Whole Memory – The ancient Land of India remembers Lord Gautama Buddha
The memories of Lord Gautama Buddha are indeed timeless. The Land of India has unfading, undying, everlasting memory of Prince Siddhartha and it is of great pleasure to share those memories.
Sunday, 26 Jul 2015
IN SKARDU, SIDDHARTHA SINGS ON
The rock carving of Buddha in Baltistan serves as a window into the past
By FERYA ILYAS
Published: July 26, 2015
Images of Buddha in his different forms meticulously carved on a rock in Skardu. PHOTO COURTESY: BCDF
Centuries have passed since Buddhists disappeared from Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), but Buddha still watches over the serene town of Skardu from the corner of a cliff. Immortalised in stone, the sage continues to radiate wisdom for those who seek. But sadly, there are none.
Resting at the edge of Manthal village on the left of a stream from Satpara Lake, the granite – known as the Buddha Rock – is pale and smooth. Believed to be carved between 8th and 10th centuries, the relic represents the glory of the past, of a time when men and women meditated in the footsteps of the ‘One Who Woke Up’.
It has the makings of a heritage site – bearing testimony to a tradition which has disappeared. Its significance goes beyond nationalities. Yet, it sits at the border of Manthal village, ignored and forgotten by the world.
The serene and spotless Satpara Lake in Skardu. PHOTO COURTESY: MARYAM TARIQ
It is widely believed in Pakistan that the rock was not known to most until British traveler Jane E Duncan documented it in the early 1900s. “I went to Sadpor in search of the carved rock which Rajah Spindia at Khapallu had told me about; three miles and a half from Skardo, and a few yards off the road to Sadpor, we came to the rock, which proved to be a large and important relic of antiquity,” Duncan wrote in her book ‘A Summer Ride Through Western Tibet’ about the 1904 trip to Skardu.
Wazir Ejaz, CEO of Baltistan Culture and Development Foundation (BCDF), tells us that Duncan―failing to understand the Tibetan inscription on the rock―copied it and sent it to German scholar August Hermann Francke who was working in Ladakh. “Francke deciphered the script in English and published it in Calcutta and the world came to know about this magnificent carving,” Ejaz says.
However, British Tibetologist Philip Denwood, in his 2007 article for Journal of Inner Asian Art & Archaeology 2, said the rock carvings and Tibetan inscriptions were noticed by GT Vigne and reproduced in 1836 and 1838. Denwood further wrote AGA Durand published a photograph of the whole rock in 1899.
Shedding light on the ancient relief, historian Muhammad Abbas Kazmi says the carving and Tibetan inscriptions were made on a 30-foot high and 20-foot wide triangle-shaped rock. “The carving depicts present time Buddha—Siddhārtha Gautama—in the centre, 20 smaller Buddhas of the past around him and future Buddhas – Maitreya – standing on both sides,” Kazmi interprets. He claims that in Buddhist tradition, the ‘Council of all Buddhas’ as represented in the carving is called ‘Mandal’ – a word from which the village’s name is derived.
Tibetan text engraved on Buddha Rock.
All the Buddhas, except the Maitreyas, are shown resting on lotuses in Bhumisparsha position which means ‘touching the earth’ and signifies the moment of enlightenment for Gautama. It is the moment when Buddha, after six years of hardship, decides to sit under a tree and not move until he achieves supreme and final wisdom. He is distracted by Mara, the lord of desire, but to no use. Gautama resisted every temptation and as the final test, Mara challenged Buddha to tell him who would bear witness to his worthiness to attain wisdom. Gautama said nothing and touched the ground beneath him. The earth shook. “The earth is my witness,” Buddha said.
The Tibetan script on the Buddha Rock, though incomplete at many places, instructs the followers of Gautama to take care of this sculpture. “The faithful ones (should) from time to time (make the colours of the sculptures) bright, and clean the place of offering that it may not decay,” says the text, as translated by Franke in the 20th century. Kazmi says only one of the three-part text is visible today but the entire script—with only a few characters missing—was on the rock when Duncan examined it.
In her book, Duncan wrote that she submitted copies of the inscription to several Buddhist scholars in London and Paris but because of the missing characters, none could give a rendering. “I wrote to Mr Francke telling him of my difficulty in getting a good translation, and he immediately sent a competent Tibetan from Khalatse to Sadpor to make new copies and this man was able to fill up many of my blank spaces, as he recognised numerous letters which had been partly destroyed,” the British traveler wrote, expressing amusement over the Tibetan charging just Rs12 for his long and fatiguing journey to the rock and back and his trouble in making the copies.
Francke, who translated the ancient text, said that “judging from the orthography employed, the writing is as old as those at Balu-mkhar, dating from not later than 1000 AD and, imperfect as they are, are of great philological and antiquarian interest; they all seem to refer to the sculptures on the rock.” He added, “Line No 8 in the third of them seems to indicate that the sculptures of Buddha are much older than the inscriptions themselves.”
Present time Buddha, Siddhãrtha Gautama, craved in the middle of the rock.
Duncan, in her travelogue, wrote that the hole was used to hold light. “At the top of the rock above the Buddha’s head there is a square hole, which the chowkidar, who acted as my guide, said was used for holding a light, and the stone round it looks smoke-blackened,” she wrote.A prominent feature of the relic is a square cube cut out at the top of the stone. Last summer, when I arrived here, I saw visitors aiming to throw pebbles inside the hollow boxy space in fulfillment of a myth that praying and then throwing a stone inside the cube successfully will make a wish come true—a local spin on European wishing wells and lovers’ locks.
Historian Kazmi, however, says the space was probably used to hold a beam with support from both sides of the stone to carry a roof. “The square recess and cuts on the edges very clearly indicate that in the beginning there was a canopy over the rock-face of the carving to protect it from weather effects,” he explains. Buddhism specialist Dr Christian Luczanits concurs, pointing out that the images were probably painted originally and the roof had protected the paintings.
A copy of a portion of Tibetan text engraved on Buddha Rock. SOURCE: JANE E DUNCAN’S A SUMMER RIDE THROUGH WESTERN TIBET
The exact purpose may remain a mystery for years to come or maybe even be lost forever if the relic is not protected from wear and tear caused by nature and humans. “The sculpture should have been declared a heritage site by UNESCO long ago, but the government and BCDF have failed to make efforts to preserve the eroding piece of history,” Kazmi says, pleading to authorities to pay attention to the relic.
Pakistan, which hosts six world heritage sites, has failed to even mention the Buddha Rock in its Tentative List from which the UN body picks places of ‘special cultural or physical significance’. The last inventory was complied in 2004 in which ten nominations were made in addition to 1993’s eight recommendations. And as per the rules, Pakistan can re-examine the list at least every ten years.
Ejaz says the BCDF―which has Buddha Rock on lease for 90 years―considered recommending it to UNESCO for a heritage site as well as for one of its awards, but did not do so because the relic does not fulfill their criteria.
Dr Luczanits sees this rock carving as part of a larger group of Buddhist relics in the region, which he recommends to be declared a heritage site together. “What is more important is to create awareness locally to ensure protection of the site as part of the heritage,” the Buddhism expert says. And BCDF’s chief Ejaz tells us that for this purpose, his organisation has constructed a boundary wall around the rock and deployed a security guard to facilitate tourists. “The BCDF has also constructed a tourist hut nearby in collaboration with the government’s tourism department and submitted proposals to different donor agencies to preserve its writings and images,” adds Ejaz.
Crystal clear Satpara Lake.
Protection of the site is crucial for preserving history as many believe this place was important for the spread of Buddhism in the area and served as a pilgrimage site for worshippers from far and wide. However, there is no concrete evidence to prove the exact use of the place.
“Such rock carvings are usually at spots that are widely visible and thus serve as a reminder of Buddhism in general, besides having a more specific local ritual function that we cannot reconstruct today anymore, except for its latest use like recorded by Ms Duncan for the square recess on Buddha Rock,” Dr Luczanits tells us. The real story behind the stone may never unravel, but Kazmi vouches for the uniqueness of the carving. “Nowhere in the Buddhist world has anyone seen the depiction of all Buddhas in such a magnificent style,” he claims to point out the importance of Baltistan, and Skardu in particular, in the Buddhist history of the region. “Even in Lhasa, China—which has been the center of Mahayana Buddhism and the seat of Buddhist kings and fourteen Dalai Lamas—such a glorious picture has not been carved,” he says with a hint of pride. Buddhism expert Dr Luczanits says the relief is part of a larger group all along the southern edge of the western Himalayas where rocks were used to depict Buddhist imagery. “The one in Skardu is unique in its composition, high quality carving and the number of Buddhas depicted; the carving emphasises the cosmic quality of the Buddha through the repetition of his image around him,” he says.
An older image showing the entrance to the historic site. The barbed-wire boundary has now been replaced with a concrete wall.
Baltistan was the land of Shamanism until Buddhism arrived in the 4th Century with the monks from Northern India, well before it entered Ladakh and Tibet. Many monasteries were built during the Palolashahi kingdom that ruled the area and the religion continued to flourish after the Tibetan conquest of the region in the second quarter of the 8th Century. In the 14th Century, Ali Hamadani and his followers arrived from Iran and changed the landscape forever. Locals embraced Islam and Buddhism vanished from their daily lives. The places of worship fell into despair due to no visitors and because the preachers of the new religion called for shunning the past. “By the 15th Century, no Buddhist was left in Baltistan and the Muslim population wreaked havoc on the Buddhist legacy, destroying religious buildings and monuments,” claims Kazmi, adding that many dug out the foundations of religious sites in search of wealth believed to be buried by Buddhist kings and lamas. More recently, in 2007 the Taliban in Swat defaced the biggest Buddha sculpture in the world, second only to the monumental statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which were destroyed in 2001 by the Afghan Taliban.
‘The Little Tibet’ and its Buddhist heritage disappeared over time, but what mysteriously survived was the Buddha Rock among a handful of artifacts. “In the midst of a purely Mohammedan population, these monuments have been allowed to remain intact except for the partial defacement of the inscriptions, while over the rest of the country every trace of its ancient religion appears to have been destroyed,” Duncan wrote in surprise.
Dr Luczanits says it is not uncommon that such rock carvings were either ignored once the religion changed or reinterpreted to attain a new meaning for the locals. In this case it appears, Buddha was simply left in peace.
Ferya Ilyas is a senior subeditor at The Express Tribune. She tweets @ferya_ilyas
Whole Memory – The ancient Land of India remembers Lord Gautama Buddha
Trouble in Tibet – No Freedom of Religion in Occupied Tibet
Whole Trouble – Military Occupation Compromises Freedom of Religion in Tibet
Taiwan urged Tibetan Prime Minister and Uighur activist not to seek visas to visit Taipei to attend a forum on Religious Freedom as their presence may offend Red China. My concern is not about Taiwan’s sense of Fear. My concern is about lack of Freedom in Occupied Tibet.
Whole Trouble – Military Occupation Compromises Freedom of Religion in Tibet
Taiwan urges Tibetan exile leader and Uighur activist to stay away, supporters say
TROUBLE IN TIBET – NO FREEDOM OF RELIGION. SIKYONG, PRIME MINISTER LOBSANG SANGAY WITH US UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE SARAH SEWALL AT KANGRA AIRPORT.
Lobsang Sangay, prime minister of Tibet’s government in exile, walks with Sarah Sewall, U.S. undersecretary of State for civilian security, democracy and human rights, during a meeting in Dharmsala, India, on Jan. 15.
(Ashwini Bhatia / Associated Press)
Ralph Jennings
Taiwanese authorities asked a close ally of the Dalai Lama, as well as a U.S.-based activist for China’s Uighur minority, not to attend a forum on religious freedom in Taipei this week because their presence might irritate mainland China’s Communist leaders, the event’s sponsors say.
U.S.-based representatives of Taiwan’s government persuaded Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer and Lobsang Sangay, prime minister of Tibet’s Buddhist government in exile in India, not to apply for visas in December, said Bob Fu, the founder of China Aid, an American nonprofit that is co-sponsoring the forum.
“To talk about China’s religious freedom situation, if you don’t mention the Tibetan and Uighur minorities, a discussion of religious freedoms is incomplete,” Fu said from the forum in Taipei, which opened Thursday with 99 participants from 26 countries. “The whole application process feels political.”
Beijing regards representatives of the Tibetan government in exile and Kadeer as separatists, and routinely pressures other countries not to host or meet with them.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry and immigration agency said they had no information about what their offices in the United States might have told potential visa applicants. “We have no way to comment; all we do is process the visas,” a National Immigration Agency spokesperson said.
Though Tibet and the Uighur homeland of Xinjiang are under control of mainland Chinese authorities, Taiwan has had de facto independence from mainland China since 1949. But Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island. The commonalities among these three contested regions have sparked significant interest in Taiwan about figures such as Kadeer and Sangay.
