Uighur Terrorists: Western World Shot Their Own Feet Again
The arrests on July 8th, 2010 of three men in Norway and Germany accused of orchestrating a terrorist bomb plot seemed like another routine raid by a Western government in the continuing campaign against groups linked to Al Qaeda. But one detail stuck out: Norwegian officials said one of the men was a Chinese Uighur, and all three supposedly belonged to Turkestan Islamic Party that advocates separatism in western China.
Terrorism experts say the plot in Norway indicates that Al Qaeda and the few members of the Turkestan Islamic Party, or TIP, who trained in the tribal areas of Pakistan see some mutual benefit in cooperating. The use of relatively obscure ethnic Uighur recruits could allow Al Qaeda to penetrate more deeply into the West. (Source)
Even US declared Turkestan Islamic Party as one terrorist group, but the organization is considered as a tool to damage China, its members and organizations are still under protection in US and European countries.
Taliban is an old story that tells how western countries lifted a stone that would hit their own feet, Turkestan Islamic Party is just another one, but I guess it would not be the last one.
Open Letter: A Sikh Leader Begs Clinton To Intervene In India
Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh reminds Hillary Clinton that her husband has condemned the murder of Sikhs during his visit to India in the year 2000, and accuses the Indian government has murdered over 250,000 Sikhs since 1984, more than 300,000 Christians in Nagaland, over 90,000 Muslims in Kashmir, tens of thousands of Christians and Muslims throughout the country.
The Honorable Hillary Clinton
Secretary of State
Government of The United States 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520
Dear Secretary of State Madam Clinton,
Congratulations on becoming the U.S. Secretary of State. Yours is a very important job, protecting the people of the United States by carrying out diplomacy and foreign policy to protect our national security.
I know that you are aware of the troubled situation in South Asia. As you know, India and Pakistan have had a longstanding dispute. You may remember when an Indian official was quoted as saying that Pakistan should be made part of India. You may also remember that it was India that set off the nuclear arms race in South Asia.
You may also have noted that India opposed your action sending Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to the region and that it publicly told President Obama to stay out of the situation in the region.
You are also aware of the repression of minorities in India. Your husband, former President Clinton, wrote in the foreword to Madeleine Albright’s book about the massacre in Chithisinghpora:
“During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering 38 Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn’t made the trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn’t made the trip because I feared what militants might do, I couldn’t have done my job as president of the United States.”
The Indian government has murdered over 250,000 Sikhs since 1984, more than 300,000 Christians in Nagaland, over 90,000 Muslims in Kashmir, tens of thousands of Christians and Muslims throughout the country, and tens of thousands of Tamils, Assamese, Manipuris, and others.
A report issued by the Movement Against State Repression (MASR) shows that India admitted that it held 52,268 political prisoners under the repressive “Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act” (TADA) even though it expired in 1995.
Additionally, according to Amnesty International, there are tens of thousands of other minorities being held as political prisoners. MASR report quotes the Punjab Civil Magistracy as writing “if we add up the figures of the last few years the number of innocent persons killed would run into lakhs [hundreds of thousands.]”
The Indian Supreme Court called the Indian government’s murders of Sikhs “worse than genocide.”
I urge you to use your influence as Secretary of State to end the repression of minorities in India.
As you know, many minorities, including the Sikhs of Khalistan, the Christians of Nagalim, the Muslims of Kashmir, and others throughout the subcontinent, are fighting for their freedom from India. In all, there are 17 freedom movements. I call for the release of all of India’s political prisoners. In addition, I respectfully urge the Administration to support a free and fair plebiscite on the issue of independence for Khalistan. There should also be similar plebiscites for Kashmir, Nagaland, and every other nation that seeks its freedom from Indian rule. It is essential that the United States use its influence to promote its ideals of freedom.
Thank you for your attention and congratulations again on becoming Secretary of State.
Sincerely,
Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh President Council of Khalistan
Why do western commentators idolise a celebrity monk who hangs out with Sharon Stone and once guest-edited French Vogue?
Has there ever been a political figure more ridiculous than the Dalai Lama? This is the "humble monk" who forswears worldly goods in favour of living a simple life dressed in maroon robes. Yet in 1992 he guest-edited French Vogue, the bible of the decadent high-fashion classes, which is packed with pictures of the half-starved daughters of the aristocracy modelling skirts and shirts that most of us could never afford.
