DHARAMSHALA DIARY: Promising heaven & earth’s rivers and mountains to Tibetans

Friday, 25 May 2007, 4:36 p.m.

By Thubten Samphel

IN AN OUTBURST TO 600-strong members of the Chinese Communist Party on 18 May in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, Zhang Qingli invoked the landscape of Tibet and the stunning imageries it provides to reinforce his revolutionary conviction.

Beijing’s Reuters reporter quoted Tibet’s party secretary as declaring, “The (mandate of) heaven in Tibet will never change. The Dalai Lama clique’s pipe dream (of independence) will never prevail…the country’s rivers and mountains will remain red.”

This column is not the place to take issue with Zhang Qingli’s thoughts on the Tibetan struggle and the bad end he predicts for it. I suppose this will be done elsewhere. But what is surprising is why would a communist functionary solicit the aid of Tibet’s heaven, rivers and mountains to support his confident assertion? It is an assertion. You cannot call it an argument, nor a well developed thesis because there are no supporting points to logically convince his audience of the rightness of his thought.

More than Zhang Qingli’s bold declaration, unencumbered by any follow-up evidence, his statement that heaven in Tibet will not change and the rivers and mountains will remain red is a new contribution to China’s revolutionary rhetoric. This will remain a quotable quote for years to come, comparable to those of Mao and Deng. Of Mao’s many pithy sayings one that is quoted all over the world, or it was at one point of time, is “Political power grows out of a barrel of a gun.” Deng has his own quote, which says, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” Both have outlasted their authors. So will Zhang’s.

But before Zhang Qingli’s quote catches on in the rest of the world or is elevated to the same status as those of Mao or Deng’s, there is a small problem. One hates to nit-pick but nit-picking is something one needs to do here. And this has to do with the “heaven in Tibet” part of Zhang’s saying.. In our school days we were taught, and now coming to think about it, taught quite wrongly, that there was one heaven and humanity had the blessing of sharing that one heaven. Now in Zhang Qingli’s new- heaven-order grand strategy (as opposed to Bush senior’s new-world-order thinking), even heaven has been divided. Surely, if there is a heaven in Tibet, there must be another one in China, two separate Tibetan and Chinese heavens, leave alone the heavens the minority nationalities are entitled to, or those of other countries.

As for the loaded “the mandate of heaven” phrase, I suspect “the mandate” is something which the reporter slyly slipped in. If you are wondering whether the mandate of heaven in Tibet will or will not change, look up Mao’s saying quoted above.

But what the hell, why is a communist talking about heaven? Only heaven will know and the one who presides over it.

Coming down to earth and putting on our red-tainted glasses and looking at the mountains and rivers of Tibet, yes, indeed, they are red, as in the East is Red days.

It is a mark of our own ideological confusion that we promise people that heaven will not change and exhort them in the same breath that everything is red. It is nice to think that true socialism will be like a piece of paradise, but to promise them so many contradictory things in heaven and earth is something which even Mao never promised his gallant band.