But outgoing Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who is leaving office in May after eight years, has tried to foster closer ties with Beijing after six decades of icy hostilities. The Dalai Lama retired as head of the Tibetan government in exile in 2011, giving up leadership to the democratically elected Sangay. The Dalai Lama abandoned calls for Tibetan independence in 1979, embracing instead a “middle way” in which Tibetans would enjoy autonomy and freedom of religion and speech under Chinese rule.
Kadeer, meanwhile, has taken a similar stance, speaking out on human rights issues in Xinjiang and campaigning for self-determination for the largely Muslim region. Many Uighurs and Tibetans say Chinese officials restrict their religious practices as well as their language and customs.
In early February, a foundation in Taipei representing the Dalai Lama said it too was told by Taiwanese officials that Sangay should avoid this week’s forum. “Taiwan is in a tough spot because of pressure from China, that’s the reason,” said Bari Dawa Tsering, director of the Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He declined to say which agency gave the word.
“Of course we hoped Sangay could do this. But Taiwan is small and right next to China, so their stance is not to add any new trouble,” he said. Shortly after Ma took office, the Dalai Lama visited Taiwan in 2009 to console survivors of a typhoon that sparked serious mudslides and killed about 700 people. China warned Taiwan then that the visit could damage relations, but the two sides put the matter behind them on the way to signing a series of landmark economic pacts. Kadeer was invited to Taiwan later that year by a musician but denied entry.
This time, Kadeer was rejected along with Dolkun Isa, a Uighur activist who escaped China in 1997 and is now a German citizen. Ma’s Nationalist Party administration “fears that to let Dolkun Isa and Rebiya Kadeer enter Taiwan will affect the understanding it has reached with Beijing,” Dilxat Rexit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, said Friday.
Ma’s Nationalist Party roundly lost elections in January, and in May he will be replaced by Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party. “Beijing’s adding of pressure has had the result of refusing them entry, and proves that Taiwan’s policy depends on Beijing’s complexion,” he added. “I hope in the future the Democratic Progressive Party government can reject Beijing.”
Trouble in Tibet – The Key to Living a Happier Life
Whole Trouble – Where is the Key to Choose Happiness in Occupied Tibet? Trouble in Tibet – The Key to Living a Happier Life
For there is ‘Trouble in Tibet’, I want to Find the Key to Living a Happier Life. Where is the Key to choose Happiness in Occupied Tibet? Happiness is like Sunshine. How can I find Sunshine, if my Land is submerged under deep Darkness called Military Occupation? The concept of finding “Inner Peace” through Meditation or Internal Reflection is invalid if there is no Peace in the external environment which conditions man’s existence at any given place and time.
ABC News
What the Dalai Lama Suggests Is the Key to Living a Happier Life
By Lauren Effron
Mar 10, 2016, 9:00 AM ET
Whole Trouble – Where is the Key to Choose Happiness in Occupied Tibet? Trouble in Tibet – The Key to Living a Happier Life
10% Happier with Dan Harris’ with the Dalai Lama For the Dalai Lama, finding inner peace is as easy as deciding that whatever is bothering you simply doesn’t exist.
Well okay, it’s not that easy. It takes a lot of practice and study.
His Holiness, along with Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, sat down with ABC News’ Dan Harris for his new live-stream podcast show, “10% Happier With Dan Harris.” The Dalai Lama and Davidson have collaborated for years on research looking at the impact meditation can have on the brain.
Specifically, the Dalai Lama spoke about the importance of studying and practicing analytical meditation, the art of actively examining something bothering us and questioning whether it really exists.
“When we analyze the nature, or the very identity of sadness or worry, you can find … the appearance of something or ‘my sadness, something is here, something solid,’ now that no longer there,” His Holiness said when describing the practice of analytical meditation.
If it’s a another person you’re angry with, the Dalai Lama suggested recognizing that you are angry at that person and then letting that anger go. “In the case of one human being who gives you problem, and you feel very negative with that person [you] consider your enemy. … That is a target of anger. Analyze that target. Dissolve. So anger no longer find independent target,” he said.
Even as a spiritual leader, His Holiness said he believed scientific research into meditation is important because having evidence and knowledge about the physical and mental benefits meditation can have on a person can only enhance “the well-being of the world.” It’s a way to deal with problems and find “peace of mind” within oneself without relying on outside escapes, such as drugs or alcohol, he said.
Davidson said having good health doesn’t just mean the “absence of illness” in the body, but also removing suffering from the mind. Teaching others how to do that through the practice of meditation, learning to live happier, can have real long-term benefits.
“It’s public health because disturbing emotions we know cause changes in the body that impact our physical health,” Davidson said. “And so there is evidence to suggest that people who are happier and have higher levels of well-being actually have biology that is more conducive to health … our aspirations is that these practices can actually reduce health care costs because it can enable people to be more healthy.”
But meditation, His Holiness said, is not merely sitting there in “thoughtlessness,” but instead using our brains to concentrate on a particular subject or noise or destructive emotion (like anger) bothering us as a way to “reduce the intensity” of the emotion, and then let it go.
“You see, one of the best gift from God is intelligence. So without using our intelligence it’s quite a pity,” he said.
So when asked what he thought of Donald Trump and the American election process, which has been fraught with anger and opponents slinging mud at each other, His Holiness said, “a serious discussion about policy matter is useful, but sometimes little bit sort of personal criticism these things that looks a little bit cheap. That’s my view.
Whole Trouble – Where is the Key to Choose Happiness in Occupied Tibet? Trouble in Tibet – The Key to Living a Happier Life
Trouble in Tibet manifests itself as Oppression of Tibetans. The Agent causing Trouble in Tibet is Occupation. If Occupation is vacated, Oppression will cease and Tibetans will find relief from Trouble.
Trouble in Tibet manifests itself as Oppression of Tibetans. The Agent causing Trouble in Tibet is Occupation. If Occupation is vacated, Oppression will cease and Tibetans will find relief from Trouble.
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
China’s oppression of Tibetans has dramatically increased — New Internationalist
The country fears that if they don’t completely crush any form of protest they will lose control. Emily Korstanje reports.
Tibetans do not have freedom of speech, religion or movement. Many passports have been recalled and the borders are closed, trapping Tibetans in the country as their culture and land diminishes. In Dutch, the poster says ‘China stop torturing Tibetans to death.’ by Emily Korstanje
In Dutch, the poster says ‘China stop torturing Tibetans to death.’ by Emily Korstanje
‘They would hang me up for several hours with my hands tied to a rope…once I was beaten continuously for two days with nothing to eat nor a drop of water to drink,’ said Labrang Jigme, a Tibetan monk arrested for peaceful protesting in Tibet. ‘The second time I was unconscious for six days unable to open my eyes or speak a word.’
Upon being released, Jigme was forced to sign a document stating that he was not tortured.
I was beaten continuously for two days with nothing to eat nor a drop of water to drink ‘They are destroying our people, beautiful culture, and land,’ said social worker and Tibetan refugee, Sonam Sangpo.
According to International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), massive peaceful protests in 2008 led to an intensive crackdown on the country with more than 600 Tibetans imprisoned and approximately 150 self-immolations – Tibetans light themselves on fire as an individual form of protests against oppression.
‘The Chinese government fears that if they don’t completely crush any form of protest they will lose control of Tibetans,’ said Executive Director of International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Europe, Tsering Jampa. ‘Instead of trying to assess why Tibetans self-immolate and change the situation, they come down harder and more fierce each time.’
Trouble in Tibet manifests itself as Oppression of Tibetans. The Agent causing Trouble in Tibet is Occupation. If Occupation is vacated, Oppression will cease and Tibetans will find relief from Trouble. Photo by Emily Korstanje.
International Campaign for Tibet (ICT)’s European director, Tsering Jampa, gathering signatures for the campaign. Emily Korstanje
Recent evidence shows that there has been a significant increase of Tibetan political prisoners since the protests, and torture has become more widespread than ever. Because of these outstanding cases, in November 2015, the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) met with China officials and asked them to account for ‘deeply entrenched’ torture and ill treatment, according to a published report by ICT.
‘It (the report) also reflects alarm at China’s attempts to subvert criticism of its record on human rights and to distort the reality,’ said Executive Director of ICT Germany, Kai Mueller. For example, when ICT brought forward torture devices that were used on prisoners, Chinese officials argued they were made comfortable with cushions so they could no longer be considered torture devices.
‘We had a Tibetan monk who was able to escape prison, testify and show examples of the torture devices that were used on him,’ Jampa said. ‘Chinese officials refused to acknowledge this case and many other cases brought before them.’
The Dalai Lama is simply asking that Tibetans have the same rights and freedom as the Chinese have
Another case brought before CAT included a Tibetan man who was shot and killed while trying to intervene on behalf of an elderly monk who was beaten with an iron rod in the prison. The elderly man later died of what Chinese officials called ‘natural causes’ even though his body showed obvious signs of torture and brutal beatings.
China refused to acknowledge these cases because of the ‘unverifiable nature of information’. CAT strongly urged China to provide more insight on these brutal cases, which have created a lot of distress among Tibetans.
China has been able to continue and intensify their control because they have successfully closed Tibet off from the rest of the world. So during the UN’s confrontation with China, ICT, which focuses on monitoring and reporting on Tibetan human rights and advocating for Tibetans imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs, ran a campaign in the Netherlands against torture in Tibet. This was to raise awareness about the abuse that Tibetans are subjected to and to gather signatures to put pressure on European government officials who would then put pressure on the Chinese government.
Trouble in Tibet manifests itself as Oppression of Tibetans. The Agent causing Trouble in Tibet is Occupation. If Occupation is vacated, Oppression will cease and Tibetans will find relief from Trouble. Photo by Emily Korstanje.
International Campaign for Tibet has helped several prisoners such as Ngawang Sangdrol, Phuntsog Nyidron and Dhondup Wangchen get released; each who share horrific stories of their imprisonment.
China refuses to give up Tibet due to its strategic location, land space, natural resources, and the fact that there are now more Chinese in Tibet than Tibetans because of immigration. Therefore, the Dalai Lama – Tibetans’ spiritual leader currently living in exile in India – has pleaded with the Chinese government to make Tibet truly autonomous so people can have freedom of speech, religion, and movement.
‘The Dalai Lama is not asking that the Chinese leave, we know it is too late for that,’ Sangpo said. ‘He is simply asking that Tibetans have the same rights and freedom as the Chinese have.
We all ask for that and for the preservation of our beautiful culture.’ Published on February 4, 2016 by EMILY KORSTANJE
New Internationalist
North American Office 2446 Bank Street, Suite 653 Ottawa, Ontario K1V 1A8 Canada
New Internationalist reports on issues of world poverty and inequality. We focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide in the fight for global justice.
Trouble in Tibet manifests itself as Oppression of Tibetans. The Agent causing Trouble in Tibet is Occupation. If Occupation is vacated, Oppression will cease and Tibetans will find relief from Trouble.
The Adventures of Sue in Tibet – Thanks to Doris Shelton
I thank Ms. Doris Shelton for describing The Amazing Adventures of “Sue in Tibet.” I examine the Whole Trouble of Tibet from various perspectives. The central issue is that of the military occupation of Tibet by a foreign power.
I thank Ms. Doris Shelton for describing The Amazing Adventures of “Sue in Tibet.” I examine the Whole Trouble of Tibet from various perspectives. The central issue is that of the military occupation of Tibet by a foreign power.
I thank Ms. Doris Shelton for describing The Amazing Adventures of “Sue in Tibet.” I examine the Whole Trouble of Tibet from various perspectives. The central issue is that of the military occupation of Tibet by a foreign power.
B B C
The amazing adventures of Sue in Tibet and her creator
16 March 2016
Image copyright: William Arthur Smith. Image caption: The cover art for Sue in Tibet shows a smiling girl, poised for adventure.
Girls did not often star in the adventure stories of the early 20th Century, but the chance discovery of a little-known book by the daughter of an American missionary who lived in a Tibetan border town led researcher Tricia Kehoe to uncover an extraordinary life story, but one marred by tragedy.
Everybody remembers when Tintin went to Tibet, but not what happened when Sue was there.
While browsing around a tiny second-hand bookshop in Nottingham, I came across a dusty, worn cloth-covered out-of-print book entitled “Sue in Tibet”. As a scholar of Tibetan studies, I was familiar with Tibet-based adventure and mystery novels published in the 1920s, but these were invariably centred on the stories of the men.
This was intriguing because it looked like it could be the first piece of western children’s literature ever set in Tibet, and its main character was a teenage girl. Published in 1942, it tells the story of Sue Shelby, the eldest daughter of an American missionary family stationed in the remote Tibetan border town of Batang.