He claims to be the current incarnation of the Tulkus line of Buddhist masters, who are "exempt from the wheel of death and rebirth". Yet he's best known for hanging out with clueless western celebs like Richard Gere and Sharon Stone (who is still most famous for showing her vagina on the big screen). Stone once introduced the Dalai Lama at a glittering fundraising ball as "Mr Please, Please, Please Let Me Back Into China!"
The Dalai Lama says he wants Tibetan autonomy and political independence. Yet he allows himself to be used as a tool by western powers keen to humiliate China. Between the late 1950s and 1974, he is alleged to have received around $15,000 a month, or $180,000 a year, from the CIA. He has also been, according to the same reporter, "remarkably nepotistic", promoting his brothers and their wives to positions of extraordinary power in his fiefdom-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India.
He poses as the quirky, giggly, modern monk who once auctioned his Land Rover on eBay for $80,000 and has even done an advert for Apple (quite what skinny white computers have got to do with Buddhism is anybody's guess). Yet in truth he is a product of the crushing feudalism of archaic, pre-modern Tibet, where an elite of Buddhist monks treated the masses as serfs and ruthlessly punished them if they stepped out of line.
The Dalai Lama demands religious freedom. Yet he persecutes a Buddhist sect that worships a deity called Dorje Shugden. He outlawed praying to Dorje Shugden in 1996, and those who defied his writ were thrown out of their jobs, mocked in the streets and even had their homes smashed up by heavy-handed officials from his government-in-exile. When worshippers complained about their treatment, they were told by representatives of the Dalai Lama that "concepts like democracy and freedom of religion are empty when it comes to the wellbeing of the Dalai Lama".
As the Dalai Lama tours Britain, lots of people are asking: why won't Brown receive him at Downing Street? I have a different question: why should Brown, who for all his troubles is still the head of an elected political party, meet with an authoritarian, fame-chasing, Apple-loving monk?
The Dalai Lama has effectively been turned into a cartoon good guy. In America and western Europe, where backward anti-modern sentiments are widespread amongst self-loathing sections of the educated and the elite, the Dalai Lama has been embraced as a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness. Despite the fact that he advertises Apple, guest-edits Vogue and drives a Land Rover, he is held up as evidence that living the simple eastern life is preferable to, in the words of Philip Rawson, westerners' "gradually more pointless pursuit of material satisfactions". Just as earlier generations of disillusioned aristocrats fell in love with a fictional version of Tibet (Shangri-La), so contemporary un-progressives idolise a fictional image of the Dalai Lama.
Most strikingly, the Dalai Lama is used as a battering ram by western governments in their culture war with China. The reason he is flattered by world leaders and bankrolled by the CIA is not because these institutions care very much for liberty in Tibet, but rather because they want to ratchet up international pressure on their new competitors in world politics: the Chinese. You don't have to be a defender of the authoritarian regime in Beijing (and I most certainly am not) to see that such global sabre-rattling is more likely to entrench tensions between the Tibetan people and China, and increase instability in world affairs, rather than herald anything like a new era of freedom in the east.
Far from "helping Tibet", the slavish western worshippers of the Dalai Lama are helping to stifle the development of a real, lively movement for liberty and democracy in the Tibetan regions. One author on the Tibetan independence movement argues that "the Dalai Lama's role as ultimate spiritual authority is holding back the political process of democratisation", since "the assumption that he occupies the correct moral ground from a spiritual perspective means that any challenge to his political authority may be interpreted as anti-religious".
At least one reason why the Dalai Lama can pose as "the ultimate spiritual authority" and all-round supreme leader of Tibetans and their future is because influential elements in the west have empowered him to play that role. In doing so, they have been complicit in the infantilisation of the Tibetan people. Tibetans now suffer the double horror of being ruled by undemocratic Chinese officials on one hand, and demeaned by the Dalai Lama and his western supporters on the other.
Stupid Pope Slams Atheism: It Has Led to Cruel and Injust Ideologies
This is the news. Seems the guy does not know anything about the history of his own religion. He dees not know how brutal his own religion is and the injust ideologies his own religion has.
DELHI, India May 29 -- Police arrested more than 4,000 protestors who were engaged in a peaceful march through the streets of India's capital Tuesday to call for the government to end violence against Christians. The rally, called "Stop Violence On Christians," was organized after two recently televised attacks on Christians and an increase of anti-Christian incidents in 2007, AsiaNews reported Tuesday.
The station house police chief confirmed he had "arrested" approximately 4,000 people at 1:05 pm and released them an hour later.
