Culture versus development: a visit to the roof of the
world
Rajneesh Narula
(Another in my occasional essay series)
http://narula.unu-merit.nl/essays.html
(for accompanying pictures visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/narular/sets/72157594194891652/
There are two possible
stories to be told about Tibet,
hermit kingdom, roof of the world.
The first tale is one of
amazement, a story of visual experiences that cannot possibly be described or
photographed. It is the kind of experience that needs to be shared, where (I,
at least, wondered, ‘what am I doing here alone? How can I possibly explain
what I am seeing?’). What is it about the light at high
altitudes, that seemingly shifts and changes every hour? How does the sky go
from standard blue to bluer than azure in a few minutes? You can look at the
same blade of grass, the same fluffy white cloud and the essence of its greenness
or whiteness is somehow 'other', somehow transmuted to a completely different
spectrum, a newer nuanced yellow, a more vibrant red, a menacing brown, a
seductive green, one that you have never seen before? Mountains change colour with the time
of day: rock faces fractured by millennia of snow, ice and wind, different
depending on how close you were, varying by the angle you looked. It broke my heart a little
that my camera could not capture any of this. I suspect this has to do a little
with the altitude, because I experienced much the same thing traipsing around
the Andes some years back. Then, as now, I
despair that mere words cannot describe this. Photographs do not either - they
seem flat, characterless, lacking in the vibrancy of the original.
I was able to capture some
of the vibrancy of colour in the people. Perhaps it is because summers are so
short, but the dresses the clothes, the jewellery, all seem so loud so, so
domineering, so clearly enlivening. As Lhasa is
home to the holiest sites, it is a town of mass pilgrimage from the rest of Tibet. Tibet – for the uninitiated - is a mountainous country
the size of France,
but mostly above 4000m and a population of less than 3 million. Hotel rooms
have oxygen machines for travellers who may experience altitude sickness. People
still live in abject poverty, and – for the most part – are religious to the
point of obsession. Pilgrims trek for days to get here, the most pious
prostrating themselves every 3 footsteps for 40 kilometres or more, holding in
hand a prayer wheel, and in some cases a statue being brought to Lhasa hoping to have it
blessed. The bravest of the lot make the 27 day trek to India to visit
the Dalai Lama.
Perhaps it is the exposure
to the sun at such high altitudes, or it simply the harshness of such
existence, but many of these country folk seem emaciated, skins tanned,
leathery. old before their years, in anguish, reaching out the goddess of
compassion, the Buddha of the future, offering votives, lighting pound after
pound of yak butter and incense, miles of paper prayers, tearing the skin of
their knees as the prostrate themselves endlessly, crying (sometimes visibly
so) for escape from their miserable present existence.
The Potala
Palace dominates the skyline, rather
like the Acropolis overlooks Athens.
This imposing structure has 1100 rooms, and the equivalent height of 15
stories, built solely to house the Dalai Lama and his retinue. The second
tallest building, wouldn’t you know, is the central police station.
Then there are the
wonderful sounds and smells. Rickshaw drivers who make bird calls instead of
ringing their bicycle bells, cyclists who have wonderful new-fangled bells that
sound like mobile phones, mobile phones that have ring tones that recite
prayers instead of hip-hop music. I would sit every evening at a rooftop
(Nepalese) restaurant, sipping (Chinese) tea, watching the sunset, hearing the
sounds of a 100 street hawkers and pilgrims haggling, spinning the prayer
wheels, answering the mobiles, whistling, electric sewing machines whirring,
all accompanied by Bollywood or Tibetan music. Despite what might otherwise
have been cacophony, I still would feel completely serene (if a bit lonely). It
truly felt as if I was sitting on the roof of the roof of the world.
The one experience I do
not remember fondly is Tibetan Yak tea. For those of you who wish to duplicate
the experience, take a cup of tepid tea, stir in 2 or 3 tablespoons on butter
that has gone slightly rancid and add a teaspoon of salt. Remember to stir
vigorously (I did not) otherwise the butter settles on top, and your first sip
will essentially be warm melted salty butter. I kept sipping through several
cups of this horrific experience, wishing desperately not to insult my hosts.
