The Tibetan Story
“My friends, say, my, I … I…” But something choked him. He couldn’t say it.
He turned to the board, took a piece of chalk and, using all of his strength, he wrote as large as he could: “VIVE LA FRANCE!”
He stayed there, his head resting on the wall, and wordlessly used his hand to motion to us: “It’s over … you may go.”
It was seven years back when I first read this story during my twelfth standard about how a village was being forced to abandon its language under new foreign rule. It signified the closeness one had to one’s culture. I couldn’t understand the importance of language or culture at that time. I thought it was a case of winner takes all where the Prussians defeated the French, and the French would’ve done the same if they had won the war. , and more importantly, for me, it was just a set of information that I had to memorise to clear my exams. But ever since then the story has followed me and it was in the trip to Mcleodganj that I realised what a great masterpiece it was.
The trip that I thought would show me a glimpse of Tibetan struggle turned out to be more than that. What I saw in three days showed me the importance of everything that I had in my life. But what was difficult for me to understand was the fact that what drove these people to pursue the impossible dream of liberating Tibet from the clutches of China, a country en route to become a superpower with over a billion population and far superior resources than what the six million Tibetans.
They say they have the truth on their side, but, surely, 60 years in exile from their homeland, they must have some less believers of that theory.
Furthermore, India as a country has always had a tradition of amalgamating different cultures under its umbrella so accommodating a culture as rich as the Tibetan one should be an asset for us. Also, their leader, the 14th Dalai Lama has stated that he is a son of India as he has survived on dal and rotis all his life. SinceMany of the Tibetans who have lived their whole life in India are more accustomed to India than Tibet, I wonder what exactly is that thing that inspires them to fight for a motherland that most of them have never even seen? and also the
Stories of parents sending their young ones across the border that I have heard are heart wrenching. — These journeys are perilous in which survival is not always guaranteed. I wonder why do these people who were sent away from Tibet by their loved ones to live a better life in India want to go back to that place? Why do they have a parliament in exile that doesn’t have any control over the actual land of Tibet and much of whose work is more beneficial for Indians rather than the Tibetans? I was not able to understand that one thing that was giving them power, I could sense it, but not understand it.
I met several people who had stories to tell. Here I would tell the story of one person whose parents sent him off to India when he was just six. He has not seen his parents since 2008 and it has been five years since he has talked with them. His parents were old when he left, so he has no hope of seeing them again. All his siblings are here in India. But he still had that exact same stubbornness that I saw on the face of every Tibetan in Dharamshala wanting to go back to Tibet. Then my mind went back to the last episode of Game of Thrones in which Tyrion Lannister says, “What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story.” And in an instant, it all became clear and my mind went back to another flashback of a conversation I had with my grandfather in which I asked him about what drove them to struggle for India’s independence. He told me how he had heard stories from his mother about India’s past glory where it was the Golden Bird and it would only reclaim its status after independence.
Then it became clear. Their faces, their reactions, their cause, and all the efforts by them, became crystal clear to me.
It was stories. It has always been stories, the stories they heard about their motherland, its beauty, the happy life that they had there before all hell broke loose. It’s not the parliament, nor the international forum that has kept the Tibet issue alive but it’s the stories that were told to the ones who never saw Tibet that kept the issue alive in the heart of younger generations and this may not guarantee its liberation but it surely will keep the flame alive.
This trip shall remain with each and every one of my classmates as stories for years to come. It doesn’t matter if our story is good or bad but it is the single force that drives us and it was on a rainy day in Mcleodganj that I realised it.
Saumy Deepak Tripathi is a student of journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, and a graduate in history from the Benaras Hindu University. He tweets @tripathisaumy. This is part of our dispatches from Dharamshala. Follow the ‘Culture’ space for more stories on the Tibet saga.