"This was the first time since November 1997 that such large numbers of Christians have been arrested in the Parliament Street Police Station. It was incredible to see Catholic nuns, Protestant pastors, civil society activists and more singing Christian songs of liberation within the police station," said John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council, and President, All India Catholic Union.
Organizers expected 2,000 people, but attendance was estimated at 5,000. Speakers demanded human dignity and constitutional rights for the Christian community and other repressed minorities, who face harassment from Hindu fundamentalists and, in many cases, local government officials.
I post this just want to show that China and India, or generally most of Asia don't welcome Christians in religion. The business and travels are still wecomed.
Dalai Lama show is set to roll into Australia again next month and again Australian politicians are getting themselves in a twist as to whether they should meet him.
Rarely do journalists challenge the Dalai Lama.
Partly it is because he is so charming and engaging. Most published accounts of him breeze on as airily as the subject, for whom a good giggle and a quaint parable are substitutes for hard answers. But this is the man who advocates greater autonomy for millions of people who are currently Chinese citizens, presumably with him as head of their government. So, why not hold him accountable as a political figure?
No mere spiritual leader, he was the head of Tibet's government when he went into exile in 1959. It was a state apparatus run by aristocratic, nepotistic monks that collected taxes, jailed and tortured dissenters and engaged in all the usual political intrigues. (The Dalai Lama's own father was almost certainly murdered in 1946, the consequence of a coup plot.)
The government set up in exile in India and, at least until the 1970s, received $US1.7 million a year from the CIA.
The money was to pay for guerilla operations against the Chinese, notwithstanding the Dalai Lama's public stance in support of non-violence, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA's payroll from the late 1950s until 1974, reportedly receiving $US15,000 a month ($US180,000 a year).
The funds were paid to him personally, but he used all or most of them for Tibetan government-in-exile activities, principally to fund offices in New York and Geneva, and to lobby internationally.
Details of the government-in-exile's funding today are far from clear. Structurally, it comprises seven departments and several other special offices. There have also been charitable trusts, a publishing company, hotels in India and Nepal, and a handicrafts distribution company in the US and in Australia, all grouped under the government-in-exile's Department of Finance.
The government was involved in running 24 businesses in all, but decided in 2003 that it would withdraw from these because such commercial involvement was not appropriate.
Several years ago, I asked the Dalai Lama's Department of Finance for details of its budget. In response, it claimed then to have annual revenue of about $US22 million, which it spent on various health, education, religious and cultural programs.
The biggest item was for politically related expenditure, at $US7 million. The next biggest was administration, which ran to $US4.5 million. Almost $US2 million was allocated to running the government-in-exile's overseas offices.
For all that the government-in-exile claims to do, these sums seemed remarkably low.
It is not clear how donations enter its budgeting. These are likely to run to many millions annually, but the Dalai Lama's Department of Finance provided no explicit acknowledgment of them or of their sources.
Certainly, there are plenty of rumours among expatriate Tibetans of endemic corruption and misuse of monies collected in the name of the Dalai Lama.
Many donations are channelled through the New York-based Tibet Fund, set up in 1981 by Tibetan refugees and US citizens. It has grown into a multimillion-dollar organisation that disburses $US3 million each year to its various programs.
Part of its funding comes from the US State Department's Bureau for Refugee Programs.
Like many Asian politicians, the Dalai Lama has been remarkably nepotistic, appointing members of his family to many positions of prominence. In recent years, three of the six members of the Kashag, or cabinet, the highest executive branch of the Tibetan government-in-exile, have been close relatives of the Dalai Lama.
An older brother served as chairman of the Kashag and as the minister of security. He also headed the CIA-backed Tibetan contra movement in the 1960s.
A sister-in-law served as head of the government-in-exile's planning council and its Department of Health.
A younger sister served as health and education minister and her husband served as head of the government-in-exile's Department of Information and International Relations.
Their daughter was made a member of the Tibetan parliament in exile. A younger brother has served as a senior member of the private office of the Dalai Lama and his wife has served as education minister.
The second wife of a brother-in-law serves as the representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile for northern Europe and head of international relations for the government-in-exile. All these positions give the Dalai Lama's family access to millions of dollars collected on behalf of the government-in-exile.
The Dalai Lama might now be well-known but few really know much about him. For example, contrary to widespread belief, he is not a vegetarian. He eats meat. He has done so (he claims) on a doctor's advice following liver complications from hepatitis. I have checked with several doctors but none agrees that meat consumption is necessary or even desirable for a damaged liver.
What has the Dalai Lama actually achieved for Tibetans inside Tibet?
