compared to China’s population of over 1.3 billion. However, Prime Minister Sangay remains firm in his resolve to step up the fight for Tibet and its people.
“The world is very nervous about the rise of China,” continued Sangay. “But we Tibetans have fought against the Chinese over the past 2,000 years. As a result, I believe knowledge is stored in our DNA on how to deal with them. You may recall that the thirteenth Dalai Lama fled to India after being persistently suppressed by Qing dynasty China, but in 1913 he managed to return to Tibet to re-establish freedom and independence for Tibet. I am firmly convinced that we will once again be able to return to Tibet and regain identity and control of our own lives.”
China has engaged in merciless ethnic suppression in an effort to implement the “Chinization” of the Tibetans, denying them their indigenous language, religion, and culture. Noting that China plunders and destroys everything that belongs to the Tibetans, the prime minister passionately discussed the need to overcome his nation’s China problem by bringing to light the dark reality of the Chinese suppression of Tibet to the international community. This, he stressed, is one of the surest ways to protect and save the Tibetans as well as safeguard democracy and freedom of the world, noting:
“China has suffered failure these past 60 years. Resistance movements spread across Tibet in 2008, when the Olympics were held in Beijing. Since 2009, the Uighurs rose against the Chinese, and then the Mongolians followed suit in 2011. Do you know that more than 90 percent of Tibetans who took part in the resistance movements were under 60 years old?
“The Tibetans finally rose against the Chinese, after having been subjugated to Chinese education system and the Chinese economic rule for as long as 60 years, with Chinese culture thrust mercilessly on us. Most of those Tibetans have yet to see the Dalai Lama. Those of us exile Tibetans have not been to Tibet. And yet, the ethnic suppression we have been subjected to at home and abroad has led us to develop an ever purer Tibetan mind, which we steadfastly sustain.”
Emulating Japan’s Nation-Building Principles
While referring to Britain’s 250-year rule over India in which English was forced on the Indians as the official national language, the prime minister noted that India achieved independence from Britain under a significant influence from Japan, stressing that Tibet can be similarly influenced by Japan on its way to eventual independence. Asked to what extent he thought the Mideast’s ツ黴“Jasmine Revolution” would influence the Chinese rule over different ethnic groups in China, he responded by describing his pride and trust in the spirit of resistance shared by the Tibetans as follows:
“Actually, the ‘Turquois Revolution’ had come before the “Jasmine Revoluion.’ Turquiois, as you know, is a precious stone carried and cherished by the Tibetans. Actually, it is we Tibetans who began resisting against authoritarian and inhumane rule, and have been demanding liberty and democracy much longer than anyone else on earth.
Declaring that he is proud to have been born Tibetan and to fight as a Tibetan - and die as a Tibetan, if necessary - Prime Minister Sangay also remarked that he hopes Tibet will emulate the basics of nation-building principles from Japan, noting:
“Japan marvelously overcame the many difficulties resulting from the Meiji Reform of 1868, as well as its defeat in World War II. I wish to concentrate my greatest efforts on giving children the highest possible level of education. By providing high quality education, which allows children of poor families, such as I once was, to become top experts, I am hoping to build a solid basis of nation-building within the next 10 to 20 years. I am determined to develop a sound infrastructure to nurture excellent human resources who will sustain the Tibetan fight for democracy and liberty.”
The prime minister then touched on the finances of his government-in-exile, explaining:
“Our annual budget is roughly $22 million, out of which we pay the expenses for our representative offices in a total of 12 countries, including Japan;pay salaries for some 2,000 government employees, including teachers, both at home and abroad; and cover expenses needed in our efforts to integrate Tibetan refugees in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, who number roughly 120,000. Our total budget certainly isn’t large, but we are expending the limited funds most efficiently with high transparency. Incidentally, my monthly salary is $367.”
Foreign Minister Chhoyang chimed in with a mild protest:
“Oh my! That’s 20 dollars more than mine!”
The two-hour interview with Prime Minister Sangay ended with Diet member Shimomura assuring him of his readiness to take continued interest in matters relating to Tibet as a Japanese politician. On my part, I am more than willing to pledge my determination to root for Prime Minister Sangay and his cabinet ministers as they strive to secure for all the Tibetans the proud and dignified way of life they deserve.
(Translated from “Renaissance Japan” column no. 479 in the October 6, 2011 issue of The Weekly Shincho.)