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THE LHASA UPRISINGA critical study
The Prelude:
By the beginning of 1959, Tibetan resistance movement had grown sufficiently under the leadership of Gompo Tashi, and with the backing of the ‘most powerful nation’, they were looking formidable against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Dalai Lama found the situation ‘near despair’. During the Monlam Festival, the population of Lhasa would swell into several thousands and pose a potential danger to the Chinese. There were the births of anti-Chinese groups during the Monlam Festival of 1952 and 1956. This time the Monlam festival had a special significance as the Dalai Lama was to give his final Geshe Lharampa (Doctorate of Buddhist Philosophy) examination. Thus it attracted more peoples and pilgrimages.
February 7, 1959 was the 29th day of the last month according to the Tibetan calendar, two days before the Tibetan New Year and a day for exorcising the evils of the passing-year. The Dalai Lama along with the Kashag and Tan Guansan (acting Chinese representative) and other dignitaries were watching Cham (ritual dance) at Potala Palace. At that time Tan informed the Dalai Lama that a Chengdu-trained dance troupe had returned to Lhasa and invited him to attend their show. The Dalai Lama readily agreed and suggested that the PLA Camp would be a more appropriate venue. However, no date was fixed. On March 5, the mega event ended and the Dalai Lama and his court moved to the summer palace – Norbulingka. Two days later Tan requested the Dalai Lama to fix a date for the show, and after some deliberations, the Dalai Lama agreed to attend the show on March 10, 1959. Surprisingly enough, no one was informed about the proposed visit until the morning of March 9 when the Chinese started sending invitations to the Kashag and other officials. That morning Kusung Depon Takla, the General of the Dalai Lama’s Bodyguard Regiment, was summoned by the Chinese and was informed that the Dalai Lama should come without his personal bodyguards and that the Tibetan guards cannot come beyond Do Zham (stone bridge) which was two miles from PLA camp. He was also told to keep the visit secret. These unusual terms of Chinese invitation which contravened the traditional Tibetan protocol incensed the already wounded Tibetan psyche. The officials feared that something sinister might be in store and it created a foreboding sense of uncertainty.
In the Norbulingka, Phala, Takla and other high officials decided to persuade the Dalai Lama not to attend the show next day. Meanwhile the rumour of the Chinese plan to abduct the Dalai Lama was deliberately circulated by the junior officials. Barshi and Yeshi Lhundup related how they went about the city to mobilize public support. . So the rumour spread like a wildfire.
The Lhasa Uprising:
Noel Barber writes that by sunset of March 9, thousand of people started to gather outside the walls of the summer palace. However, it is almost unanimous among the Tibetan, Western and Chinese sources that the stream of people began to converge around the Norbulingka in the morning of March 10. The populace demanded the Dalai Lama to cancel the visit. People’s anger was first directed towards the Tibetan elite, especially those who were seen as collaborators. One of the first to suffer mob’s wrath was Sampho, a member of the delegation that signed the infamous 17-Point Agreement. Sampho, dressed in PLA uniform, came in his jeep driven by a Chinese chauffeur. This was seen as a symbol of betrayal and the crowd hurled stones at him. Later he was rushed to the Indian Mission hospital. Another influential official who suffered the brunt of crowd’s anger was Khenchung Sonam Gyaltsen, a member of Chamdo Liberation Committee. Identifying him as a fifth-columnist, crowd surged forward and began jostling him. He pulled out a pistol and fired twice, that enraged the crowd further and was he beaten to death. These clearly indicate that the masses held the Tibetan elite responsible for what they saw as the betrayal of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan nation. When the members of Kashag came out, their cars were thoroughly searched by the people, lest they feared that the Dalai Lama might be hidden inside. The Dalai Lama’s acquiescence to the crowd’s demand did not defuse the situation. But the arena of demonstration gradually shifted to the main Lhasa city, and now the public wraths were directed against the Chinese. On March 13, huge crowd held a demonstration in Shol and condemned the 17-Point Agreement and the declaration of independence was made. Demonstrations were also held near the Indian and Nepalese missions, calling for their supports.
The Dalai Lama felt that he was “standing between two volcanoes each likely to erupt at any moment.” On the evening of the March 10, Tan Guansan wrote a letter to the Dalai Lama and advised him not to attend the show. The next day the Dalai Lama replied that he was not able to attend the theatrical performance owing to the obstruction posed by the “reactionary, evil elements.” In his next letter, the Dalai Lama wrote that he was “making every possible effort to deal with them.” The Dalai Lama’s last letter, written on March 16, said: “A few days from now, when there are enough forces that I can trust, I shall make my way to the Military Area Command secretly.” The Dalai Lama’s missives to Tan were written ‘to gain time’ and were dictated by circumstance rather than conviction. If the Dalai Lama was seen supporting the revolt, then the Chinese have no choice but to resort to violence to bring the situation under hand. Hence to avert bloodshed it was important for the Dalai Lama to project himself as opposing the uprising.