If his goal has been independence for Tibet or, more recently, greater autonomy, then he has been a miserable failure.
He has kept Tibet on the front pages around the world, but to what end? The main achievement seems to have been to become a celebrity. Possibly, had he stayed quiet, fewer Tibetans might have been tortured, killed and generally suppressed by China.
In any event, the current Dalai Lama is 72 years old. His successor — a reincarnation — will be appointed as a child and it will be many years before he plays a meaningful role. As far as China is concerned, that is one problem that will take care of itself, irrespective of whether or not John Howard or Kevin Rudd meet the current Dalai Lama.
The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with violence. Throughout the ages, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to massacre infidels, heretics, and even other devotees within their own ranks. Some people maintain that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic violence of other religions. To be sure, for some practitioners in the West, Buddhism is more a spiritual and psychological discipline than a theology in the usual sense. It offers meditative techniques that are said to promote enlightenment and harmony within oneself. But like any other belief system, Buddhism must be judged not only by its teachings but by the secular behavior of its proponents.
Buddhist Exceptionalism? A glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of religious groups. In Tibet, from the early seventeenth century well into the eighteenth, competing Buddhist sects engaged in armed hostilities and summary executions.1 In the twentieth century, in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere, Buddhists clashed with each other and with nonBuddhists. In Sri Lanka, armed battles in the name of Buddhism are part of Sinhalese history.2
Just a few years ago in South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various duties. The brawls partly destroyed the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, “it would use worshippers’ donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars.”3
But what of the Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chinese crackdown in 1959? It is widely held by many devout Buddhists that Old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La.
The Dalai Lama himself stated that “the pervasive influence of Buddhism” in Tibet, “amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment.”4 A reading of Tibet’s history suggests a different picture. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is quite a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army. His two previous lama “incarnations” were then retroactively recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the first Dalai Lama into the third Dalai Lama.
To elevate his authority beyond worldly challenge, the first (a.k.a. third) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was done in by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their high priests or other courtiers.
Bitter hostility between competing Buddhist sects continued over the centuries. In 1660, the fifth Dalai Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The fifth Dalai Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too “like eggs smashed against rocks….In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.”
In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama’s denomination). The Gelug school, known also as the “Yellow Hats,” showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional prayers: “Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine.” An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any of the wars of other religions. This grim history remains largely unvisited by followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.5
Shangri-La (for Lords and Lamas) Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.” Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.”4 Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace,” and admits to having owned slaves during his reign.5
Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet.7 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.“8 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and hunt down runaway serfs.
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine.9 The monastic estates also conscripted impoverished peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery.10 The greater part of the rural population—some 700,000 of an estimated total of 1,250,000—were serfs. Serfs and other peasants generally were little better than slaves. They went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for high-ranking lamas or for the secular landed aristocracy. Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners send them to work in a distant location.11
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished.” They “were just slaves without rights.”12 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He claimed that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord's men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain.13
The serfs were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land—or the monastery’s land—without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.14 They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery sometimes for the rest of their lives.15
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
Torture and Mutilation In the Dalai Lama’s Tibet, torture and mutilation—including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation—were favored punishments inflicted upon runaway serfs and thieves. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”16 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.17
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, and breaking off hands. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling.18
The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.19
Early visitors to Tibet comment about the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,“ while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them….The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.”20
Occupation and Revolt The Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1951, claiming suzerainty over that country. The 1951 treaty provided for ostensible self-government under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration “to promote social reforms.” At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect change. Among the earliest reforms they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. “Contrary to popular belief in the West,” writes one observer, the Chinese “took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion.” No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants.21
The Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go over the centuries and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.22 The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the young Dalai Lama was installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian solutions upon Tibet.
In 1956-57, armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The uprising received extensive assistance from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.23 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that group. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA in 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.24
Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.25 “Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,“ writes Hugh Deane.26 In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.“27 Eventually the resistance crumbled.
Enter the Communists Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese in Tibet, after 1959 they did abolish slavery and the serfdom system of unpaid labor, and put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular education, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.28
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants.29
By 1961, the Chinese expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas, and reorganized the peasants into hundreds of communes. They distributed hundreds of thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.30
Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But the many monks who had been conscripted into the religious orders as children were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends, and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.31
Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.”32 But the official 1953 census—six years before the Chinese crackdown—recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.33 Other census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves—of which we have not seen evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.
