Phagpala vs. Lhalu

Recently I’ve been reading in Tibet, Tibet by Patrick French about Phagpala and Lhalu, who are both traitors to their homeland, Tibet.   Patrick French contrasts and compares the traitors in an interesting way that leaves me wondering who is more of a traitor.  Phagpala is known as a “hate figure” and father of a murderer, while Lhalu isn’t seen as a “committed” traitor, but a “pragmatic traitor.”   Lhalu simply agreed to work for the CCPC and promote Chinese propaganda in order to ensure a comfortable life for his family, in hopes of them not growing up bitter and disadvantaged.  However, when I read that rationale, I thought it was really unfounded.  As a parent the greatest gift to be given to a child is an example of what it means to be a good person (which it is definitely a good person that worries about his family).  A parent should be honest with integrity, striving to do the right thing. 

Earlier today I was talking with a friend who is a parent to three adorable young children.  He was relaying to me the fact that in high school he used to be very violent and beat on people frequently.  I asked, “Are you going to tell your kids that?” He wasn’t sure if he would, of course, as he wants to set a good example.  I explained that my parents acted on the same hesitation in my youth, and later on when I found out more about their pasts I felt a little annoyed at having such high standards and expectations placed on me by my parents; they themselves didn’t live up to some of them in their youth.  Even though they were petty things like education, career, friends, etc., I still felt annoyed at the pressure I’d felt throughout my life, and that it wasn’t based on anything really except my parents “hope for a better life for me,” similar to that hope of Lhalu for his children (but not really, because Lhalu was dealing with life or death).   I know this is a stretch, but I had a strong feeling that Lhalu’s children would could have in some way benefited in harder living conditions and seeing their dad fighting for what was right and being true to himself and his beliefs.  Honesty and integrity under dire circumstances are such inspiring traits to witness.  Seeing my parents as humans earlier in my life would have been beneficial not only to our relationship, but to my motivation to live up to expectations that were explained to me better.  At the same time, however, I did see honesty and integrity in my parents all the time.  

It must be said somewhere in here that I haven’t spent six years in Chinese prison and seen horrible torturous and murderous things, so I absolutely cannot really assess Lhasa's choice.  All I can say as an outsider is that Lhasa could have gifted his family with something much different, and possibly greater, than a comfortable temporal lifestyle.  I find much greater and lasting comfort in a comfortable spiritual and moral lifestyle (this does not necessarily mean mormonism ;)).  Lhasa definitely traded something in agreeing to betray his people, his country, and even his religion.

WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL

We've taken care of everything 
The words you hear, the songs you sing 
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes 
It's one for all and all for one 
We work together, common sons 
Never need to wonder how or why

In class yesterday we all wrote quotes/ideas on the board from our current readings from Tibet, Tibet.  The topic of duscssion was “vulnerable populations,” and my first thought was the word “control.”  The past few chapters (7-10) have hit heavily on the idea that the Tibetan people are suppressed and their freedom is stripped, and thereafter or maybe beforehand control is assumed by the superior party.  There are subtle and overt ways that the Chinese have taken power from Tibetans: religion was taken, religious buidlings destroyed, propaganda against their beliefs enforced, etc.  The quotes that I chose to write on the board go as follows:

"They control us very closely, and stop us from practising our religion" (p. 82).
"They teach us propaganda against His Holiness the Dalai Lama and then test us on it, to make sure we know the phrases.  We will resolutely oppose the scheming activities of the tiny number of Tibetan pro-independence elements! We will safeguard the four basic principles and oppose bourgeois liberalisation!" (pp. 82-83)
"We have to do what the Democratic Management Committee says, or we risk being expelled" (p. 82).
"I have never taken part in a demonstration.  If you do that, you might die" (p. 81).
"Nuns and monks had been at the vanguard of public protests in Tibet in the late 1980s, and there were many documented cases of their being molested, tortured and killed, or driven to suicide while in prison" (p. 78).
"...with much of eastern Tibet in open mutiny, truth was less important than adherence to the line emanating from the Chairman" (p. 68).
"Anyone who displayed religious faith in Tibet, the Panchen explained, was persecuted as superstitious..." (p. 64).

The word "control" pervaded my thoughts throughout these chapters, and then one of my favorite Rush songs, 2112, joined the word control.  As I mentioned in class, "Big Brother" has always terrified me since I was a kid, and even more so after reading 1984, Animal Farm, and other literature like this.  It frightened me because it was so obviously easy for a group of people to lose total control and freedom to another group.  A quote a once read in my history class in high school by Adolf Hitler said, "What good fortune for the government that the people do not think."

In looking at my diagram on the board I felt a sense of sadness and pain.  It reminded me a lot of my students because they are in a definite position where advantage could be taken of them, and especially even 30 years ago.  The way genocide happens is through a dictator or more powerful person/people taking control or freedom from an inferior counterpart.

Reflections on Basic Education in Tibet

Zhiyong, Z. (2008). Reflections on basic education under the “three guarantees” policy in Tibet’s pastoral districts. Chinese Education and Society, 41(1), 44-50.

·      “The blind quest for greater numbers of schools and students exceeded the actual needs and sustaining capacity of Tibet’s economic development, causing an imbalance in the internal proportions of education and a grave decline in the quality of education” (Doujie, 1991, p.98).

·      They had a “bloated education system” in Tibet but the policy “brought some improvement to the quality of education” (p.45).

·      The author maintains “that the low quality of education in pastoral districts has to do with the teachers’ identification with their roles.  The behavior and demeanor of the teachers as they handle the relations among the state, schools, and students and their families are a far cry from the status of teachers as knowledgeable and ethical persons in positions of authority” (p. 48).

·      Zhiyong finally asserts that there are definitely other possible causes for the issues in education in Tibet: “religious concepts, the errant mode of production and way of life in pastoral districts, the lack of economic development, the schools’ ecological environment, and so forth” (p. 49).

o   The “three guarantees” policy of having food, clothing, and housing was a good idea in theory, but didn’t get practiced very well.  Through reading this article it appears as though people were going to school just so they could get food (as the policy encouraged this), and not to become a more educated society.  However, it was a good incentive to get educated.  The education in Tibet is “bloated” and of low-quality according to the author as a result of many factors listed above.