Image copyright Newark Museum Image caption This photograph may record the Shelton family’s first journey from the interior of China into Tibet
Set against the backdrop of rampant banditry and skirmishes between Tibetan and Chinese soldiers, it begins with the dangerous journey on horseback across snow-capped mountains by Sue’s family before they eventually settle in Batang. By the end Sue, fluent in Chinese and Tibetan, acts as an interpreter at a crucial military conference, so ensuring peace at a time of unrest.
Its observations are astonishingly accurate – because it is based very closely on the true-life adventures of its author, Dorris Shelton Still. However, her story did not have the same happy ending. As a woman back in the United States, so her children told me, Dorris almost never spoke of her unique childhood.
Image copyright Newark Museum Image caption The Shelton family making a precarious crossing over a lake in the Batang region
Like Sue, Dorris was the eldest daughter of the Sheltons, an American missionary family stationed in the remote Sino-Tibetan border town of Batang between 1908 and 1921. Batang was not a strange or exotic land for Dorris, it was home. Clues to the Sheltons’ life come from Sue’s story too.
Image copyright Newark Museum Image caption Dorris Shelton was sent away from Batang in 1921 to attend boarding school in the US
Image copyright Willliam Arthur Smith Image caption Sue in Tibet recounts the heroine’s close friendships with Tibetan girls in Batang
Just a few years after the British invasion of Lhasa in 1905 and a subsequent massacre of missionaries and converts by Tibetan lamas in Batang itself, the fictional family are received with a mixture of curiosity, fear and suspicion. Nevertheless, Sue becomes best friends with local girl Nogi, who teaches her to apply yak butter to her skin after bathing. They swap snacks of peanut better and jelly sandwiches for yak meat and dried yak cheese.
Sue even befriends a so-called Living Buddha, known in Tibet as a tulku or reincarnated lama. This story has some basis in reality as one remarkable photograph now held at the Newark Museum shows. It documents the occasion when the Shelton family sat down to a picnic with an incarnate lama who had been disbarred from priestly functions because he fell in love.
Image copyright Willliam Arthur Smith Image caption When Sue met a so-called Living Buddha
Image copyright Newark Museum Image caption When Dorris met an incarnate lama (second from right)
As she notes in her memoirs, Dorris never forgot her friends in Batang, and would regularly pine for butter tea and tsampa, the traditional staples of Tibet. Although she longed to return, it was never to be.
But the triumphant climax of Sue in Tibet is where fiction departs from reality. When Sue’s father is prevented by injury from acting as interpreter at a crucial military conference, Sue jumps in, and after a gruelling journey on horseback, she saves the day, returning to a heroine’s welcome in Batang.
It was not like that for Dorris and her sister, who were dressed like sober American girls and kept to a strict schooling schedule. In 1921, they were sent off to boarding school. But they were never again to see their father, the heroic doctor whom Sue’s father is closely based on.
Image copyright Newark Museum Image caption Dorris and her sister, despite their very Tibetan way of life, were kept in Western clothes while in Batang
While on a mission to Lhasa to set up a medical centre, he was shot by bandits on the road. He died days later. His family were not there, but a travelling companion later provided a graphic and tragic account of what happened, paying tribute to the doctor’s courage and crediting him with saving his life. After the bandits moved on, they found the doctor lying on the side of the road.
“There were blood stains all over his face. I could see a large wound open on his forehead. “
He was desperate for water, but that was scarce. Nursed for a few day, the doctor knew what was coming once his arm was amputated..
“Ming Shang. I will be gone in a few days, no hope to live, I love you, be a good boy. I have told the other folk to look after you,” Dr Shelton said.
“I was extremely sad, a man who loved me as his own son, now I had to carry his amputated arm on the back of my horse,” the account goes on to say.
Image copyright Newark Museum Image caption Her father, a doctor, was on the way to set up a medical mission in Lhasa, when he was killed by bandits Even though Dorris went on to write about Sue in Tibet, her children believe the pain of the loss of her father lay behind her personal silence in her later years. Her granddaughter, Andrea Still does recall one conversation, possibly a tribute to Dorris’s father’s work as a doctor.
“She spoke about …where Western and Eastern philosophies met with most friction. It was that if someone was injured…in Tibetan culture, they would write a prayer down on a slip of paper, cover the paper in mud and swallow it down while saying prayers and walking in supplication, while the Westerner finds his trusty doctor.”
Image copyright Newark Museum Image caption Dorris Shelton went on to involve herself in Tibetan causes from the US
Tibet clearly stayed with her Dorris. She was involved in raising money to help Tibetan refugees and sponsoring Tibetan businesses in Dharamsala, the Indian city which has become a hub for Tibetan exiles. She also had private audiences with the Dalai Lama.
In many ways, the book was ahead of its time. In the 1940s, out of the 284 children’s books published in the US, only 21 had girls as their main characters. Sue, however, is centre-stage. Faced with unfamiliar and dangerous situations, she is an independent and quick-thinking girl with a strong sense of curiosity and a passion for adventure.
It is clearly a reflection of Dorris’s spirit too and she wrote about her time in Tibet with a poignant nostalgia in her later journals. “We were happy youngsters in a beautiful land with friends we loved and endless wonderful things to do.”
Image copyright Shelton Family archive
I thank Ms. Doris Shelton for describing The Amazing Adventures of “Sue in Tibet.” I examine the Whole Trouble of Tibet from various perspectives. The central issue is that of the military occupation of Tibet by a foreign power.
The Story of Tibet relates to The Origin of Man. Mount Kailash in Tibet is associated with The Beginning of Anatomically Modern Man.
Both Tibet and India believed that they can contain Red China’s of Expansionism using diplomatic negotiations. I will not blame Tibet or India for trying to resolve the problem of Red China’s aggression with patience and without escalating international tensions. Their efforts have failed and yet I will not blame them for trying to negotiate for a peaceful solution. Red China’s deception could not be easily discovered and her plans for total subjugation of Tibet could not be deciphered in time.
I hold Red China responsible for her own evil actions and she cannot escape consequences as evil actions always leads to downfall, disaster, calamity, catastrophe, and apocalypse. I cannot predict the response of India, or the United States to continued military occupation of Tibet. However, with a sense of profound confidence, I seek Blessings of Mount Kailash to predict and announce to the World, “Beijing is Doomed.”
The Story of Tibet relates to The Origin of Man. Mount Kailash in Tibet is associated with The Beginning of Man.
India has ignored Tibet for too long
A settlement of the Tibet issue is imperative for regional stability should become our consistent diplomatic refrain
By Brahma Chellaney, Livemint | November 11, 2014
Despite booming two-way trade, India-China strategic discord and rivalry is sharpening. At the core of their divide is Tibet, an issue that fuels territorial disputes, border tensions and water feuds.
Beijing says Tibet is a core issue for China. In truth, Tibet is the core issue in Beijing’s relations with countries such as India, Nepal and Bhutan that traditionally did not have a common border with China. These countries became China’s neighbours after it annexed Tibet, which, after waves of genocide, now faces ecocide.
China itself highlights Tibet as the core issue with India by laying claim to Indian territories on the basis of purported Tibetan religious or tutelary links, rather than any professed Han Chinese connection. Indeed, ever since China gobbled up the historical buffer with India, Tibet has remained the core issue.
The latest reminder of this reality came when President Xi Jinping brought Chinese incursions across the India-Tibet border on his recent India visit. Put off by the intrusions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government permitted Tibetan exiles to stage protests during Xi’s New Delhi stay, reversing a pattern since the early 1990s of such protests being foiled by police during the visit of any Chinese leader.
However, India oddly bungled on Tibet and Sikkim during Xi’s visit—diplomatic goof-ups that escaped media attention. In response to China’s increasing belligerence—reflected in a rising number of Chinese border incursions and Beijing’s new assertiveness on Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)—India since 2010 stopped making any reference to Tibet being part of China in a joint statement with China. It has also linked any endorsement of one China to a reciprocal Chinese commitment to a one India.
Yet the Modi-Xi joint statement brought in Tibet via the backdoor, with India appreciating the help extended by the “local government of Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China” to Indian pilgrims visiting Tibet’s Kailash-Mansarovar, a mountain-and-lake duo sacred to four faiths: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Tibet’s indigenous religion, Bon. Several major rivers, including the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej and the Karnali, originate around this holy duo.
The statement’s reference to the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China was out of place. It lent implicit Indian support to Tibet being part of China by gratuitously changing the formulation recorded during Premier Li Keqiang’s 2013 visit, when the joint statement stated: “The Indian side conveyed appreciation to the Chinese side for the improvement of facilities for the Indian pilgrims”. Did those in the ministry of external affairs (MEA) who helped draft the statement apprise the political decision-makers of the implications of the new, China-inserted formulation?
After all, the new wording ran counter to India’s position since 2010—a stance that came with the promise of repairing the damage from India’s past blunders over Tibet, including by Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi. Nehru, in the 1954 Panchsheel pact, ceded India’s British-inherited extraterritorial rights in Tibet and implicitly accepted the sprawling region’s annexation without any quid pro quo. Under the terms of this accord, India withdrew its military escorts from Tibet, and conceded to China the postal, telegraph and telephone services it operated there.
But in 2003, Atal Bihari Vajpayee went further than any predecessor and formally surrendered India’s Tibet card. In a statement he signed with the Chinese premier, Vajpayee used the legal term recognize to accept what China deceptively calls the Tibet Autonomous Region as “part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China”.
Vajpayee’s blunder opened the way for China to claim Arunachal Pradesh as South Tibet, a term it coined in 2006 to legitimize its attempt at rolling annexation. Had Vajpayee not caved in, China would not have been emboldened to ingeniously invent the term South Tibet for Arunachal, which is three times the size of Taiwan and twice as large as Switzerland. And since 2010, Beijing has also questioned India’s sovereignty over J&K, one-fifth of which is under Chinese occupation.
In this light, the reference to China’s Tibet region in the Modi-Xi joint statement granted Beijing via the backdoor what India has refused to grant upfront since 2010. This sleight of hand implicitly endorsed Tibet as being part of China without Xi committing to a one India policy.
Now consider India’s second mistake—falling for China’s proposal for establishing an alternative route for Indian pilgrims via Sikkim, a state that strategically faces India’s highly vulnerable “chicken’s neck” and where Beijing is working to insidiously build influence.
Ironically, it is by agreeing to open a circuitous alternative route for pilgrims via Sikkim’s Nathula crossing that Beijing extracted the appreciation from India to China’s Tibet government. Given that Kailash-Mansarovar is located close to the Uttarakhand-Nepal-Tibet tri-junction, the new route entails a long, arduous detour—pilgrims must first cross eastern Himalayas and then head toward western Himalayas through a frigid, high-altitude terrain.
Unsurprisingly, the meandering route has kicked up controversy, with the Uttarakhand chief minister also injecting religion to contend that scriptures “recognize only the traditional paths for pilgrimage passing through Uttarakhand”. China currently permits entry of a very small number of Indian pilgrims through just one point—Uttarakhand’s Lipulekh Pass. The foreign ministry, which organizes the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, is to take a maximum of 1,080 pilgrims in batches this year, with no more than 60 travellers in each lot.
One obvious reason China chose the roundabout route via Sikkim is that the only section of the Indo-Tibetan border it does not dispute is the Sikkim-Tibet frontier, except for the tiny Finger Area there. Beijing recognizes the 1890 Anglo-Sikkim Convention, which demarcated the 206-km Sikkim-Tibet frontier, yet paradoxically rejects as a colonial relic Tibet’s 1914 McMahon Line with India, though not with Myanmar.
The more important reason is that China is seeking to advance its strategic interests in the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction, which overlooks the narrow neck of land that connects India’s northeast with the rest of the country. Should the chicken’s neck ever be blocked, the northeast would be cut off from the Indian mainland. In the event of a war, China could seek to do just that.
Two developments underscore its strategic designs. China is offering Bhutan a territorial settlement in which it would cede most of its other claims in return for being given the strategic area that directly overlooks India’s chokepoint. At the same time, Beijing is working systematically to shape a Sino-friendly Kagyu sect, which controls important Indian monasteries along the Tibetan border and is headed by the China-anointed but now India-based Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley.
The Indian government has barred Ogyen Trinley—who raised suspicion in 1999 by escaping from Tibet with astonishing ease—from visiting the sect’s headquarters at Rumtek, Sikkim. Yet—redounding poorly on Indian intelligence—the Mandarin-speaking Ogyen Trinley has been regularly receiving envoys sent by Beijing. In recent years, he has met Han religious figures as well as Xiao Wunan, the effective head of the Asia-Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation. This dubious foundation, created to project China’s soft power, has unveiled plans with questionable motives to invest $3 billion at Lord Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal—Lumbini, located virtually on the open border with India.