Chinese authorities do admit to “mistakes,” particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when religious persecution reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming was imposed on the peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls over Tibet “and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades.”34
In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.35
In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet and various western provinces. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han preeminence are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in political “subversion.” Some arrestees were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.36
Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (For years there was a one-child limit for Han families.) If a couple goes over the limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by district. Meanwhile, Tibetan history, culture, and religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus on Chinese history and culture.37
Elites, Émigrés, and the CIA For the rich lamas and lords, the Communist intervention was a calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. However, throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama’s annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.38
In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline “Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right.”39 In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who had been apprehended while visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Today, mostly through the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable-sounding than the CIA, the US Congress continues to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for “democracy activities” within the Tibetan exile community. The Dalai Lama also gets money from financier George Soros, who now runs the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other institutes.40
The Question of Culture We are told that when the Dalai Lama ruled Tibet, the people lived in contented and tranquil symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords, in a social order sustained by a deeply spiritual, nonviolent culture, inspired by humane and pacific religious teachings. The Tibetan religious culture was the social glue and comforting balm that kept rich lama and poor peasant spiritually bonded together, to maintain those proselytes who embrace Old Tibet as a cultural purity, a Shangri-La.
One is reminded of the idealized imagery of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in a deep spiritual bond with their Church, under the protection of their lords.41 Again we are invited to accept a particular culture on its own terms, which means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those at the top who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic reality than does the romanticized image of medieval Europe.
When seen in all its grim realities, Old Tibet confirms the view expressed earlier in this book that culture is anything but neutral. Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of grave injustices, benefiting some portion of a society’s population at great cost to other segments. In theocratic Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the poor as deserving their mean lowly existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residues of virtues and vices accumulated from past lives, all presented as part of God's will.
It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more traditionally spiritual societies. This is probably true, and it may explain why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is a brutal class injustice whatever its cultural wrapping. There is a difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist side by side
Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that he continues to be revered in Tibet, but
…few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans. Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to return to power. “I've already lived that life once before,” said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, “I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave.”42
Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk’s building. When she asked how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, Lewis thought their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful “not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time,” or deal with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger women “were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naive.” They recounted stories of their grandmothers’ ordeals with monks who used them as “wisdom consorts,” telling them “how much merit they were gaining by providing the ‘means to enlightenment’— after all, the Buddha had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment.”
The women interviewed by Lewis spoke bitterly about the monastery’s confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. When a boy cried for his mother, he would be told “Why do you cry for her, she gave you up - she’s just a woman.” Among the other issues was “the rampant homosexuality in the Gelugpa sect. All was not well in Shangri-la,” Lewis opines.43
The monks who were granted political asylum in California applied for Social Security. Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted with the paperwork. She observes that they continue to receive Social Security checks amounting to $550 to $700 per month along with Medicare and MediCal. In addition, the monks reside rent free in nicely furnished apartments. “They pay no utilities, have free access to the Internet on computers provided for them, along with fax machines, free cell and home phones and cable TV.” In addition, they receive a monthly payment from their order. And the dharma center takes up a special collection from its members (all Americans), separate from membership dues. Some members eagerly carry out chores for the monks, including grocery shopping and cleaning their apartments and toilets. These same holy men “have no problem criticizing Americans for their ‘obsession with material things.”44
To support the Chinese overthrow of the old feudal theocracy is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in Tibet. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La adherents in the West.
The converse is also true. To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibet’s religious culture is being undermined by the occupation. Indeed this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed, and the theocracy has passed into history. What I am questioning here is the supposedly admirable and pristinely spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. In short, we can advocate religious freedom and independence for Tibet without having to embrace the mythology of a Paradise Lost.
Finally, it should be noted that the criticism posed herein is not intended as a personal attack on the Dalai Lama. Whatever his past associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he speaks often of peace, love, and nonviolence. And he himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of the ancien régime, having been but 15 years old when he fled into exile. In 1994, in an interview with Melvyn Goldstein, he went on record as favoring since his youth the building of schools, “machines,” and roads in his country. He claims that he thought the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor for the lord’s benefit) and certain taxes imposed on the peasants were “extremely bad.” And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation.45 Furthermore, he now proposes democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution, a representative assembly, and other democratic essentials.46
In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It reads in part as follows:
Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes-that is the majority—as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair… I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.47
And more recently in 2001, while visiting California, he remarked that “Tibet, materially, is very, very backward. Spiritually it is quite rich. But spirituality can’t fill our stomachs.”48 Here is a message that should be heeded by the well-fed Buddhist proselytes in the West who wax nostalgic for Old Tibet.