The Escape:
As the situation in Lhasa continues to go unabated, the Kashag decided to move the Dalai Lama to a safer place. On the morning of March 17, Chinese fired two shells at Norbulingka to intimidate the crowd. Both the Dalai Lama and the Kashag consulted the Nechung Oracle who pronounced that they should leave immediately. That evening, the Dalai Lama slipped out secretly in the guise of a soldier, crossed Kyichu River and headed south. The Chinese Military Command in Lhasa discovered his disappearance only three days later. Crack troops from PLA set out in hot pursuit across the uncharted terrain of the Tibetan plateau. On March 20, the PLA troops poised to retake the city. The shelling began and tanks and armored cars crept forward. Better arms and superior military tactics overwhelmed the Tibetan people. On March 23, the Chinese hoisted Red flag over the Potala palace for the first time. The uprising was brutally quelled. Later a secret document captured by the guerrillas mentioned that from March 1959 to October 1960, over 87,000 Tibetans were killed in the vicinity of Lhasa city alone.
Late March 1959, in a safe house on the Wisconsin Avenue outside Washington D.C., two men – an American and an oriental looking monk – waited anxiously beside a wireless receiver. Their seemingly endless waiting came to an abrupt end when one early morning the wireless finally began to move. Referring a specially-prepared dictionary, the monk painstakingly translates the Morse coded message from Tibetan into English, his excitement mounting as its contents are revealed. Finally two men embraced and congratulated each other for the success. The message had been transmitted from the highlands of Tibet. Central Intelligence Agency-trained Tibetan radio operators Athar and his guerrilla troops met the Dalai Lama’s escape party at Chongye on March 21 and were escorting them to the south. Large swathes of southern Tibet were under the control of guerrilla fighters at that time. At Lhuntse Dzong, the Dalai Lama and the Kashag issued a proclamation setting up the new temporary government of Tibet. Now free of the Chinese control, they supported the Khampa resistance fighters and Gompo Tashi was awarded the title Magchi Dzasag (Chief of Army). It was here that the decision to seek asylum in India was made, and was radioed to the Government of India via CIA. On March 30, the Dalai Lama and his entourage crossed the border into exile. CIA instructed Athar and Lotse to handover Rs. 200,000 from their funds to the escaping party.
A Critical Appraisal of the Revolt:
The 1959 Revolt marked the breakdown of an attempted marriage between two irreconcilable spouse – Buddhist Tibet and Communist China; Mao with his military strength and the Dalai Lama with his religious and social influence. The 17-Point Agreement envisioned that these two mutually antagonistic forces would somehow co-habit the same territorial, social, political, and spiritual space. But in reality, the two parties in their own ways understood the 17-Point Agreement and their interpretations and the expectations were diametrically opposed to each other. The Chinese hoped that old-Tibetan systems would succumb to the new fervour of the Chinese communism whereas Tibetan thought they had won the preservation of the de-facto independence they had enjoyed for decades. Thus the 17-Point Agreement was doomed to failure from the very beginning.
One interesting question is whether the Chinese ever had any intention of abducting the Dalai Lama or not. It is highly unlikely that they had such a plan. From all accounts, there were absolutely no reasons for the Chinese to abduct the Dalai Lama and that to the contrary they needed his presence in Tibet more than anything else at that moment of time. Tsering Topgyal in his recent research on the uprising observes that: “There were no incentives for the Chinese to throw away eight years of courtship and provoke an inevitable Tibetan rebellion by kidnapping the Dalai Lama.” The Dalai Lama himself had discounted such a fear and asked people to disperse. Eminent historian Prof. Dawa Norbu also opines that the Tibetan fears and suspicions were unfounded, “and that the Chinese had no such intentions.” However the people’s suspicions must be understood in the light of hatred and doubts, which surrounded Sino-Tibetan relation since 1951. The Tibetan fear was corroborated by number of circumstantial evidences. On March 3, 1959, Barshi consulted the Nechung Oracle with the resulting warning that the Dalai Lama should not venture outside his palace. In 1959, the Dalai Lama was 25-years old and according to the Tibetan belief system, it was a Lo Kag (obstructive year). It was believed that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan nation would undergo hardship. Likewise there were the cases in eastern Tibet where Lamas disappeared after attending Chinese social functions. Moreover, the Chinese were pressing the Dalai Lama to attend the April session of the NPC as a Tibetan delegate. All these had made the imminent abduction look real and it will not be difficult for its protagonist to convince the masses under such an atmosphere. The genesis of the Revolt lay in the eight years of Chinese occupation, which had produced an atmosphere in which such a rumour could be seen as a genuine one. The issue of abduction was only the immediate cause that set the whole of Tibet ablaze. Tsering Topgyal saw the origins of the Tibetan Revolt in a “Triumvirate of fear, misconception, and security dilemma.”
The Kashag, CIA or the Guomindang Agents neither instigated the uprising, as the Chinese accused them of, nor the Dalai Lama was taken into exile against his wishes. The Revolt was a popular uprising crisscrossing various sections of Tibetan society. Tsering Shakya wrote that it was “essentially in defense of the value system of the ordinary men and women, to which the Dalai Lama was central.”
By: Kalsang Wangdu
PGT History
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