Trinley—the first Tibetan lama living in exile to include Han Buddhist rituals in traditional Tibetan practices—was recently accused by the head of the Drukpa sect in India of aiding Beijing’s frontier designs by using his money power to take over Drukpa Himalayan monasteries, including in the Kailash-Mansarovar area. Indeed, Himachal Pradesh police in 2011 seized large sums of Chinese currency from the Karmapa’s office.
Since coming up to power, Modi has pursued a nimble foreign policy. His government, hopefully, can learn from its dual mistakes. With China now challenging Indian interests even in the Indian Ocean region, it has become imperative for India to find ways to blunt Chinese trans-Himalayan pressures.
One key challenge Modi faces is how to build leverage against China, which largely sets the bilateral agenda, yet savours a galloping, $36-plus billion trade surplus with India. Modi’s Make in India mission cannot gain traction as long as Chinese dumping of goods undercuts Indian manufacturing.
Also, past blunders on Tibet by leaders from Nehru to Vajpayee have helped narrow the focus of Himalayan disputes to what China claims. The spotlight now is on China’s Tibet-linked claim to Arunachal, rather than on Tibet’s status itself.
To correct that, Modi must find ways to add elasticity and nuance to India’s Tibet stance.
One way for India to gradually reclaim its leverage over the Tibet issue is to start emphasizing that its acceptance of China’s claim over Tibet hinged on a grant of genuine autonomy to that region. But instead of granting autonomy, China has made Tibet autonomous in name only, bringing the region under its tight political control and unleashing increasing repression.
India must not shy away from urging China to begin a process of reconciliation and healing in Tibet in its own interest and in the interest of stable Sino-Indian relations. China’s hydro-engineering projects are another reminder that Tibet is at the heart of the India-China divide and why India must regain leverage over the Tibet issue.
That a settlement of the Tibet issue is imperative for regional stability and for improved Sino-Indian relations should become India’s consistent diplomatic refrain. India must also call on Beijing to help build harmonious bilateral relations by renouncing its claims to Indian-administered territories.
Through such calls, and by using expressions such as the Indo-Tibetan border and by identifying the plateau to the north of its Himalayas as Tibet (not China) in its official maps, India can subtly reopen Tibet as an outstanding issue, without having to formally renounce any of its previously stated positions.
Tibet ceased to be a political buffer when China occupied it in 1950-51. But Tibet can still turn into a political bridge between China and India. For that to happen, China must start a process of political reconciliation in Tibet, repudiate claims to Indian territories on the basis of their alleged Tibetan links, and turn water into a source of cooperation, not conflict.
Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research.
This entry was posted on November 13, 2014 by Tenzin Gaphel.
TROUBLE IN TIBET – BLESSINGS OF MOUNT KAILASH. NATHU LA PASS, SIKKIM, NEW GATEWAY TO KAILASH – MANSAROVAR LAKE PILGRIMAGE.The Story of Tibet relates to The Origin of Man. Mount Kailash is associated with The Beginning of the Anatomically Modern Man.The Story of Tibet relates to The Origin of Man. Mount Kailash in Tibet is associated with The Beginning of Man.The Story of Tibet relates to the Origin of Man. Mount Kailash in Tibet is associated with The Beginning of the Anatomically Modern Man.The Story of Tibet relates to The Origin of Man. Mount Kailash in Tibet is associated with The Beginning of the Anatomically Modern Man.The Story of Tibet relates to The Origin of Man. Mount Kailash in Tibet is associated with The Beginning of the Anatomically Modern Man.The Story of Tibet relates to The Origin of Man. Mount Kailash in Tibet is associated with The Beginning of the Anatomically Modern Man.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. Pilgrims seeking to destroy forces of Evil occupying Tibet. Traditional Trekking Route.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. Pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar to destroy Evil force occupying Tibet.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. Pilgrimage to destroy Evil force occupying Tibet.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. A new route to Pilgrimage to destroy Evil force occupying Tibet.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash to destroy Evil force occupying Tibet.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. Pilgrimage to destroy Evil force occupying Tibet.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. Destroy Evil force occupying Tibet.
Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. During 1973, I served in this area trekking between Tawaghat and Lipulekh Pass.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash to drive Evil force occupying Tibet.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. Uttarakhand Route to Mount Kailash is of interest to me for I served in that area during 1973.Trouble in Tibet – Blessings of Mount Kailash. New Pilgrimage Route via Nathu La Pass, Sikkim.
Special Frontier Force Remembers the Legacy of 35th US President
Special Frontier Force, a military organization in India was established during the Cold War Era while the US fought wars in the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam. In my view, Special Frontier Force is the relic of Unfinished Vietnam War, America’s War against the spread of Communism in South Asia.
On behalf of Special Frontier Force, I feel honored to share John F Kennedy’s Legacy. Due to Cold War Era secret diplomacy, Kennedy’s role in Asian affairs is not fully appreciated both in the US and India. In 1962, during presidency of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of Republic of India, Kennedy joined hands with India and Tibet to transform the Tibetan Resistance Movement into a regular fighting force.
On behalf of Special Frontier Force, I feel honored to share John F Kennedy’s Legacy. Due to Cold War Era secret diplomacy, Kennedy’s role in Asian affairs is not fully appreciated both in the US and India. In 1962, during presidency of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of Republic of India, Kennedy joined hands with India and Tibet to transform the Tibetan Resistance Movement into a regular fighting force.
Special Frontier Force, a military organization in India was established during the Cold War Era while the US fought wars in the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam. In my view, Special Frontier Force is the relic of Unfinished Vietnam War, America’s War against the spread of Communism in South Asia.
On behalf of Special Frontier Force, I feel honored to share John F Kennedy’s Legacy. Due to Cold War Era secret diplomacy, Kennedy’s role in Asian affairs is not fully appreciated both in the US and India. In 1962, during presidency of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of Republic of India, Kennedy joined hands with India and Tibet to transform the Tibetan Resistance Movement into a regular fighting force.
Remembering John F. Kennedy’s Legacy on his 100th birthday
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE REMEMBERS JOHN F KENNEDY’S LEGACY ON 35th PRESIDENT’S 100th BIRTHDAY.
Published May 29, 2017
Fox News
On behalf of Special Frontier Force, I feel honored to share John F Kennedy’s Legacy. Due to Cold War Era secret diplomacy, Kennedy’s role in Asian affairs is not fully appreciated both in the US and India. In 1962, during presidency of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of Republic of India, Kennedy joined hands with India and Tibet to transform the Tibetan Resistance Movement into a regular fighting force.
In this Feb. 27, 1959 file photo, Sen. John F. Kennedy, D-Mass., is shown in his office in Washington. Monday, May 29, 2017 marks the 100-year anniversary of the birth of Kennedy, who went on to become the 35th President of the United States. (AP Photo, File) (AP 1959)
As Americans celebrate this Memorial Day, they also will remember the life and legacy of President John F. Kennedy who was born 100 years ago this Monday.
While the 35th president left a mixed legacy following his assassination in Dallas in 1963, Kennedy remains nearly as popular today as he did during his time in office, and he arguably created the idea of a president’s “brand” that has become commonplace in American politics.
“President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy worked hard to construct a positive image of themselves, what I call the Kennedy brand,” Michael Hogan, author of ‘The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Biography.’ “And because history is as much about forgetting as remembering, they made every effort to filter out information at odds with that image.”
In commemoration of JFK’s 100th birthday, Fox News has compiled a rundown on the life of the 35th president:
Born on May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts to Joseph “Joe” Kennedy and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy
In 1940, Kennedy graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts in government
From 1941 to 1945, Kennedy commanded three patrol torpedo boats in South Pacific during World War II, including the PT-109 which was sunk by a Japanese destroyer
In 1946, Kennedy was elected to Congress for Massachusetts’s 11th congressional district and served three terms
Elected to the U.S. Senate to represent Massachusetts in 1952
Kennedy marries Jacqueline Bouvier, a writer with the Washington Times-Herald, in 1953
Receives the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his book “Profiles in Courage”
Elected President of the United States in 1960, becoming the youngest person elected to the country’s highest office, and the first Roman Catholic president.
He is credited with overseeing the creation and launch of the Peace Corps
Sent 3,000 U.S. troops to support the desegregation of the University of Mississippi after riots there left two dead and many others injured
Approved the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 intending to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro
In 1962, Kennedy oversaw the Cuban Missile Crisis — seen as one of the most crucial periods of the U.S.’s Cold War with the Soviet Union
Signed a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union in July 1963
Asked Congress to approve more than $22 billion for Project Apollo with the goal of landing an American on the moon by the end of the 1960s
Escalated involvement in the conflict in Vietnam and approved the overthrow of Vietnam’s President Ngô Đình Diệm. By the time of the war’s end in 1975, more than 58,000 U.S. troops were killed in the conflict
Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
On behalf of Special Frontier Force, I feel honored to share John F Kennedy’s Legacy. Due to Cold War Era secret diplomacy, Kennedy’s role in Asian affairs is not fully appreciated both in the US and India. In 1962, during presidency of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of Republic of India, Kennedy joined hands with India and Tibet to transform the Tibetan Resistance Movement into a regular fighting force.
On behalf of Special Frontier Force, I feel honored to share John F Kennedy’s Legacy. Due to Cold War Era secret diplomacy, Kennedy’s role in Asian affairs is not fully appreciated both in the US and India. In 1962, during presidency of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of Republic of India, Kennedy joined hands with India and Tibet to transform the Tibetan Resistance Movement into a regular fighting force.
Bruce Riedel Reveals the Failed CIA Operations in Tibet and Cuba
Whole Review – JFK’s Forgotten Crisis, Book by Bruce Riedel. I reject Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interpretation of Prime Minister Nehru’s Policy since 1947. In fact, Bruce Riedel reveals the failed CIA operations in Tibet and Cuba.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy faced two great crises in 1962 – the Cuban missile crisis and the Sino-Indian War. While his part in the missile crisis that threatened to snowball into a nuclear war has been thoroughly studied, his critical role in the Sino-Indian War has been largely ignored. Bruce Riedel fills that gap with JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War. Riedel’s telling of the president’s firm response to China’s invasion of India and his deft diplomacy in keeping Pakistan neutral provides a unique study of Kennedy’s leadership. Embedded within that story is an array of historical details of special interest to India, remarkable among which are Jacqueline Kennedy’s role in bolstering diplomatic relations with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan President Ayub Khan, and the backstory to the China-India rivalry – what is today the longest disputed border in the world.
Bruce Riedel is senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project. He joined Brookings following a thirty-year career at the CIA. His previous books include The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future; Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad; and Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back.
In my analysis, Indian Prime Minister Nehru and the US President John F. Kennedy are not accountable for the Failed CIA Operations in Tibet and Cuba. THE 1962 INDIA – CHINA WAR AND THE US FACTOR. PRESIDENT KENNEDY PLANNED TO NUKE CHINA IN 1962.
The great conspiracy hatched by the UK and the US to dismember India in 1947 is not mentioned in JFK’s Forgotten Crisis Book Review. The First Kashmir War of 1947-48 is not because of Nehru’s incompetence. Following this unfair and unjust attack on India in 1947, Nehru acted in the interests of India and obtained the Soviet support for Kashmir without any concern for his own policy of Non-Alignment. He was indeed a great diplomat who performed a balancing act. The Communist takeover of mainland China and Chairman Mao Zedongs’s Expansionist Doctrine compelled Nehru to visit Washington D.C. in 1949 to initiate the Tibetan Resistance Movement and Nehru kept it as a covert operation to avoid provoking the Soviets. Nehru offered the UN Security Council seat to Red China to please the Soviets for they are the only people who fully supported India on the Kashmir issue.
It is the US policy which helped Red China to occupy Aksai Chin area of Ladakh. The US claims Kashmir as the territory of Pakistan. The US policy does not recognize India’s right to Kashmir.
It is the US policy which helped Red China to occupy Aksai Chin area of Ladakh. The US claims Kashmir as the territory of Pakistan. Even today, the official maps of the US show Kashmir as Pakistan’s territory and the US continues to support Pakistan with an aim to dismember India. These covert operations have extended to Punjab and to the Northeast. Nehru kept his cool and obtained the US support to defend the Northeast Frontier. Kennedy did not hesitate to use the Nuke threat and it forced Red China to declare unilateral ceasefire. India regained the full control of the Northeast Frontier while the Chinese still occupy Ladakh which clearly reveals the nature of the US policy which does not recognize India’s right to Kashmir. Too much attention is given by Indian readers to Mrs. Kennedy’s sleeping arrangements during her visit to New Delhi in March 1962. She came with two other ladies. I know the man who cleans the trash cans of that suite. She was experiencing her monthly period during her stay in New Delhi. Nehru may wear a Red Rose but he was not fond of mating women during their monthly periods. Feel free to ask the CIA or Bruce Riedel to refute my account. The evidence is in the trash can, the dust bin called History. All said and done, the CIA failed in 1959 for they underestimated the capabilities of the Enemy in Tibet. The Tibet Uprising of 1959 was brutally crushed and CIA helped the Dalai Lama to find shelter in India. The CIA again failed in Cuba for they underestimated the capabilities of the Enemy in Cuba. Basically, the CIA lacks intelligence capabilities and gave false assurances to Nehru about China’s intentions and preparedness to wage a war across the Himalayan Frontier. Ask Chairman Mao Zedong as to why he attacked India in 1962. What did he say about his own attack? Indians keep repeating the false narrative shared by Neville Maxwell, a communist spy. What about Indian Army Chief? What was his name? Was he related to Nehru clan? Who appointed him to that position? Was there any favoritism? India honored all the military leaders who defended Kashmir.
Tell me about the Battlefield casualties. How many killed and wounded during the 1962 War? Ask Red China to give me its numbers. What is the secret about it? Ask Red China to declassify its War Record to get a perspective on the Himalayan Blunders of Nehru.
Whole Review – JFK’s Forgotten Crisis, Book by Bruce Riedel. On behalf of Special Frontier Force – Vikas Regiment, I reject Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interpretation of Prime Minister Nehru’s Policy since 1947.
Rudra Rebbapragada
Special Frontier Force/Establishment 22/Vikas Regiment
Whole Review – JFK’s Forgotten Crisis, Book by Bruce Riedel. I reject Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interpretation of Prime Minister Nehru’s Policy since 1947.
PM Modi urged the MPs to read ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis’ in his Parliament speech.
JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War, Bruce O. Riedel, Brookings Institution, 2015
Bruce Riedel’s book is written in an accessible style and adds considerably to our understanding of the limitations of Nehru, the India-friendliness of JFK, and the Sino-Indian War of ’62.
Occurring in the shadows of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Sino-Indian War of 1962 is a forgotten slice of history that is remembered vividly only in India.
With it is buried an important episode of US president John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s diplomacy, an intriguing ‘what-if’ of Indo-US relations, and perhaps the most active chapter in the neglected history of Tibet’s resistance to China’s brutal occupation.
The war, however, brought about significant geopolitical changes to South Asia that shape it to this day. Bruce Riedel’s JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War is a gripping account of the United States’ involvement in South Asia and Kennedy’s personal interest in India.
In it, he dispels the commonly held belief that India was not a priority of US foreign policy in the early 1960s and that Kennedy was too preoccupied with events in his own backyard to pay any attention to a “minor border skirmish” on the other side of the world.
Except perhaps among historians of the Cold War, it is not widely known that the United States cosied up to Pakistan during the Eisenhower administration not to buttress South and West Asia against communism but to secure permission to fly reconnaissance missions into the Soviet Union, China, and Tibet.
Initiated in 1957, the US-Pakistan agreement allowed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to operate U-2 reconnaissance planes from Lahore, Peshawar, and other airbases in West Pakistan over Communist territory. Airfields in East Pakistan, such as at Kurmitola, were also made available to the United States. Some of the missions were flown by the Royal Air Force as well.
These overflights provided a wealth of information about the Soviet and Chinese militaries, economies, terrain, and other aspects important to Western military planners. Particularly useful was the information on China, which was otherwise sealed off to Western eyes and ears.
Ayub Khan, the Pakistani president, claimed his pound of flesh for the agreement – Washington and Karachi signed a bilateral security agreement supplementing the CENTO and SEATO security pacts that Pakistan was already a member of and American military aid expanded to include the most advanced US jet fighter of the time, the F-104.
In addition to intelligence gathering, the United States was also involved – with full Pakistani complicity – in supporting Tibetan rebels fight the Chinese army.
The CIA flew out recruits identified by Tibetan resistance leaders, first to Saipan and then on to Camp Hale in Colorado or to the Farm – the CIA’s Virginia facility – to be trained in marksmanship, radio operations, and other crafts of insurgency. The newly-trained recruits were then flown back to Kurmitola, from where they would be parachuted back into Tibet to harass the Chinese military.
No one in Washington had any illusion that these rebels stood any chance against any professionally trained and equipped force, especially one as large as the People’s Liberation Army, but US policymakers were content to harass Beijing in the hope of keeping it off balance.
Jawaharlal Nehru knew of US activities in Tibet, for his Intelligence Bureau chief, BN Mullick, had his own sources in Tibet. It is unlikely, however, that he knew of Pakistan’s role in the United States’ Tibet operations.
In any case, Nehru did not believe that it was worth antagonising the Chinese when there was no hope of victory; India had to live in the same neighbourhood and hence be more cautious than the rambunctious Americans.
Furthermore, it was the heyday of non-alignment and panchsheel, and the Indian prime minister did not wish to upset that applecart if he could help it. In fact, Nehru urged US President Dwight Eisenhower during their 1956 retreat to the latter’s Gettysburg farmhouse to give the UN Security Council seat held by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China to Mao Zedong’s Communist China.
As Nehru saw it, a nation of 600 million people could not be kept outside the world system for long, but Ike, as the US president was known, still had bitter memories of the Chinese from Korea fresh in his mind. Yet three years later, when Ike visited India and Chinese perfidy in Aksai Chin had been discovered, the Indian prime minister’s tone was a contrast.
To most, Cuba defines the Kennedy administration: JFK had got off to a disastrous start in his presidency with the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, an inheritance from his predecessor’s era.
His iconic moment, indisputably, came two years later in the showdown with Nikita Khrushchev over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Less well known is the president’s interest in South Asia and India in particular.
Riedel explains how, even before assuming the presidency, Kennedy had made a name for himself in the US Senate with his powerful speeches on foreign policy.
In essence, he criticised the Eisenhower government for its failure to recognise that the era of European power was over; Kennedy wanted to fight a smarter Cold War, embracing the newly liberated peoples of Asia and Africa and denying the Communists an opportunity to fan any residual anti-imperialism which usually manifested itself as anti-Westernism.
Riedel points to a speech in May 1959 as a key indicator of the future president’s focus:
In May 1959, JFK declared, “…no struggle in the world today deserves more of our time and attention than that which now grips the attention of all Asia. That is the struggle between India and China for leadership of the East…” China was growing three times as fast as India, Kennedy went on, because of Soviet assistance; to help India, the future president proposed, NATO and Japan should put together an aid package of $1 billion per year that would revitalise the Indian economy and set the country on a path to prosperity.
The speech had been partially drafted by someone who would also play a major role in the United States’ India policy during Kennedy’s presidency: John Kenneth Galbraith.
Riedel shows how, despite his Cuban distraction, Kennedy put India on the top of his agenda. A 1960 National Intelligence Estimate prepared by the CIA for the new president predicted a souring of India-China relations; it further predicted that Delhi would probably turn to Moscow for help with Beijing.
However, the border dispute with the Chinese had shaken Nehru’s dominance in foreign policy and made Indian leaders more sympathetic of the United States. The NIE also projected the military gap between India and China to increase to the disadvantage of the former.
The PLA had also been doing exceedingly well against Tibetan rebels, picking them off within weeks of their infiltration. By late 1960, a Tibetan enclave had developed in Nepal; Mustang, the enclave was called, became the preferred site for the CIA to drop supplies to the rebels.
Galbraith, the newly appointed ambassador to India, disapproved of the CIA’s Tibetan mission, which had delivered over 250 tonnes of arms, ammunition, medical supplies, communications gear, and other equipment by then.
Like Nehru, he thought it reckless and provocative without any hope of achieving a favourable result. There were, however, occasional intelligence windfalls coming from Tibet and Kennedy overruled Galbraith for the moment. JFK’s Forgotten Crisis shows how Galbraith was far more attuned to India than he is usually given credit for. He is most famously remembered – perhaps only among Cold War historians – for nixing a Department of Defence proposal in 1961 that proposed giving India nuclear weapons.
Then, he predicted – most likely accurately – that Nehru would denounce such an offer and accuse the United States of trying to make India its atomic ally. Now, the Harvard professor pushed for Nehru and Kennedy to meet.
This would give the Indian prime minister, Galbraith hoped, an opportunity to remove any lingering suspicions he may have had about US foreign policy in South Asia. The large aid package Washington had planned for India would only sweeten the meeting.
This was not to be: Nehru remained most taciturn and almost monosyllabic during his visit to Jacqueline Kennedy’s home in Newport. However, he was quite enamoured by the First Lady, and Jackie Kennedy later said that she found the Indian leader to be quite charming; she, however, had much sharper things to say about the leader’s daughter!
Washington’s outreach to Delhi annoyed Karachi. Though ostensibly the US-Pakistan alliance was to fight communism, the reality was that Pakistan had always been preoccupied with India.
Ayub Khan felt betrayed that the United States would give India, a non-aligned state, economic assistance that would only assist it in developing a stronger military to be deployed against Pakistan. Riedel’s account highlights the irresistible Kennedy charm – when Pakistan suspended the Dragon Lady’s flights from its soil, JFK was able to woo Khan back into the fold.
However, the Pakistani dictator had a condition – that Washington would discuss all arms sales to India with him. This agreement would be utterly disregarded during the Sino-Indian War and Pakistan would start looking for more reliable allies against their larger Hindu neighbour.
Riedel reveals how Pakistan had started drifting into the Chinese orbit as early as 1961, even before China’s invasion of India, an event commonly believed to have occurred after India’s Himalayan humiliation.
When India retook Goa from the Portuguese, a NATO country, it caused all sorts of difficulties for the United States.
On the one hand, Kennedy agreed with the notion that colonial possessions should be granted independence or returned to their original owners but on the other, Nehru and his minister of defence, Krishna Menon, had not endeared themselves to anyone with their constant moralising; their critics would not, now, let this opportunity to call out India’s hypocrisy on the use of force in international affairs pass.
The brief turbulence in relations was set right, oddly, by the First Lady again. On her visit to India, she again charmed the prime minister and he insisted that he stay with him instead of the US embassy and had the room Edwina Mountbatten had often used on her visits readied. The play of personalities, an often ignored facet of diplomacy, has been brought out well by Riedel.
Ironically, China believed that the Tibetan resistance movement was being fuelled by India with US help. India’s granting of asylum to the Dalai Lama did not help matters either, even though it was Nehru who had convinced the young Dalai Lama to return to Tibet in 1956 and have faith in Beijing’s promises of Tibetan autonomy.
Although Indian actions did factor into the Chinese decision to invade India in October 1962, records from Eastern European archives indicate that the Sino-Soviet split was also partly to blame. Humiliating India served two purposes for Mao: first, it would secure Chinese access to Tibet via Aksai Chin, and second, it would expose India’s Western ties and humiliate a Soviet ally, thereby proclaiming China to be the true leader of the communist world.
Riedel’s treatment of the war and the several accounts makes for interesting reading, though his belief that there is rich literature on the Indian side about the war is a little puzzling.
Most of what is known about the Sino-Indian War comes from foreign archives – primarily the United States, Britain, and Russia but also European archives as their diplomats recorded and relayed to their capitals opinions they had formed from listening to chatter on the embassy grapevine.
There is, indeed, literature on the Indian side but much of it seeks to apportion blame rather than clarify the sequence of events. Records from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of External Affairs, or the Ministry of Defence are yet to be declassified, though the Henderson-Brooks-Bhagat Report was partially released to the public by Australian journalist Neville Maxwell.
Chinese records, though not easily accessible, have trickled out via the most commendable Cold War International History Project. The Parallel History Project has also revealed somewhat the view from Eastern Europe.
Riedel dispels the notion of Nehru’s Forward Policy as the cassus belli. According to Brigadier John Dalvi, a prisoner of war from almost the outset, China had been amassing arms, ammunition, winter supplies, and other materiel at its forward bases since at least May 1962.
This matches with an IB report Mullick had provided around the same time. Furthermore, the Indian forces were outnumbered at least three-to-one all along the border and five-to-one in some places. The troops were veterans of the Korean War and armed with modern automatic rifles as compared to Indian soldiers’ 1895 issue Lee Enfield.
Though Riedel exonerates Nehru on his diplomacy, he does not allow the prime minister’s incompetence to pass: the political appointment of BM Kaul, the absolute ignorance of conditions on the ground, and the poor logistics and preparation of the troops on the border left them incapable of even holding a Chinese assault, let alone breaking it.
JFK’s Forgotten Crisis brings out a few lesser known aspects of the Sino-Indian War. For example, India’s resistance to the PLA included the recruitment of Tibetan exiles to harass the PLA from behind the lines. Nehru was approached by the two men most responsible for the debacle on the border – Menon and Kaul – with the proposal which Nehru promptly agreed.
A team, commanded by Brigadier Sujan Singh Uban and under the IB, was formed. A long-continuing debate Riedel takes up in his work is the Indian failure to use air power during the conflict in the Himalayas.
It has been suggested that had Nehru not been so timid and fearful of retaliation against Indian cities but deployed the Indian air force, India may have been able to repel or at least withstand the Chinese invasion. One wonders how effective the Indian Air Force really might have been given the unprepared state of the Army.
In any case, Riedel points out that the Chinese air force was actually larger than the IAF – the PLAAF had over 2,000 jet fighters to India’s 315, and 460 bombers to India’s 320. Additionally, China had already proven its ability to conquer difficult terrain in Korea.
Throughout the South Asian conflict, the United States was also managing its relationship with Pakistan. Despite the Chinese invasion, the bulk of India’s armies were tied on the Western border with Pakistan and Ayub Khan was making noises about a decisive solution to the Kashmir imbroglio; it was all the United States could do to hold him back.
However, Ayub Khan came to see the United States as a fair-weather friend and realised he had to look elsewhere for support in his ambitions against India: China was the logical choice. Thus, the 1962 war resulted in the beginning of the Sino-Pakistani relationship that would blossom to the extent of Beijing providing Islamabad with nuclear weapon and missile designs in the 1980s.
The Chinese had halted after their explosive burst into India on October 20. For a full three weeks, Chinese forces sat still while the Indians regrouped and resupplied their positions. On November 17, they struck again and swept further south. The Siliguri corridor, or the chicken neck, was threatened , and India stood to lose the entire Northeast.
In panic, Kaul asked Nehru to invite foreign armies to defend Indian soil. A broken Nehru wrote two letters to Washington on the same day, asking for a minimum of 12 squadrons of jet fighters, two B-47 bomber squadrons, and radar installations to defend against Chinese strikes on Indian cities.
These would all be manned by American personnel until sufficient Indians could be trained. In essence, India wanted the United States to deploy over 10,000 men in an air war with China on its behalf.
There is some doubt as to what extent the United States would have gone to defend India. However, that November, the White House dispatched the USS Kitty Hawk to the Bay of Bengal (she was later turned around as the war ended).
After the staggering blows of November 17, the US embassy, in anticipation of Indian requests for aid, had also started preparing a report to expedite the process through the Washington bureaucracy.
On November 20, China declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew its troops to the Line of Actual Control. A cessation of hostilities had come on Beijing’s terms, who had shown restraint by not dismembering India.
Riedel makes a convincing case that Kennedy would have defended India against a continued Chinese attack had one come in the spring of the following year, and that overt US support may have influenced Mao’s decision.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, the United States sent Averell Harriman of Lend-Lease fame to India to assess the country’s needs. Washington had three items on its agenda with India:
1. Increase US economic and military aid to India;
2. Push India to negotiate with Pakistan on Kashmir as Kennedy had promised Ayub Khan; and
3. Secure Indian support for the CIA’s covert Tibetan operations.
The first met with little objection, and though Nehru strongly objected to talks with Pakistan, he obliged. Predictably, they got to nowhere. On the third point, Riedel writes that India agreed to allow the CIA to operate U-2 missions from Char Batia.
This has usually been denied on the Indian side though one senior bureaucrat recently claimed that Nehru had indeed agreed to such an arrangement but only two flights took off before permission was revoked.
Nonetheless, the IB set up a Special Frontier Force of Tibetans in exile and the CIA supported them with equipment and air transport from bases in India. All this, however, withered away as relations again turned sour after the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and the election of Richard Nixon.
Most of the sources JFK’s Forgotten Crisis uses are memoirs and prominent secondary sources on South Asia and China. Riedel also uses some recently declassified material from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library that sheds new light on the president’s views on South Asia.
Despite the academic tenor of the book, it is readily accessible to lay readers as well; personally, I would have preferred a significantly heavier mining of archival documents and other primary sources but that is exactly what would have killed sales and the publisher would not have liked!
Overall, Riedel gives readers a new way to understand the Kennedy years; he also achieves a fine balance in portraying Nehru’s limitations and incompetence. The glaring lack of Indian primary sources also reminds us of the failure of the Indian government to declassify its records that would inform us even more about the crisis.
As Riedel notes, the Chinese invasion of India created what they feared most and had not existed earlier: the United States and India working together in Tibet. This was largely possible also because of the most India-friendly president in the White House until then.
Yet Pakistan held great sway over American minds thanks to the small favours it did for the superpower. It was also the birth of the Sino-Pakistani camaraderie that is still going strong. The geopolitical alignment created by the Sino-Indian War affects South Asian politics to this day. Yet it was a missed opportunity for Indo-US relations, something that had to await the presidency of George W. Bush.
There are two things Indian officials would do well to consider.
First, Pakistan’s consistent ability to extract favours from Washington is worth study: if small yet important favours can evince so much understanding from the White House, it would be in Indian interests to do the same.
Second, Jaswant Singh’s comment to Strobe Talbott deserves reflection: “Our problem is China, we are not seeking parity with China. we don’t have the resources, and we don’t have the will.” It is time to develop that will.
Special Frontier Force Pays Tribute to President John F. Kennedy
The History of Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22: People’s Republic of China could not alter the course of India’s foreign policy. The 1962 War launched by China ended very abruptly when China declared unilateral ceasefire and withdrew from the captured territory on November 21, 1962. President Kennedy played a decisive role by threatening to “NUKE” China.
While sharing an interesting story titled Cold War Camelot published by The Daily Beast which includes excerpts from the book JFK’s Forgotten CIA Crisis by Bruce Riedel, I take the opportunity to pay tribute to President John F. Kennedy for supporting the Tibetan Resistance Movement initiated by President Dwight David Eisenhower. Both Tibet, and India do not consider Pakistan as a partner in spite of the fact of Pakistan permitting the use of its airfields in East Pakistan. Red China has formally admitted that she had attacked India during October 1962 to teach India a lesson and to specifically discourage India from extending support to Tibetan Resistance Movement. Red China paid a huge price. She is not able to truthfully disclose the human costs of her military aggression in 1962. She failed to achieve the objectives of her 1962 War on India. President Kennedy threatened to “Nuke” China and forced her to declare unilateral cease-fire on November 21, 1962. China withdrew from territories she gained using overwhelming force. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sustained massive casualties and their brief victory over India did not give them any consolation. Red China’s 1962 misadventure forged a stronger bonding between Tibet, India, and the United States.
Special Frontier Force, a military organization in India was established during the Cold War Era while the US fought wars in the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam. In my view, Special Frontier Force is the relic of Unfinished Vietnam War, America’s War against the spread of Communism in South Asia.
On behalf of Special Frontier Force, I feel honored to share John F Kennedy’s Legacy. Due to Cold War Era secret diplomacy, Kennedy’s role in Asian affairs is not fully appreciated both in the US and India. In 1962, during the presidency of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of Republic of India, Kennedy joined hands with India and Tibet to transform the Tibetan Resistance Movement into a regular fighting force.
Special Frontier Force, a military organization in India was established during the Cold War Era while the US fought wars in the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam. In my view, Special Frontier Force is the relic of Unfinished Vietnam War, America’s War against the spread of Communism in South Asia.
Cold War Camelot
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN K. KENNEDY. SUPPORTING TIBET WAS PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MAIN REASON FOR HOSTING A STATE DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.
Bruce Riedel
11.08.1512:01 AM ET
JFK’s Forgotten CIA Crisis
During a spectacular dinner at Mount Vernon, Kennedy pressed Pakistan’s leader for help with a sensitive spy operation against China.
At Mount Vernon
The magic of the Kennedy White House, Camelot, had settled in at Mount Vernon. It was a dazzling evening, a warm July night, but a cool breeze came off the Potomac River and kept the temperature comfortable. It was Tuesday, July 11, 1961, and the occasion was a state dinner for Pakistan’s visiting president, General Ayub Khan, the only time in our nation’s history that George Washington’s home has served as the venue for a state dinner.
President John F. Kennedy had been in office for less than six months, but his administration had already been tarnished by the failed CIA invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and a disastrous summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Austria. Ayub Khan wrote later that the president was “under great stress.” The Kennedy administration was off to a rocky start: It needed to show some competence.
The idea of hosting Ayub Khan at Mount Vernon came from Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who was inspired by a dinner during the Vienna summit held a month earlier at the Schönbrunn Palace, the rococo-style former imperial palace of the Hapsburg monarchy built in the seventeenth century. Mrs. Kennedy was impressed by the opulence and history displayed at Schönbrunn and at a similar dinner held on the same presidential trip at the French royal palace of Versailles. America had no royal palaces, of course, but it did have the first president’s mansion just a few miles away from the White House on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River. The history of the mansion and the fabulous view of the river in the evening would provide a very special atmosphere for the event.
On June 26, 1961, the First Lady visited Mount Vernon privately and broached the idea with the director of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which manages the estate. It was a challenging proposal. The old mansion was too small to host an indoor dinner so the event would have to take place on the lawn. The mansion had very little electricity in 1961 and was a colonial antique, without a modern kitchen or refrigeration, so that the food would have to be prepared at the White House and brought to the estate and served by White House staff. But the arrangements were made, with the Secret Service and Marine Corps providing security, and the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Regiment from Fort Myers providing the colonial fife and drum corps for official presentation of the colors. The National Symphony Orchestra offered the after-dinner entertainment. Tiffany and Company, the high-end jewelry company, provided the flowers and decorated the candlelit pavilion in which the guests dined.
The guests arrived by boat in a small fleet of yachts led by the presidential yacht, Honey Fitz, and the secretary of the navy’s yacht, Sequoia. They departed from the Navy Yard in Washington and sailed the fifteen miles down river to Mount Vernon past National Airport and Alexandria, Virginia; the trip took an hour and fifteen minutes. On arrival the most vigorous guests, such as the president’s younger brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, climbed the hill to the mansion on foot, but most took advantage of the limousines the White House provided.
Brookings Institution
The guest list was led by President Ayub Khan and his daughter, Begum Nasir Akhtar Aurangzeb, and included the Pakistani foreign minister and finance minister, as well as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Aziz Ahmed, and various attaches from the embassy in Washington. Initially the ambassador was upset that the dinner would not be in the White House, fearing it would be seen as a snub. The State Department convinced Ahmed that having it at Mount Vernon was actually a benefit and would generate more publicity and distinction. The Americans invited to the dinner were the elite of the new administration. In addition to the president, attorney general, and vice president and their wives, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of the Navy John Connally, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer, and their wives joined the party. Six senators, including J. W. Fulbright, Stuart Symington, Everett Dirksen, and Mike Mansfield were joined by the Speaker of the House and ten congressmen, including a future president, Gerald Ford, and their wives. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, William Roundtree; the chief of the United States Air Force, General Curtis Lemay; Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Talbott; Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver; and the president’s military assistant, Maxwell Taylor, were also in attendance. Walter Hoving, chairman of Tiffany, and Mrs. Hoving, and a half-dozen prominent Pakistani and American journalists, such as NBC correspondent Sander Vanocur, attended from outside the government. In total more than 130 guests were seated at sixteen tables.
Perhaps the guest most invested in the evening, however, was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen W. Dulles. The Kennedys had long been friends of Allen Dulles. A few years before the dinner Mrs. Kennedy had given him a copy of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel, From Russia, with Love, and Dulles, like JFK, became a big fan of 007. Dulles was also a holdover from the previous Republican administration. He had been in charge of the planning and execution of the Bay of Pigs fiasco that had tarnished the opening days of the Kennedy administration, but Dulles still had the president’s ear on sensitive covert intelligence operations, including several critical clandestine operations run out of Pakistan with the approval of Field Marshal Ayub Khan.
Before sitting down for dinner just after eight o’clock, the guests toured the first president’s home and enjoyed bourbon mint juleps or orange juice. Both dressed in formal attire for the occasion, Kennedy took Ayub Khan for a walk in the garden alone. At that time, the CIA was running two very important clandestine operations in Pakistan. One had already made the news a year earlier when a U-2 spy plane had been shot down over the Soviet Union by Russian surface-to-air missiles; this plane had started its top-secret mission, called Operation Grand Slam, from a Pakistani Air Force air base in Peshawar, Pakistan. The U-2 shoot down had wrecked a summit meeting between Khrushchev and President Eisenhower in Paris in 1960 when Ike refused to apologize for the mission. The CIA had stopped flying over the Soviet Union, but still used the base near Peshawar for less dangerous U-2 operations over China.
The history of Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22: 1957 was a turning point. India had recognized that its foreign policy of political neutralism was of no use and had started depending upon the United States to address the military threat posed by China’s occupation of Tibet. But, the effort was too modest and both India and the United States had grossly underestimated the strength of the People’s Liberation Army.
The second clandestine operation also dated from the Eisenhower administration, but was still very much top-secret. The CIA was supporting a rebellion in Communist China’s Tibet province from another Pakistani Air Force air base near Dacca in East Pakistan (what is today Bangladesh). Tibetan rebels trained by the CIA in Colorado were parachuted into Tibet from CIA transport planes that flew from that Pakistani air base, as were supplies and weapons. U-2 aircraft also landed in East Pakistan after flying over China to conduct photo reconnaissance missions of the communist state.
Ayub Khan had suspended the Tibet operation earlier that summer. The Pakistani president was upset by Kennedy’s decision to provide more than a billion dollars in economic aid to India. Pakistan believed it should be America’s preferred ally in South Asia, not India, and shutting down the CIA base for air drops to Tibet was a quiet way to signal displeasure at Washington without causing a public breakdown in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Ayub Khan wanted to make clear to Kennedy that an American tilt toward India at Pakistan’s expense would have its costs. In his memoirs, Khan later wrote that he sought to press Kennedy not to “appease India.”
Before the Mount Vernon dinner, Allen Dulles had asked Kennedy to meet alone with Ayub Khan, thinking that perhaps a little Kennedy charm and the magic of the evening would change his mind. The combination worked; the Pakistani dictator told Kennedy he would allow the CIA missions over Tibet to resume from the Pakistani Air Force base at Kurmitula outside of Dacca.
Ayub Khan did get a quid pro quo for this decision later in his visit: Kennedy promised that, even if China attacked India, he would not sell arms to India without first consulting with Pakistan. However, when China did invade India the following year, Kennedy ignored this promise and provided critical aid to India, including arms, without consulting Ayub Khan, who was deeply disappointed.
The main course for dinner was poulet chasseur served with rice and accompanied by Moët and Chandon Imperial Brut champagne (at least for the Americans), followed by raspberries in cream for dessert. President Kennedy hosted a table at which sat Begum Aurangzeb, who wore a white silk sari. Khan enjoyed the beauty of a Virginia summer evening with America’s thirty-one-year-old First Lady; he sat next to Jackie, who wore a Oleg Cassini sleeveless white organza and lace evening gown sashed at the waist in Chartreuse silk. In his toast the Pakistani leader warned that “any country that faltered in Asia, even for only a year or two, would find itself subjugated to communism.” In turn Kennedy hailed Ayub Khan as the George Washington of Pakistan. After midnight the guests were driven back to Washington down the George Washington Parkway.
The CIA operation in Tibet had its detractors in the Kennedy White House, including Kennedy’s handpicked ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, who called it “a particularly insane enterprise” involving “dissident and deeply unhygienic tribesmen” that risked an unpredictable Chinese response. However, the operation did produce substantial critical intelligence on the Chinese communist regime from captured documents seized by the Tibetans at a time when Washington had virtually no idea what was going on inside Red China. The U-2 flights from Dacca were even more important to the CIA’s understanding of China’s nuclear weapon development at its Lop Nor nuclear test facility.
But Galbraith was in the end correct to be skeptical. The operation did have an unpredicted outcome: The CIA operation helped persuade Chinese leader Mao Zedong to invade India in October 1962, an invasion that led the United States and China to the brink of war and began a Sino-India rivalry that continues today. It also created a Pakistani-Chinese alliance that still continues. The contours of modern Asian grand politics thus were drawn in 1962. The dinner at Mount Vernon was a spectacular social success for the Kennedys, although they received some predictable criticism from conservative newspapers over its cost. It was also a political success for both Kennedy and the CIA, keeping the Tibet operation alive. As an outstanding example of presidential leadership in managing and executing covert operations at the highest level of government, it is an auspicious place to begin an examination of JFK’s forgotten crisis.
From JFK’s FORGOTTEN CRISIS: TIBET, THE CIA, AND THE SINO-INDIAN WAR,by Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution Press, November 6, 2015.
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR HIS SUPPORT TO TIBET. DINNER HOSTED AT PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON’S MOUNT VERNON ESTATE ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.mountvernon.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY WHO HOSTED STATE DINNER AT GEORGE WASHINGTON’S MOUNT VERNON ESTATE ON JULY 11, 1961 TO GET SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS FROM PRESIDENT AYUB KHAN OF PAKISTAN.SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY. A STATE DINNER HOSTED ON JULY 11, 1961 WAS USED TO GET SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS FROM PRESIDENT AYUB KHAN OF PAKISTAN.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR ENLISTING SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING THIS DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961. On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR ENLISTING SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING THIS DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR ENLISTING SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR ENLISTING SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR ENLISTING SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR ENLISTING SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR ENLISTING SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR GETTING PAKISTAN’S SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.jfklibrary.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR GETTING PAKISTAN’S SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961.On www.mountvernon.orgSPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR GETTING PAKISTAN’S SUPPORT FOR TIBET OPERATIONS DURING DINNER AT MOUNT VERNON ON JULY 11, 1961. On www.jfklibrary.org
Trouble in Tibet – Red China’s Doctrine of Neocolonialism – The Forced Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads
‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
STRUGGLE IN THE CITY FOR TIBETAN NOMADS
By Benjamin Haas
Aba (China) (AFP) – By mid-morning, Lobsang’s leather cowboy hat is askew, his black robes dishevelled, and his breath stinks of booze. Once a nomad herder roaming the high Tibetan plateau, instead he stumbles around his sparse new concrete house.
For decades he and his wife grazed yaks and sheep, living a life little changed in centuries, until they acquiesced three years ago to government calls to give up their yak-hair tents for permanent housing.
Now they live in a resettlement village, row after row of identical blue-roofed grey shells, an hour’s drive from Aba in Sichuan province along winding mountain roads.
“Everything changed when we moved to this town,” said Tashi, who like her husband is in her 40s but not sure of her exact age. “First we ran out of money, then he couldn’t find suitable work and then he started drinking more and more.”
Chinese authorities say urbanisation in Tibetan areas and elsewhere will increase industrialisation and economic development, offering former nomads higher living standards and better protecting the environment.
Those who move receive an urban hukou — China’s strictly controlled internal residence permits that determine access to social services. The government offers free or heavily subsidised houses, medical insurance, and free schooling.
TROUBLE IN TIBET – RESETTLEMENT OF TIBETAN NOMADS. KANDING, THE GANZI PREFECTURE. RED CHINA’S NEOCOLONIALISM.‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
A woman walks in the snow in Kangding in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, southwestern China.
But critics say the drive has a one-size-fits-all approach and many former pastoralists have not prospered, despite its promises.
Unlike the voluntary urbanisation of the early 2000s, when many adults maintained subsistence lifestyles while sending children and the elderly into towns, Andrew Fischer, of the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said: “The policy lock, stock and barrel shoves nomads into these resettlements thinking that is good for them.
“But then that gives rise to a variety of related problems like unemployment, social problems, alcoholism, et cetera, which are typical hallmarks of rapid social dislocation,” he told AFP.
‘TOO LATE’
‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
At the resettlement facility, many relocated former herders complained to AFP they lacked work or training. Critics of China’s urbanization drive say it has a one-size-fits-all approach and many former pastoralists have not prospered.
Dolkar, 42, sold his last 13 yaks for 85,000 yuan (now $13,000) two years ago, a decision he now regrets, and has yet to find stable employment. “I thought this was a lot of money, but I didn’t realise things in the town would be so expensive,” he lamented.
“A person from the government came and convinced me I should move, but now I see I’ve lost so much. I want to go back, but it’s too late.”
Now available urban jobs are low-wage, manual positions in construction or sanitation. But many nomads shun menial labour, having enjoyed wealthy status in the Tibetan community by virtue of their valuable livestock holdings.
‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
Critics say one goal of the urbanisation campaign is to give authorities more oversight over the people of Tibet.
“It’s not like everyone can become a petty entrepreneur selling dumplings in the marketplace, the jobs need to be there and in the absence of that, the government moving them to urban areas isn’t going to help.”
SEPARATIST FORCES
Critics say one goal of the urbanisation campaign is to give authorities more oversight over the people of Tibet, which has been ruled by Beijing since 1951.
The resettlement village AFP visited is in what was Kham, the eastern part of pre-invasion Tibet, where Khampa warriors fought Communist forces, sometimes with CIA backing, until the late 1960s.
‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
Across China, urbanisation is a top economic priority, with Premier Li Keqiang calling it the country’s ‘Grand Strategy for Modernisation’.
The region’s top Party official, Chen Quanguo, has said each village should become a “fortress” to “guard against and combat the infiltration of Tibetan separatist forces”.
Urbanisation efforts “concentrate people into areas where they are far easier to surveil and where they become more dependent on state subsidies to survive —- in other words, where they are easier to control”, Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.
Environmental experts also say that rather than protecting mountain pastures, the policy has damaged their ecology, allowing invasive weeds to proliferate and change the nature of the soil.
“Not using these grasslands long-term doesn’t work,” said Sun Jie, deputy director of the Grassland Research Institute at the Inner Mongolia Academy of Agricultural & Animal Husbandry Sciences.
“It’s always been natural for grasslands to be used for grazing, the plants and the soil need it for healthy growth,” she added. “Otherwise poor quality foliage moves in and contributes to soil decline.”
Across China, urbanisation is a top economic priority, with Premier Li Keqiang calling it the country’s “grand strategy for modernisation” at a 2014 policy meeting.
But benefits such as running water have come at the cost of Tibetan former nomads’ sense of identity, with many complaining their sons and daughters are taught almost entirely in Mandarin.
“My children will never know our history, they won’t understand our Tibetan traditions,” said Dorje, who moved into the resettlement camp six years ago and occasionally works odd jobs. “My grandchildren will never know I used to be a respected and wealthy man, they will only know poverty.”
‘Trouble in Tibet’ has several faces and one of them is Resettlement of Nomads. This Policy of Resettlement of Tibetan Nomads symbolizes Red China’s Neocolonialism; extension of political and economic control over Tibet using organizational, and technological superiority.
Trouble in Tibet – Demise of Tibetan Language Education
Trouble in Tibet – Demise of Tibetan Language Education
Trouble in Tibet has millions of faces, and I am sad to add the face of Tashi Wangchuk to describe Tibet’s Trouble; tragic demise of Tibetan Language Education.
Tibetan language rights activist Tashi Wangchuk detained again for “slanderous” videos on Chinese TikTok
Chinese authorities detained prominent Tibetan language rights activist, Tashi Wangchuk, on October 20, 2024, for his language rights activism on Chinese social media platforms. The Yushul (Chinese: Yushu) City Public Security Bureau (PSB) accused Tashi of publishing “fabricated” and “slanderous” videos on platforms such as Douyin (TikTok) and Kuaishou to “slander government agencies” and challenge government decision-making.
Tashi was held for 15 days and released on November 4, 2024. This detention follows his previous five-year prison term from 2016 to 2021 on charges of “inciting separatism,” after his appearance in a New YorkTimes article and video documentary in November 2015 documenting his efforts to petition the Chinese government for Tibetan language protection.
China Charges Tibetan Education Advocate With Inciting Separatism
THE NEW YORK TIMES By EDWARD WONG MARCH 30, 2016
China Charges Tibetan Education Advocate With Inciting Separatism
Tashi Wangchuk, a Tibetan entrepreneur and education advocate, at his home in Yushu, China, in July. Mr. Tashi was detained in January and held in secret until his family was notified this month. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times
BEIJING : A detained Tibetan entrepreneur who advocated for bilingual education in schools across Tibetan regions of China has been charged with inciting separatism, according to an official police document.
The entrepreneur, Tashi Wangchuk, 30, is being held at the main detention center in Yushu, the town in Qinghai Province in western China, where he lives with his elderly parents. Mr. Tashi could face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty, depending on the specifics of the allegations against him.
Mr. Tashi was detained on Jan.27 and held in secret for weeks. His relatives said they were not told of his detention until March 24, though Chinese law requires that a detainee’s family be notified within 24 hours. A document stating the charge against Mr. Tashi, which a police officer gave the family, and a photograph of which was seen by The New York Times, was dated March 4.
Before his detention, Mr. Tashi had written on his microblog that Tibetans needed to protect their culture and that Chinese officials should aid them in doing so. He has argued for greater Tibetan autonomy within China, but none of his known writings have called for Tibetan independence, which he has said he opposes.
A Tibetan’s Journey for Justice
Worried about the erosion of Tibetan culture and language, one man takes his concerns to Beijing, hoping media coverage and the courts can reverse what he sees as a systematic eradication.
By JONAH M. KESSEL on Publish Date November 28, 2015. Photo by Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times.
The family said it has not been able to find a local lawyer to represent Mr. Tashi. Officials have not yet announced a trial date.