What I have tried to challenge is the Tibet myth, the Paradise Lost image of a social order that actually was a retrograde theocracy of serfdom and poverty, where a favored few lived high and mighty off the blood, sweat, and tears of the many. It was a long way from Shangri-La.
Notes:
Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 6-16. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 113. Kyong-Hwa Seok, “Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple Turf,” San Francisco Examiner, December 3, 1998. Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998), 205. Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123. Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174. As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9. Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110. Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1929), 15, 19-21, 24. Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31. Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113. A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-92. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 92-96. Waddell, Landon, and O'Connor are quoted in Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52. Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985), 29. See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William Leary, “Secret Mission to Tibet,“ Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998. On the CIA's links to the Dalai Lama and his family and entourage, see Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (London: Faber and Faber, 1989). Leary, “Secret Mission to Tibet.” ; Hugh Deane, “The Cold War in Tibet,” CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 1987). George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos, Communist China and Tibet (1964), quoted in Deane, “The Cold War in Tibet.“ Deane notes that author Bina Roy reached a similar conclusion. See Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance, 248 and passim; and Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet, passim. Harrer, Return to Tibet, 54. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 36-38, 41, 57-58; London Times, 4 July 1966. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 29 and 47-48. Tendzin Choegyal, “The Truth about Tibet,“ Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53. Elaine Kurtenbach, Associate Press report, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 February 1998. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 47-48. Report by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril (Berkeley Calif.: 2001), passim. International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril, 66-68, 98. Jim Mann, “CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in '60s, Files Show,“ Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1998; and New York Times, 1 October, 1998; and Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet. News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 3. Heather Cottin, “George Soros, Imperial Wizard,“ CovertAction Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002). The Gelders draw this comparison, The Timely Rain, 64. John Pomfret, “Tibet Caught in China's Web,“ Washington Post, 23 July 1999. Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 15 July 2004. Kim Lewis, additional correspondence to me, 16 July 2004. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 51. Tendzin Choegyal, “The Truth about Tibet.“ The Dalai Lama in Marianne Dresser (ed.), Beyond Dogma: Dialogues and Discourses (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1996). Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, 17 May 2001.
Here is a video from the contents above. I know many westerners will refuse to acknowledge these simple and straight forward facts.
Bombing killed Muslims, Police Fired on Muslims and India government suspects Muslims
Big joke in India.
The bomb, hidden under a bench in the mosque's courtyard, exploded during prayers Friday, killing 11 people.
During clashes that erupted between security officials and Muslim protesters after the blast, police opened fire on stone-throwing crowds, killing five.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Indian media reported that intelligence agencies were looking at a possible link to Islamic militant groups based in predominantly Muslim neighbouring Pakistan, India's longtime rival.
None of the reports offered any reasons why investigators would suspect Muslim groups in an attack on a mosque, but the militants are routinely blamed even when Muslims are targeted.
Such accusations stoke resentment among Muslims, who account for about 130 million of India's 1.1 billion people, about 80 per cent of whom are Hindu.
Hundreds in Hong Kong complain Bible too sexual in apparent protest of obscenity ruling
HONG KONG: More than 1,700 people have complained to Hong Kong regulators that the Bible is overly sexual and violent, apparently to mock a recent ruling condemning a sex survey in a student newspaper.
The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority said Thursday it had received 1,766 complaints since the launch of an anonymous Web site detailing sexual and violent content in the Bible.
The site and the deluge of complaints were sparked by last week's decision by regulatory authorities to classify a university student journal as "indecent."
"Student Press," published by students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was condemned by the Obscene Articles Tribunal for including a sex survey that asked readers whether they had fantasized about incest and bestiality.
The anonymous Web site — which claims to be authored by "a Hong Kong student" — says the holy book contains passages far more disturbing than the sex survey.
Today in Asia - Pacific
Trains make historic border crossing between Koreas
UN aide credits China with pressing Sudan to accept peacekeeping force
Hong Kong lawmaker's comment on Tiananmen outrages victims' survivors
The Chinese-language Web site quotes lengthy Biblical passages containing scenes of rape, incest and cannibalism. It also includes a sample of a complaint letter, which it encourages readers to copy and submit to authorities.
"The Bible not only has incest, its obscenity far exceeds the university journal," the Web site said, after referencing last weeks regulatory decision.
The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority referred the journal to the obscenity tribunal last week, after receiving more than 20 complaints. The authority said Thursday that a total of 184 complaints were lodged against the paper.
Editors at the student journal insisted they did nothing wrong. They also staged protests, saying the "indecent" label violated academic freedom.
