The Burning Issue

Protests by self-immolation is a new phenomenon in Tibet. Of all the people, the Dalai Lama knows best thProtests by self-immolation is a new phenomenon in Tibet. Stories of young people burning themselves in protest against the draconian policies and practices of the Chinese government are coming out of the country on almost a daily basis. Unfortunately, both the Chinese government and the Tibetan leaders in exile are responding to this human tragedy solely in terms of a blame game.

The Tibetan government in exile as well as the activists ascribe self-immolations to the repressive nature of the Chinese rule that leaves Tibetans with no other option but to sacrifice their lives to remind the world of their pain. The Chinese government blames the Dalai Lama and the exiles for encouraging this form of protest to create more instability inside China and generate international sympathy. This politics of blame marshals the same old adversarial vocabulary that has been the hallmark of Sino-Tibetan relations since 1959 and has failed to achieve any accommodation so far. It certainly falls short of addressing the immediate crisis at hand - the lost of human lives due to the copycat phenomenon of self-immolation.

Self-immolation, some argue, is a non-violent form of protest because it does not seek to harm the adversary. Contrary to the common perception of it being a result of misery and hopelessness, self-immolation protests, its proponents argue, symbolise a politics of hope. A secular, not religious, hope. For this hope is not for a religious martyrdom that will guarantee a luxurious post-death berth in some arcadian heaven. In fact, goes the argument, this is a secular hope that a sacrifice of one’s own life will bring change within the political system that governs the collective or at least mobilise world opinion against the brutality of the Chinese government. The fact that Tibet is back in the international news and the exiles in India and the West are galvanizing their movement in solidarity with the self-immolating protesters indicates that the acts are already having some impact. But at what cost? Does any of this makes the key demand of Tibetans inside Tibet - the return of the Dalai Lama and the right to be treated with dignity - closer to fruition?

Self-immolation is not non-violent. It is in fact, a violence against one-self. Harming one’s own corporeal being is unjustifiable and goes against most interpretations of Buddhism. It certainly goes against the hard work put in by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan religious figures to equate Tibetan Buddhism and identity with non-violence. Though violence, as much as non-violence, was always part and parcel of Tibetan history and culture, the 14th Dalai Lama has been singularly successful in associating the Tibet cause with non-violence. Won’t his lifetime’s work go waste if this novel form of political protest spreads like a wildfire? No community can exercise patience, something that non-violent resistance demands, in the face of young men killing themselves.

Collective politics, especially at the times of stress and in a context of repression, tends to become rapidly radicalised as individuals feel the pressure to perform in specific ways. Compromise becomes a bad word. And as the performance of patriotism and loyalty toward the Dalai Lama becomes associated with immolating oneself to protest against the Chinese rule, more Tibetan lives will be lost in the coming days. How does that benefit the Tibetan cause?

International media will soon lose interest for the repetitive deaths are not newsworthy ("what’s new?") and there is no powerful foreign government interested in rocking the Chinese boat. With the ongoing economic crisis at home and major changes in West Asia and North Africa that are exposing Western government’s hypocrisy toward democracy and human rights, it is naive to believe that any additional pressure would be applied on China. In any case, the Chinese government’s main concern is what people within China feel. Given the almost total censorship of information in the country as well as the widespread Han chauvinism that perceives Tibetans as insolent younger brothers to be taken care of by the more progressive Han Chinese majority, self-immolations will not bring about solidarity with the tens of millions of marginalised Chinese. In fact, the Chinese government will get an opportunity to portray Tibetans as hopelessly religiously fanatic who cannot be reasoned with. The victory of the Tibetan movement in terms of getting international attention will prove to be pyrrhic.

If Tibetans inside China were to kill themselves in protest, they have the full right to do so. We ought to empathise with them without any reservation and put pressure on China to mitigate its repressive rule. However, the exile community and its supporters in India and in the West also needs to deliberate seriously what this trend of protests will bring about.

Imagine being a young Tibetan monk in Tibet. On the one hand you have a daily reality of the so-called patriotic campaigns -- to denounce the person you cherish most as your religious leader as well as the symbol of the nation. On the other, you have the option of immolating yourself knowing that you’ll be worshipped as a hero by other Tibetans, especially in exile where most of your religious leaders reside. That a number of Tibetans are copying each other in immolating themselves should therefore not come as a surprise. While the ultimate responsibility for this tragedy lies with the Chinese government, the exile leadership faces a dilemma and has two options.

Should it use the protests to rejuvenate Tibetans and their supporters all over the world, even if it means indirectly encouraging the attractiveness of this heroic sacrifice for the already suffering young Tibetans inside China? Or should it highlight the continuing oppression of Tibetans inside China but at the same time discourage self-immolation by publicly calling for, and privately working for, the Tibetans in the affected region to treasure their lives for the survival of the nation? The new political leadership under Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay faces this challenge and their response so far has been to go for the first option. While it is within its prerogative to join this bandwagon of the new, but dangerous, heroic phase of protests, they need to address the disjuncture between the commitment to the middle way of the Dalai Lama (which entails genuine autonomy for the Tibetans within the People’s Republic of China and struggle to seek that through non-violent means) and the actual reality of a struggle where individual lives are being sacrificed.

However, it is the religious leaders in exile who must take the initiative here. It is they who should go for the second option. Karmapa, the third highest lama in Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, has expressed his discomfort with political suicides. Other individual lamas too have expressed their disquiet. But one waits for the Dalai Lama to make his views known on this. Will he go with the political leadership’s strategy of solidarity with self-immolation or will he adopt a less popular but religiously compatible stance of requesting the Tibetans inside China not to indulge in self-immolation? Of all the people, he knows best that China does not fear the dead or the dying monks. It fears the living ones.

A version of this piece appeared in the Guardian