China’s loss could be India’s gain

FROM THE TELEGRAPH

BY SUNANDA K. DATTA RAY

When the Darjeeling road was being laid, an old Tibetan remarked that the blasting could be heard in Lhasa. Similarly, there is little doubt that Wednesday’s mass chanting in Bodh Gaya to mark the start of the year-long celebrations for 900 years of the Karmapa Lama, head of the Karma Kagyu Buddhist sect, could be heard in Beijing. It was a reminder, like the voice of the jailed Nobel Laureate, Liu Xiaobo, that the power of faith does not need the barrel of a gun.

Not that any sense of statecraft disturbed the continuous chanting of Myanmarese and Cambodian monks around the sacred Bodhi tree or cast a shadow over the riot of colour under the huge marquee. But the throng of more than 5,000 devotees made clear that no pope ever had as many or as fervently loyal divisions. Young Chinese with cell phones and laptops mingled with striped and skirted Bhutanese. There were Thais in white cotton, modish Taiwanese sporting jeans, Sri Lankans and Vietnamese in different shades of yellow, Japanese and Koreans in severe grey gowns, pilgrims from Hongkong, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as Americans and Europeans in monastic maroon silk designer dresses.

Many wore cloth masks as protection against Bodh Gaya’s dust and dirt. Many clutched bottles of safe drinking water as they picked their way through the slush or bumped in tongas drawn by skinny nags. Discomfort is a small price for the experience of a lifetime. They knew that the ceremony they had come to witness and participate in would not be repeated for 900 years.

But underlying the pageantry lurked the inescapable question: can culture and politics ever be separated in determining identity? It arose unbidden as the infinitely lonely figure of Ogyen Trinley Dorje stood watching a gaily bedecked palanquin bearing away a small metal statue of the first of his line, Dusum Khyenpa, to the timeless wail of “Karmapa Chenno! Karmapa listen to us!” The 17th Karmapa had just launched his antique metallic self on a journey round the world to mark 900 years of the lineage. The celebration will end next December when the image returns to Delhi.

Someone asked at the press conference afterwards in an ornate upstairs room of the Yongey Tergar monastery if the Karmapa would follow Dusum Khyenpa’s statue on its global peregrination. Ever the diplomat (he greeted journalists with folded hands and “Namaste!”), he replied through an interpreter that everything depended on “events and circumstances”. It could have been shorthand for a new variant of the Great Game. A German Buddhist next to me identified the government of India, China, and the Dalai Lama’s administration in Dharamsala as the key players whose interaction determines the Karmapa’s movements. The 26-year-old monk, whose own interests are confined to his flock’s spiritual welfare, is unconcerned about strategic calculations. But he cannot escape the Great Game’s consequences.

If the Karmapa cut a lonely figure, the crowd around him confirmed the far-reaching impact of his person and position at a time when Wen Jiabao’s impending visit and the controversy over the ceremony to honour Liu underline the delicate balance of Sino-Indian relations. Tibet remains central to that equation. The Karmapa’s address during Wednesday’s ceremony mentioned Tibet’s historic connection with India. Asked if it would extend into the future, he expatiated on the student-teacher relationship between the two countries, India’s enormous contribution to Tibet’s culture, religion and lifestyle, and on the warmth and kindness with which India’s people and government had received Tibetan refugees. Deeply grateful for these gifts, Tibetans are trying to hold on to what they have received from India and give something back in return. “We hope to preserve and continue the relationship in a very live way” may have suggested more than continuing the ancient guru-shishya bond to which the Dalai Lama also pays tribute.

The Dalai Lama had repeatedly reminded Beijing that Tibet’s culture, religion and way of life face “great danger”. While fully concurring with the pontiff’s representations, the Karmapa wondered if ordinary Chinese people were aware of the damage being done to Tibet. But he claimed no insight into official Chinese thinking. He had earlier told me it was “funny” for communist leaders who didn’t believe in god to recognize an incarnation. But having done so, they could not derecognize him. They were saddled with a Karmapa whom they acknowledged but who had rejected them.

That anomaly and China’s humiliating dilemma over a lost asset account for the fantasies conjured up to explain the enigma. Suspecting that the Karmapa still enjoys China’s secret support, some wonder if he could have escaped without at least tacit Chinese connivance. Others believe the American Central Intelligence Agency planned the exercise with or without Beijing’s acquiescence, thereby feeding India’s dormant but never extinguished paranoia about the Foreign Hand. Such comments could also apply to the Dalai Lama and his flight in 1959 but speculation is seldom logical, and it’s also whispered that unwillingness to offend Beijing too much obliges New Delhi to continue to treat the Karmapa more like a State prisoner than a State guest. The government’s silence on the subject only encourages wild theories.

Tibet’s exiled prime minister, Samdhong Rinpoche, who sat next to the Karmapa on the stage, recently threw some light on Chinese motives. Claiming that “in the absence of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, China wants to make use of him (the Karmapa) for their own purposes”, he explained that “with the rumoured retirement of the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa will take on additional responsibilities” even if Dharamsala continues to “take care of administrative governance”. That forces the administration in exile — the third player in this Great Game — to do some hard thinking. The Karmapa hasn’t been disappointed in linking his post-China existence to the Dalai Lama’s. But the rumours that Samdhong Rinpoche mentioned could indicate a more independent future role. Ogyen Trinley Dorje denies temporal ambition, saying his spiritual responsibilities are heavy enough for one person. But he also realistically recognizes the material component of spiritual well-being and has just given Bodh Gaya a high-tech filter that supplies 500 litres of potable water per hour. Welfare is indivisible.

The “events and circumstances” he mentions may not leave him much choice as modern young Tibetans like Tenzing Norbu who webcast Wednesday’s proceedings in many languages (even Polish) and Lobsang Wangyal whose Miss Tibet contest will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year are drawn to the Karmapa’s vision of peace and harmony beyond doctrinal definition.

Behind him, the stage rose in a pyramid of yellow cloaks on maroon robes (unlike the rows of maroon cloaks on yellow robes squatting on mats) to a large golden Buddha. I thought the cross-legged figure in a black hat immediately below was a senior monk in deep meditation but, no, it was an image of Dusum Khyenpa from Bangkok. The four yellow-draped sentries around it were human though they, too, might have been waxworks in their stillness. There was no immobility, however, about the lithe young men in brocades and conical hats brandishing dummy swords or the pretty girls in flowing silk waving long shimmering sleeves. Or R.S. Nandkumar’s musicians singing in praise of the Buddha in Sanskrit after Tilopa, the sect’s 10th- century founder who coined the aphorism, “The problem is not enjoyment; the problem is attachment.”

No Indian crowd is ever so disciplined; no choreography so impeccably orchestrated. His Holiness had personally ensured that the ceremonial umbrellas with appliqué designs were of exactly the same height, that the timing, movement and steps of the dancers were perfectly matched. He would have made a superb stage manager if millions of Buddhists had not looked to him to manage their destiny. China’s loss could be India’s gain if education and exposure hone his natural leadership qualities for that task.