Publications deemed "indecent" must be sealed in a wrapper with a warning, and people who publish or distribute such items without doing so may be fined up to HK$400,000 (US$51,152; €37,795) and jailed for one year.
The Bible should also be "wrapped in a plastic bag with a warning notice before it is sold to people over 18 years old," the anonymous Web site said.
So far no major Christian groups have publicly responded to the complaints against the Bible.
Hong Kong's Christian community, largely Protestant and Roman Catholic, is estimated at about 660,000, including 105,000 Filipino Catholics, many of whom work as domestic helpers in this wealthy city.
Recently, the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee conducted a study on India's minority populations. The results are now in the hands of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Consider some of the report's findings relative to the Muslims of India [who encompass 140 million people or about 15% of the Indian population] (10):
In rural areas: 94.9% of Muslims living below poverty line fail to receive free food grain.
Only 3.2% of Muslims get subsidized loans.
Only 2.1% of Muslim farmers have tractors, while just 1% own hand pumps.
54.6% of Muslims in villages and 60% in urban areas have never been to schools. In rural areas, only 0.8% of Muslims are graduates, while in urban areas despite 40% of the Muslims receiving modern education only 3.1% are graduates. Only 1.2% of Muslims are post-graduates in urban areas.
While West Bengal has 25% Muslim population, only 4.2% are employed in state services. In Assam, with a 40% Muslim population, only 11.2% are in government employment. Kerala has 20% Muslims, but only 10.4% of government employees are Muslim.
In Karnataka, where the Muslim population is 12.2%, 8.5% are employed in government services. While in Gujarat, of the 9.1% Muslim population, 5.4% are in state jobs; in Tamil Nadu, against a 5.6% Muslim population, 3.2% are employed in government.
Though West Bengal is known as a political bastion of the left bloc, the ones who have always spoken strongly against parties entertaining communal bias, the state has zero% Muslims in state PSUs. While Kerala has 9.5% in state PSUs, Maharashtra has only 1.9%.
Though the Sachar committee was not able to secure data regarding the presence of Muslims in the armed forces, it is fairly well-known that their percentage here is not more than three.
Muslims form only 10.6% of the population in Maharashtra, but 32.4% of the prison inmates here are Muslims. In New Delhi, 27.9 % of inmates are Muslims, though they form only 11.7% of the population here. While in Gujarat, Muslims form 25.1% of the ones imprisoned, they form 9.1% of the population. In Karnataka, Muslims form 12.23% of populace and 17.5% of those imprisoned.
A recent report of the Sachar Committee reveals astonishing result:
Muslims in India may be actually scraping the bottom of the education barrel, falling even below Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes when it comes to enrolment in literacy schools.
--------1965----2001 Male (Rural) Muslim---60%-----75% SC/ST----50%-----85% Others---80%-----90%
--------1965----2001 Female (Rural) Muslim---32%-----68% SC/ST----19%-----72% Others---40%-----80% Enrollement in Literacy Schools (from the report of the Sachar Committee)
From the above data, Muslims enrollement in literacy schools was higher than pitiful SC/ST communities. But today, Muslims lag behind.
According to the report:
Barring infant mortality and sex ratio, Muslims way behind others, even SC/STs, in social, health indices
The Scheduled Caste peoples are also known as Dalits or Untouchables; Scheduled Tribe people are also referred to as Adivasis. Both are living at the bottom of Indian society. If you think situation of lower castes in India is bad, imagine how bad it is for the Muslims.
India government did realize the problem and of course, it has good policies.
In 1983 a high-powered panel for minorities was appointed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and headed by Dr Gopal Singh. Its report revealed a gloomy picture of Muslim backwardness, especially in education. In the same year, the prime minister’s 15-point programme was proclaimed. It stated, “India of our dreams can survive only if Muslims and other minorities can live in absolute safety and confidence.” The 15 points covered all factors which resulted in backwardness, such as communal riots, lack of representation in state and Central services and nil access to the 20-point development programme.
(Source) As usual, it's easy to find good policies from India government, but most of them are poorly implemented.
Committee of governors on the welfare of minorities submitted its report in 1998, lamenting the dismal implementation of the 15-point programme. It said: “The very purpose of the 15-point programme seems to have been defeated as a result of negligence on the part of the authorities who have failed to implement the programme.”
Post-Babri, post-9/11, the world seems to have split into two camps: Muslim and non-Muslim.