But Lhasa (and here I slide into the second
story) is now as much Chinese as it is Tibetan. 70% of the city’s 100,000 population
is Chinese. It is laid out along a grid system with avenues with 4 lanes (plus
two more for bicycles), street lights, and overpasses, underground sewage
system, medical schools, but most of the commerce is ruin by Chinese. Chinese
inhabitants do not have to study Tibetan, although the Tibetans are required to
learn Chinese. Young Tibetans text each other in Chinese, but speak in Tibetan.
It is said that 50 years ago, Lhasa
was home to 30,000 monks, the same number of peasants, and not a single
soldier. Today, there are 30,000 soldiers, and less than 5000 monks
I ask myself, though (for
I am an economist) how can a society expect to live in the 10th century
indefinitely. For it remained – until the Chinese takeover – stuck in a time
warp, run along feudal lines, with a strong and impervious class system. Monks
who were the cream of society; educated, controlling the flow of knowledge,
diverting resources from the peasants - their stronger, more intelligent male
offspring as novice recruits; free labour to build their monasteries, food and
other material supplied by the peasants for free. In return: a dubious
possibility for reincarnation as a higher being, with no opportunity to be
upwardly mobile in this life. Education (and indeed literacy) was the domain of
the ruling hermit classes, and the aristocracy until the communists came. Not
unlike the church during the dark ages in Europe.
I can see – and understand – how the communists must have been aghast at this
state of affairs. The Chinese have gone about their mission with much the same
zeal, as, well, missionaries. The same earnest belief that they were on a
mission of good, of saving the poor exploited working classes from a life of
penury, the miserable downtrodden heathen natives from their uncivilised and
miserable servitude. Much the same way as the colonising Europeans of the
Victorian era who equally zealously fell over themselves to ‘save’ Africa,
Latin America and Asia. The only difference between the Communists
and the Victorians was that the goal was to take away God from the equation, rather than introducing the natives to
the 'right' God. It is a little hypocritical to let people to live in poverty
without hope, even – as in this case – when they are still so embedded in the
old ways that they cannot see the old system as exploitative.
When one sees the Potala Palace
one is amazed. However, at what cost? The remains of the 5th Dalai Lama, who
commissioned this palace 500 years ago, are entombed in a structure that uses
3710 Kg of gold. I'd estimate the various caskets, tombs and so forth in the
palace account for 10,000 kilos of gold. His summer palace (barely 3 km from
the Potala – the Dalai lamas did not like travelling apparently) – otherwise
known as Wikkipedia in Beijing, yet another demonstration of ostentatious
consumption that is somehow incongruent with Buddhism as I understand it.
Especially here, in a country of such great poverty and natural harshness,
where almost nothing grows, everything (except for yak products and minerals)
has to be trucked in from China,
across mountains, or flown in by air.
So while I too mourn that
mass tourism (now that a railway connects Tibet
with Beijing) and
I am alarmed that the ethnic Chinese population is gradually taking over from
the Tibetan one, I also see that this as inevitable. I suppose every
traveller feels - when visiting unknown parts - that subsequent travellers are
sure to ruin the experience, that in a few years time there will be nothing to
see. But in this case, I feel somewhat justified in feeling a little
melancholic and sad, rather like seeing an ex-lover for the last time, knowing
things will never be the same again.
On the other hand, perhaps
we forget that culture is a resilient beast. Witness the resurgence and
reconstruction of monasteries that were decimated during the Cultural
Revolution, or indeed the survival of Incan traditions in the Andes
despite the efforts of the conquistadors, or the Indian subcontinent after 2000
years of occupation. Cultures need to merge, to evolve, absorb and integrate
new ideas from elsewhere, expunge old, withered traditions that are no longer
useful, purposeful or supportive of progress. For a culture to be
self-absorbed, that defines its evolution by itself, which sees the influence
of new ideas as a threat, to see new trends as a menace, cannot survive except
as a glorified theme park. And that, sadly, is where Tibet is going.
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