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Affirmation of Taiwanese democracy

By Tsering Namgyal

Tsering Namgyal is pursuing graduate work at the University of Minnesota, US. Photographer unknown

In Taipei, taking a taxi could be quite similar to attending a class on Buddhism. If you tell them you are a Tibetan, the driver might engage with you on the finer points of Middle-way philosophy.

So politics aside, let’s for a moment discuss the religious significance of the Dalai Lama’s trip to Taiwan. Taiwan has a fairly large number of Tibetan Buddhists, estimated at over half a million. Over the past two decades, Tibetan monks have been travelling there in such large numbers that one could spot them in department stores, in night markets, and in underground metros carrying their latest Apple I-Phones.

Every winter, buses after buses full of Buddhist followers from Taiwan, Hong Kong and some from China, would arrive in Bodhgaya, India, to attend prayers conducted by Tibetan monks, including at the Karmapa Lama’s now huge popular Kagyu Monlam for World Peace. Pilgrims from China are also seen offering prayers there.

The Dalai Lama’s trip to Taiwan in 1997 and 2001 not only popularised Buddhism in Taiwan but also somewhat re-introduced Tibetan culture to the Taiwanese. School textbooks have been educating every Chinese kid that Tibetans are a ferocious Himalayan tribal people who like munching on yak meat and feeding their dead to vultures. That is pretty close. But what they have missed to mention at the same time is that Tibetans have their own sophisticated language and grammar and its massive monasteries have been giving out degrees in philosophy before even Oxford University.

Even before the Communists came to power in China, our monks have been travelling to China where they have always found a fertile and a friendly market. Yet this new post-modern religious exchange, facilitated by global travel, has translated into a no small sympathy for the Tibetan struggle. And it helps that Taiwanese and Tibetans have some sense of how it feels like to be at the receiving end of Han Chinese chauvinism.

The rise of China’s ambition — which is now whipping up, if Chinese bloggers are an indication, a nationalistic fervour of Olympian proportions — is making everybody pretty nervous, of course, including tiny Taiwan. Taiwanese also perhaps see in Tibetan cause a blueprint for their own search for national identity. These days, Taipei is often a venue for “Free Tibet” concerts where Tibetan flags are flown quite high, pro-Tibet slogans are shouted in Mandarin. President Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-trained KMT apparatchik, has worked hard to promote better relations with China, which has suffered after years of pro-independence presidents Lee Teng-hui and his protégé Chen Shui-bian. Both Lee and Chen met with the Dalai Lama during his first and second visits to Taipei.

Thus, the decision by the members of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which rules much of the Southern Taiwan, to invite the Tibetan leader to attend prayer ceremonies for the victims of the disaster, is seen as upsetting the new-found camaraderie between Beijing and Taipei. Ma has the impossible task of keeping the Taiwanese economy afloat — which means more integration with China, it is largest business partner — without making Taiwan just another province of China. Local bloggers are having a field day calling him “Chief Ma,” an imitation of the title of Hong Kong’s boss.

Recently, China’s President Hu Jintao went as far as to congratulate “Mr Ma” on his re-election as the chairman of the nationalist Kuomingtang, saying that the two sides should now work to “revive the Chinese race.”

China has complained as usual this time on the Dalai Lama’s visit but most believe that they are unlikely to throw much tantrum for the visit is likely to help strengthen Ma’s position in Taiwan and remedy shortcomings with regards to his botched rescue efforts. Even if China is unhappy, it is a no-brainer for China does not wish well for both the Dalai Lama or to anyone who speaks for the Taiwanese or Tibetans anyway.

Ma had been criticised for his poor handling of the disaster, his delayed decision to accept foreign aid and rescue missions, and his wooden image, which had come out as somewhat haughty and arrogant in the face of tragedy of such proportions.

The DPP had been described as capitalising on the disaster to embarrass Ma. Yet as the largest opposition party in Taiwan and the party that controls much of the Southern Taiwan, where the typhoon took its largest toll, DPP leaders have the right to do whatever they think is necessary to help ease the pain of the victims and their relatives. Not all Taiwanese approve of the Dalai Lama’s visit, however. As one chat-room user pointed out: “Do we really need such a big lama?” And another asked, using a popular Chinese saying, “Are foreign monks are really more adept at reading the sutras?”

Amongst the victims are of course people of all religions and the Dalai Lama is going as a representative of Tibetan Buddhism of which he is the highest priest. And to have a lama of such stature pray for the victims will be very satisfying for many relatives who will leave with the thought that the man who said the last prayers for their deceased is none other than the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.

Despite the government’s and the local media’s efforts to downplay the visit, Taiwanese flocked in thousands to the Dalai Lama’s public talk in Kaohsiung, the second biggest city in Taiwan. He also had a meeting with Taiwan’s top Catholic Cardinal, 86-year-old Paul KS Shan, testifying to the Dalai Lama’s years of efforts towards inter-religious ties. Ironically, prominent local Buddhist leaders seemed to have shied away from meeting with the Tibetan leader as usual. Of course, the heavyweight KMT politicians who normally prayed with much frequency at the island’s high-profile temples prior to the elections are nowhere to be seen, for they are busy appeasing the gods — or the ghosts — in Beijing. Come election time and they will probably know that they might be burning their incense at the wrong temple.

At the end of the day, the real winner of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Taipei is the Taiwanese democracy, or the Taiwanese people. It is a no small message for citizens living across the strait on the mainland. Alas, this model of visit by the Tibetan leader could only be followed in a democracy with the checks and balances provided by a shrewd opposition party. Unfortunately, this means that those in China or in Hong Kong are quite unlikely to have the Dalai Lama visit them in the near future.

Copyright © 2009 Tibet Sun

Published in Tibet Sun