In Malegaon. In a town of seven lakh, there is no health facility, 85 per cent of the population is crammed into slums. There are open drains, flies and mosquitoes abound, chikunguniya and dengue, detected and undetected, take their toll. Children are everywhere, but where are the schools? Most of the older ones are dropouts who work on powerlooms. A survey revealed that 33 per cent of primary school students are hearing-impaired because of the deafening din of the powerlooms.
Indian Muslims from being mishal-e-raah (pathfinders) have, over the last 60 years, become raah ke pathar (stones on the path). The slide has been unrelenting, and neither the community itself nor its leaders have made any move to arrest this. Nor has the media. The Gudiyas and Imranas have hogged headlines. Images of veiled women appear with or without reason, to titillate readers.
Untouchables Protest by Converting from Hindus to Buddhism
Thousands of Untouchable Hindus converted to the Buddhism this month across India to protest the discrimination of their caste. More than 100,000 people have been converted this time as the organizers claim.
Untouchability has been illegal in India since independence, but it is still commonly practised. In many villages Dalits are not allowed to drink clean water from a well. In some areas, tea shops keep a different glass for Dalits to use, so higher-caste Hindus are not "polluted" by drinking from the same vessel, even after it has been washed. After the 2004 tsunami, Dalit survivors in Tamil Nadu were prevented from sharing water in relief camps.
Many Dalits are forced to work as scavengers and latrine cleaners.
Even at university, Mr Durai says he was badly beaten by higher-caste students enraged that a Dalit had got better marks than them.
Conversion is a highly charged political issue. Several states have passed laws this year making it harder to convert, and the mass ceremonies will infuriate Hindu nationalist parties that have been campaigning to stop lower caste Hindus changing their religion.
This year several states, including Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, have introduced laws that anyone wishing to convert will have to obtain official permission first. Gujarat, home to some of the most hardline Hindu groups, has introduced a more controversial law under which Buddhism is considered part of Hinduism. (Source)
B R Ambedkar, one of the tallest leaders of India and an untouchable, embraced and revived the lost Buddhism religion of India along with 15 lakh of his followers. Ambedkar took to Buddhism, after announcing in 1935 that "I was born a Hindu, but I will not die as a Hindu".
To mark the golden jubilee of the mass religious conversion of Ambedkarites, there was a grand congregation this year at Deeksha Bhoomi, Nagpur. This event is an annual feature, observed on Asoka Vijaya Dashami Day (Dussehra for Hindus), which fell on October 2.
On that day, Nagpur bowed to an estimated 20 lakh Dalit Buddhists who came to Deeksha Bhoomi and the stupa to have a glimpse of the casket where Ambedkar's ashes are placed.
They were joined by western and South East Asian scholars, monks and Dalit diaspora. The Western Buddhist Order, Birmingham, UK, celebrated the event in September in London as 50 years of Dhamma Revolution.
Sadly enough, Indian television, which scours for stories to pack each minute of air time, lost the golden opportunity to bring this unique event into the public domain. It did not report a minute of it. Is it a case of marked indifference?
Buddhism in India has a predominantly Dalit following, as a result of the revival by Ambedkar. For this reason, it appears that our society prefers to treat Buddha as an untouchable.(Source)
The Mumbai Bombing Reveals India's Biggest Problem
The bombing in Mumbai is a sorrow and sad event but it is not isolated. It is one of the long-time struggles of Indian internal conflicts, and it reveals one of India's biggest problems: Disintegration of India.
Look back at Indian history, India was not a united country until British invasion. India today has hundreds languages, it is full of conflicts among different religions, different castes, different tribes and different cultures and even among the rich and poor. Generally India is divided even Hindus takes about 80% of India's population.
The conflicts between Hindus and Muslims has been there for a long history, which led to the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh. But today, Muslims is still about 15%of India's population. There are still struggling for their equal rights and independence, especially Muslims in Kashmir. The terror attacks between Muslims and Hindus came from both sides. Here is the part of the long conflict list. In northern India, the World Hindu Council planned to build a temple in Ayodhyaon the ruins of a 16th-century Muslim mosque. The 1992 destruction of the mosque by Hindus sparked nationwide riots that killed 2,000 people. In 2002, hundreds Muslims died in Gujarat state because of Hindus/ looting, burning and killing (Source).
The conflicts among different castes exist in India too. The Indian government’s decision on university quotas for lower castes caused the protest from higher castes.
It is hard to say who is main cause of the conflicts. But one thing is sure: Indians have a non-functioning government even it is called democracy one. Indian government does not only fail economically, but also politically. This government cannot lead Indian into a united country.
