The chances of being spotted in daylight were greater. So they traveled through the night and slept during the day. It was safer that way.

Tenzin Kusang’s grandparents kept to this routine as they journeyed across the arid, pastoral Tibetan landscape into neighboring India, following a familiar plot line for many Tibetan families, said Kusang, a sophomore biology major on the pre-med track. Her family arrived safely on foot after the Dalai Lama’s exile to Dharamshala, India, in 1959.

The Dalai Lama is an enduring symbol of Tibetan heritage for Nepali-born Kusang and many other Tibetan families that fled the region following violent clashes between Tibetans and the Chinese government. So when excited chatter swept campus following the announcement of the “Common Ground for Peace” forum on Oct. 8-9, news of the Dalai Lama’s campus visit took a greater significance and importance for Kusang, who already planned to see the Dalai Lama in Connecticut later this year.

“When people see Dalai Lama, they see Tibet,” Kusang said. “He gives a name for Tibet and for Tibetans in exile.”

And Tibet’s history has been a tumultuous one, punctuated by bloody confrontations with the Chinese government.

The stretch of land that constitutes Tibet offers crucial strategic advantage for international juggernaut China. For Tibetans, the Chinese occupation of the region is a source of major discontent. The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, proposes greater — not complete — autonomy from China, while advocating a nonviolent means of achieving it.

In the centuries since the decline of the Mongol Empire, the Chinese government and Tibetans have remained at odds, debating China’s role culturally and socially in Tibet. Violent clashes between the factions have erupted, most notably in 1959, which led to the Dalai Lama’s exile, and in 2008.

In the months preceding the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Buddhist monks and other Tibetans burned stores and police vehicles in defiance of the Chinese government’s rule, The New York Times reported in March 2008.

“Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place,” the Dalai Lama said, according to The New York Times article, commenting on the Chinese government’s “restrictions on Buddhist temples and re-education programs for monks.”

During the 1959 turmoil, 800 artillery shells were launched into the Dalai Lama’s Summer Palace, leveling the ancient site, the BBC reported. The 14th Dalai Lama fled to India, where he and the Tibetan government in exile have since resided. An estimated 2,000 people perished in the capital of Lhasa during the 1959 Tibetan-led uprising, the BBC reported.

The Tibetan standard of living in modern-day settlements in India is relatively comfortable, said Steven Johnson, a doctoral student who spent the summer studying the Tibetan population in Dharamshala, India, the Dalai Lama’s current home.

Still, Tibetans in Dharamshala and Delhi are politically vulnerable, given they aren’t allowed to vote. The Indian government also possesses the authority to order Tibetans living in the country to adopt Indian citizenship or leave at any time.

“They are a vulnerable minority living in a foreign land,” Johnson said.

Approximately 80,000 refugees — including Pasang Lhamo’s grandparents — joined Tibet’s spiritual leader in India following the 1959 unrest. Lhamo’s family remained in Tibet for two years after the Dalai Lama’s flight to India. But when her grandmother’s father and brother were forcibly taken by the Chinese government after being accused of helping finance Tibetan opposition to Chinese occupation in the region, Lhamo’s family couldn’t run the risk of staying.

“They took my grandmother’s father and brother away and, at that point, my grandmother and my grandfather talked it out and decided it’s best to sort of leave,” Lhamo, a sophomore public relations and policy studies major, said.

Born in India and raised in Cambridge, Mass., Lhamo was often questioned about her ethnicity. When others openly wondered about her ethnicity, Lhamo would insist that she is Tibetan.

“I grew up realizing people didn’t understand who I was. From there, I just always felt like I needed to stick up for myself,” she said.

The Dalai Lama isn’t hailed as a cultural and social figurehead by all.

For Xiao Yu, a graduate student studying counseling, the representation of the Dalai Lama in the United States is an entirely opposite portrayal she learned in primary school in the Shandong province of China. Since the fourth grade, Yu said she was taught to view Tibet as part of China and the Dalai Lama as a figure who threatened Chinese unity.

Yu doesn’t hold a strong sentiment either way toward the Dalai Lama, but said she is experiencing a mix of emotion having everything she was taught about the Dalai Lama turned upside down and questioned at SU.

“I was a little bit surprised because, at least where I’m from, he’s a bad guy,” she said.

Yu has fielded concerns from students from China interested in attending the Dalai Lama’s lecture who are fearful the Chinese government would be able to trace the ticket sale from their SUIDs.

“It’s a really complicated emotion,” she said.

For junior policy studies major Tenzing Chonzom, an Indian-born Tibetan, the Dalai Lama’s teachings of compassion and patience should be guiding universal principles.

“Simple human values is what he focuses on,” Chonzom said.

Through the years, Chonzom said she’s felt herself becoming separated from the physical and cultural geography of Tibet. The Dalai Lama, in a sense, brings her closer to that.

“My grandparents … had to be refugees in India. And then my parents were born, then I was born. I grew up in India, kind of growing up in Indian culture, but also having Tibetan culture, and then my parents decided to come to America. And I became an American citizen last summer,” Chonzom said. “Every layer of my identity kind of represents my Tibetan culture just dissipating.”

Said Chonzom: “He is representing my community.”

 

Published on October 8, 2012 at 5:04 am

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong