Tibet

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Michael Parenti's essay "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth" examines social conditions in Tibet not only in recent decades, but also in the centuries prior to the Chinese occupation. In doing so, he challenges romanticised notions of life under the pre-1959 Buddhist theocracy, instead describing the harsh reality:

Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches." Much of the wealth was accumulated "through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending." . . .

The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. . . .

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: "Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished" they "were just slaves without rights." Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives. . . .

As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes. . . .

To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. "To idealize them," notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), "is to deny them their humanity."

Comments

I too doubt it was a "Shangri-La"

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

But I doubt also that the fact that there were exploitative rich men, abusing slave owners, cruel taskmasters can be laid at the door of the buddhist sangha. The monks owned nothing - the abbotts included - and for the poor (ie most people) life at 4.5 km above sea level must have been very hard. Look at the vasseldom of their neighbours, the kashmiris, afghans, mongolians, bhutanese, nepalis and the fact that monks 'lead' national life must have been something of a blessing, just about every family had the right to put one of their sons into the brotherhood, for which he got an education, and the family had respect, alms, and merit (in the buddhist sense). Sure the history has been sugar-coated by starry-eyed would-be tantrists, but read Alexandra David-Neel or Lama Anagarika Govinda, or Evans-Wentz and the ethnologies suggest that at the beginning and middle of the 20th century tibetans were an exceedingly peaceful, spiritual and cheerful people - stoic even in the face extreme hardship.