Mr. Tashi’s case has attracted international attention. Officials at the State Department are aware of his detention, and a representative of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression said the group was starting a petition to call for his release. President Obama may raise human rights issues with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, when Mr. Xi visits Washington this week for a summit meeting on nuclear issues.
As an advocate for Tibetan culture, Mr. Tashi has been most vocal about language education, saying that schools should adopt a true system of bilingual education so that Tibetan children can become fluent in their mother language.
Mr. Tashi has said that the dearth of effective Tibetan language education, and the fact that the language is not used in government offices, violates the Chinese Constitution, which guarantees cultural autonomy for Tibetan and other ethnic regions.
Mr. Tashi runs a shop in Yushu and sells goods from the region to buyers across China on Taobao, an online platform run by Alibaba, the e-commerce giant. In 2014, Alibaba chose Mr. Tashi to be featured in a video for the company’s investor roadshow before a high-profile initial public offering. The founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, Jack Ma, was the video’s main narrator.
Late last year, Mr. Tashi was quoted in two articles in The New York Times on Tibetan language and culture. He was also the main subject of a documentary video by The Times about his attempts to use the legal system to compel officials to improve Tibetan language education.
In an interview last year, Mr. Tashi said he did not support Tibetan independence because he believed that Tibet could continue to develop economically as a part of China. He said he wanted true autonomy for Tibetan regions as guaranteed in the constitution, which he said would help preserve Tibetan language and culture.
Mr. Tashi also said in the interview that he was thankful to all the Chinese people who truly protect minorities, and he praised Mr. Xi for having promoted a democratic and law-abiding country these last few years.
Mr. Tashi had been detained briefly twice before, he and his family members have said. Once was for trying to go to India, a common destination for Tibetans who want to see the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader. The other detention, in 2012, was for posting online comments that criticized local officials over land seizures.
TIBET’S ATLAS OF EMOTIONS. TROUBLE IN TIBET – NO PEACE UNDER OCCUPATION. MIND MAP OF TIBET SHOWS FEAR, ANGER, SADNESS, AND DISGUST.
Peace is true or real experience if that experience is in conformity with facts of external world. If forces of occupation control, rule, govern, reign, or operate conditions of external world, there can be no ‘Inner Peace’ for it is not real or true. For any Tibetan living in Occupied Tibet, his emotions are not his Enemy; the Enemy is visible, the Enemy is real. There is no Calmness of Mind for this Enemy is not yet removed.
“Dalai Lama” Website Launched by His Holiness the Dalai Lama includes Mind Map, and Atlas of Emotions to help people find or discover “Inner Peace.” Spirituality and Science can be blended, but the real issue is that of blending Freedom and Repression. For Repression excludes Freedom, there will be no Peace, neither in Mind, nor in World.
Inner Peace? The Dalai Lama Made a Website for That
Special Frontier Force – Tibetan Resistance: The Doctrine and the Philosophy of Tibetan Resistance to China’s War of Occupation is based on the Force or Power of an Idea that concludes that the Enemy has no Power over your Mind and the Enemy cannot exercise authority over your Mind. Resistance begins when man sets his Mind Free. Resistance is Freedom in Action without any sense of Fear.
The Dalai Lama spoke about the Atlas of Emotions study at the Wilson House on the Sisters of St. Francis’ Assisi Heights campus in Rochester, Minnesota.
By KEVIN RANDALL
May 6, 2016
ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Dalai Lama, who tirelessly preaches inner peace while chiding people for their selfish, materialistic ways, has commissioned scientists for a lofty mission: to help turn secular audiences into more self-aware, compassionate humans.
That is, of course, no easy task. So the Dalai Lama ordered up something with a grand name to go with his grand ambitions: a comprehensive Atlas of Emotions to help the more than seven billion people on the planet navigate the morass of their feelings to attain peace and happiness.
“It is my duty to publish such work,” the Dalai Lama said.
To create this “map of the mind,” as he called it, the Dalai Lama reached out to a source Hollywood had used to plumb the workings of the human psyche.
Specifically, he commissioned his good friend Paul Ekman — a psychologist who helped advise the creators of Pixar’s “Inside Out,” an animated film set inside a girl’s head — to map out the range of human sentiments. Dr. Ekman later distilled them into the five basic emotions depicted in the movie, from anger to enjoyment.
Dr. Ekman’s daughter, Eve, also a psychologist, worked on the project as well, with the goal of producing an interactive guide to human emotions that anyone with an Internet connection could study in a quest for self-understanding, calm and constructive action.
“We have, by nature or biologically, this destructive emotion, also constructive emotion,” the Dalai Lama said. “This innerness, people should pay more attention to, from kindergarten level up to university level. This is not just for knowledge, but in order to create a happy human being. Happy family, happy community and, finally, happy humanity.”
The Dalai Lama paid Dr. Ekman at least $750,000 to develop the project, which began with a request several years ago.
Dr. Ekman recalled the Dalai Lama telling him: “When we wanted to get to the New World, we needed a map. So make a map of emotions so we can get to a calm state.”
As a first step, Dr. Ekman conducted a survey of 149 scientists (emotion scientists, neuroscientists and psychologists who are published leaders in their fields) to see where there was consensus about the nature of emotions, the moods or states they produce, and related areas.
Based on the survey, Dr. Ekman concluded that there were five broad categories of emotions — anger, fear, disgust, sadness and enjoyment — and that each had an elaborate subset of emotional states, triggers, actions and moods. He took these findings to a cartography and data visualization firm, Stamen, to depict them in a visual and, he hoped, useful way. “If it isn’t fun, it’s a failure,” Dr. Ekman said. “It’s got to be fun for people to use.” Stamen’s founder, Eric Rodenbeck, has created data visualizations for Google, Facebook and MTV, as well as maps showing climate change and rising oceans. But he said the Atlas was the most challenging project he had worked on because it was “built around knowledge and wisdom rather than data.”
Not surprisingly, getting scientists to reach a unified understanding of human emotions was difficult.
Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, also counseled Pixar on establishing and depicting the emotional characters for “Inside Out.” He has even advised Facebook on emoticons.
Although Dr. Keltner took part in Dr. Ekman’s survey, the two are not in complete agreement on the number of core emotions. Still, Dr. Keltner said he saw the project as a good step. “The survey questions could have allowed for more gray areas,” he said. “But it’s important to take stock of what the scientific consensus is in the field.”
Dr. Ekman emphasized that the Atlas was not a scientific work intended for peer review.
“It is a visualization for what we think has been learned from scientific studies,” he said. “It’s a transformative process, a work of explanation.”
The Dalai Lama wants to keep religion out of it.
“If we see this research work as relying on religious belief or tradition, then it automatically becomes limited,” he said. “Even if you pray to God, pray to Buddha, emotionally, very nice, very good. But every problem, we have created. So I think even God or Buddha cannot do much.”
The Dalai Lama said he hoped the Atlas could be a tool for cultivating good in the world by defeating the bad within us.
“Ultimately, our emotion is the real troublemaker,” he said. “We have to know the nature of that enemy.”
The Dalai Lama said he had been encouraged by President Obama’s reaction to the project when he told him about it in India.
“Obama seems, I think, to show more interest about our inner value,” he said. “In the past, compassion was something of a sign of weakness, or anger a sign of power, sign of strength. Basic human nature is more compassionate. That’s the real basis of our hope.”
While excited about the Atlas, however, the 80-year-old Dalai Lama will probably not be clicking around the interactive site. He is much more comfortable turning the printed pages of a version that was custom-made for him.
“Technology is for my next body,” he once quipped to the researchers.
TROUBLE IN TIBET – MIND MAP OF TIBET – WHERE IS PEACE WITHOUT FREEDOM?
“Dalai Lama” Website Launched by His Holiness the Dalai Lama includes Mind Map, and Atlas of Emotions to help people find or discover “Inner Peace.” Spirituality and Science can be blended, but the real issue is that of blending Freedom and Repression. For Repression excludes Freedom, there will be no Peace, neither in Mind, nor in World.
Tibetans want to find or discover “Freedom” which is defined as the state or quality of being free from the control of some other person or some arbitrary power; a being able of itself to choose or determine action freely without hindrance, restraint, or repression. If Tibetans are not “Free” to act, how can Tibetans discover “Inner Peace?” Creation of Mind Map will not create Freedom in Occupied Tibet. Repression in Tibet has to go to discover Inner Peace in Mind Map of Tibet.
Dalai Lama: Website launched by Dalai Lama, Atlas of Emotions, blends Science and Spirituality to create Mind Map and reach global audiences
TROUBLE IN TIBET – MIND OF TIBET. DALAI LAMA’S WEBSITE ATLAS OF EMOTIONS EXCLUDES MIND MAP OF TIBET WHERE REPRESSION REIGNS.
May 6, 2016 Sally Elliott
The Dalai Lama never ceases his quest to help others navigate the complex human psyche as part of the path to inner peace, and the Dalai Lama’s website is designed to do just that.
In a truly creative and contemporary collaboration between a Hollywood producer, world-class scientists, and the Dalai Lama, a website, named Atlas of Emotions, was launched with a view of helping the world identify and understand human emotions and overcome those that block the path to peace. The Dalai Lama’s website is the result of a collaboration between Paul Ekman, an American psychologist, and the producers of 2015 animated blockbuster Inside Out. Atlas of Emotions blends science and spirituality to create a mind map for global audiences — the religious, the spiritual, and the secular.
“It is my duty to publish such work,” the Dalai Lama told the New York Times.
According to the New York Times, Dr. Ekman and the Dalai Lama are good friends, and when he decided on a course of action to help the human race achieve peace, the Dalai thought of Pixar’s Inside Out and its universally comprehensible model of the mind and human emotion.
“Specifically, he commissioned his good friend Paul Ekman — a psychologist who helped advise the creators of Pixar’s ‘Inside Out,’ an animated film set inside a girl’s head — to map out the range of human sentiments. Dr. Ekman later distilled them into the five basic emotions depicted in the movie, from anger to enjoyment,” reports the outlet.
Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Repression excludes Freedom. There is neither inner nor outer Peace if Freedom is not in Mind Map.
The Dalai Lama is one of the world’s most prolific and widely followedspiritual leaders [Photo by Lisa Maree Williams]
The Dalai Lama’s website is aimed at achieving his lofty life mission guiding the human race to overcome selfish and hateful behavior, practice kindness, self-awareness, and compassion — in a changing world of countless brands of faith.
“‘When we wanted to get to the New World, we needed a map,’ Dr. Ekman recalled the Dalai Lama telling him. ‘So make a map of emotions so we can get to a calm state,’” reports the New York Times.
Eve Ekman, Dr. Ekman’s fellow psychologist daughter, also collaborated to maximize the engagement and accuracy of the website launched by the Dalai Lama. Atlas of Emotions blends scientific knowledge, which psychologists use to help patients understand and overcome negative behaviors and emotions, and spiritual ideology to provide an interactive guide to human emotions, and it is available to any person with internet access. The website is set to be an invaluable resource for those without the money or opportunity to seek professional help and people seeking to understand their complex emotions on the path to self-awareness, inner peace, and constructive action.
“We have, by nature or biologically, this destructive emotion, also constructive emotion. This innerness, people should pay more attention to, from kindergarten level up to university level,” the Dalai Lama told the NY Times.
“This is not just for knowledge, but in order to create a happy human being. Happy family, happy community and, finally, happy humanity.”
Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. There is no Inner Peace in Mind or World without Freedom.
The Dalai Lama was the guest of honor at a U.S. Government-hosted PrayerBreakfast. [Photo by Pool/Getty Images]
The website launched by the Dalai Lama greets visitors with a simple and sophisticated homepage that outlines five core emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and enjoyment. Users can navigate through the wealth of scientific and spiritual knowledge through Triggers, States, Actions, Moods, and Calm — explanations of how thoughts and feelings come about, how they are experienced, the actions we take as a result, how those make us feel, and how we can overcome the blocks to inner peace and happiness posed by ignorance or lack of understanding.
Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Where is Peace and Freedom in Atlas of Emotions?
New work! We designed an Atlas of Emotions for the @DalaiLama and @PaulEkman
Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Where is Peace and Freedom in Atlas of Emotions?
With the highest quality of professional input, the website launched by the Dalai Lama, Atlas of Emotions, which blends science and spirituality to create a mind map, is set to reach global audiences. The potential for engagement is infinite.
Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Where is Peace and Freedom in Atlas of Emotions?Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Repression is not compatible with Calmness.Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Repression Causes FEAR.Trouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Repression leads to Apprehension and FearTrouble in Tibet – Mind Map of Tibet. Repression Triggers FEAR.Trouble in Tibet – No Peace Under Occupation. Tibet’s Atlas of Emotions. Mind Map of Tibet shows Fear, Anger, Sadness, and Disgust.Tibet’s Atlas of Emotions – Mind Map of Tibet Shows Fear, Apprehension, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness.
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