Tsering Shakya

1 HE MODES OF representation of the "other" have become one of thepressing issues of academic studies. Since the publication in 1978 of theseminal work, Edward Said's Orientalism, which addresses the fundamen-tal way in which European culture was able to manage and even repro-duce the orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, andimaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period, while many of thesestudies tend to concentrate on areas that have undergone direct colonialencounters such as India, Africa, and the Middle East, Tibet has remainedoutside the scrutiny of postcolonialist discourse. There is a faint assump-tion that Tibet is immune from orientalist discourse, in part, it is assumed,because Tibet was never territorially annexed by a western power andtherefore was not subjected to colonialist subjugation. However, it is er-roneous to postulate that territorial conquest alone defines western im-perialism. In fact, as Tibet lies just above the "jewel in the crown," BritishIndia, it was inevitable that Tibet would loom large in the British politicaland cultural imagination.

It is not just to the British, with the motive of empire, that Tibet be-came a subject of muse and conquest. As much of the globe became sub-jugated, strategically and culturally, there was no possibility that Tibetcould stand out as unique, and she too became an object of western gazeand objectification. However, so far in the field of Tibetan or Buddhiststudies, where much of the narrative relating to Tibet is enunciated, ques-tions drawn from critical studies on the postcolonial discourse have neverbeen raised. Tibetan studies still continues along the lines of an orientalistdescriptive mode, with no trace of the new line of enquiry that has devel-oped in western theory.

Questions of description, depiction, or representation are not merelyissues of the authenticity, realness, truthfulness, or positiveness of this or

Tsering Shakya is Fellow in Tibetan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Univer-sity of London, London, UK WC1H OXG

Journal of the American Academy of Religion March 2001, Vol 69, No. 1, pp. 183-189.© 2001 The American Academy of Religion

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that image. Nor are they about a dichotomy between the lofty heights ofacademia and the popular culture of the gutter. The issue is, as Said pointsout, that all such descriptions of the "other" are framed in the ideologicalstructure of the objectifier, with the native being a passive object in theobjectifier's gaze.

Donald S. Lopez's treatment of the subject is a welcome departurefrom the usual approach to Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism in western aca-demic studies. Here, the focus is not Tibet but the West and its romanceand fascination with Tibetan Buddhism. Lopez writes that the point is notto posit a more "real" Tibetan Buddhism against the one constructed byorientalism but, rather, to draw attention to how images of Tibet, andparticularly Tibetan Buddhism, have been constructed in western culture.

In this respect, Lopez questions the evolution of views of Tibet bothin popular culture and in the field of Tibetan studies in the West. WhileLopez deals with the evolution of western interest in Tibet, particularlythe Tibetan brand of Buddhism, chapters dealing with the earliest Tibetanhistory also make compelling reading. The book shows clearly how west-ern attitudes toward the religion found in Tibet have vacillated betweenrevulsion and attraction. The very act of naming the religion is a signifierof the constructors' mental condition. Early western travelers, who weremainly missionaries or colonial adventurers with a purpose, were repelledby what they saw as a demonic faith, while at the same time the piety ofthe Tibetans appealed to them and was seen as a positive element condu-cive to spreading the Christian faith. The first chapter of Lopez's book isentitled "The Name": the naming and classification of what was encoun-tered by the Occident formed an important part of the epistemology oforientalism. Whether in the natural sciences or in the experience of phe-nomena, naming became a means of understanding whereby the unfamil-iar was made comprehensible. Lopez shows how early writers erroneouslyborrowed the Tibetan term lama and appended "ism." Here, Protestantchauvinism chose the term to demonstrate "the corrupt priestcraft" in away similar to that in which European Protestants or Anglicans viewedCatholicism. In the process of classifying the indigenous view is discountedas either unscientific or irrelevant. Today the term lamaism has been moreor less discarded in the academic field; nevertheless, it still creeps into popu-lar literature, and there is still a residual trace in the western perceptionthat the religion found in Tibet is a debased form of the original Buddhism.Today this debate has openly resurfaced among Chinese sociologists andacademics, incensing Tibetans.

It will be evident that, during the last decade, Tibet has been the focusof renewed interest, and images of Tibet and of Buddhism have pen-etrated much of western popular discourse, whether Hollywood films,

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pop music, television programs, or advertisements. The question beingasked is, What is the relationship between western discourse on Tibetand native subjectivity? Lopez's implicit argument is that the westerndefinitions of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism have been so powerful thatthe Tibetans have been denied agency, so that, in effect, they have beencolonized. This is dramatically highlighted in the title of the book, Pris-oners of Shangri-La.

One of the main questions that occurs to me on reading Prisoners ofShangri-La is about the meaning of being imprisoned. The concluding chap-ter, titled "The Prison," seems to indicate that Tibetans have become pris-oners of the western representation of Tibet. This is problematic and bringsto the foreground the issue of whether counterappropnation necessarilyresults' in or amounts to imprisonment of the indigenous subject.

The colonist's appropriation and construction of the native identityhas been a dominant theme in postcolonial studies of literature, art, andhistory. From Fanon and Said to current postcolonial theorists includingHomi Bhabha, all have dealt with this issue and have shown that in the pro-cess there is a counterappropriation by the native elite of the colonialist con-struction of the indigenous self. The colonialized elite, in turn, counter-appropriates the same rhetoric and metaphors to oppose the dominantpower in a struggle for agency and in the nationalist project.

There is certainly a process of mimicry, hybridization, and appropria-tion of western representation of Tibetanness or Buddhism among certainsections of the Tibetan diaspora. However, it is clear to me that the pen-etration of the western construct into the Tibetan community remains atbest superficial, and the mimicry is not necessarily carried out by way ofimbibing a set of values and definitions offered by the West. Unlike the casein many colonized territories, penetration by western constructs, whethercultural or political, remains at the margins of Tibetan subjectivity.

Even today, despite the growth of Buddhism in the West, the socialbasis of Tibetan Buddhism remains the Tibetan community. Lamas andother Buddhist teachers still find their constituency in the communityfrom which they originated and draw their authority from traditionalsources. A Westerner may be recognized as a trulku, but it is unlikely thatTibetans would sit at his feet and receive teachings. It is one of the com-plaints of western Buddhists and centers that Tibetans living in the vicin-ity hardly visit their centers. This demonstrates that Buddhist Tibetansand Buddhist Westerners continue to exist in separate domains.

When we look at those lamas teaching in the West who have achieveda high profile, in general they remain unknown in the Tibetan commu-nity. Their constituency remains western followers, and their focus is theWest. The countless works of Trungpa and the current popular book by

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Sogyal Rinpoche are solely marketed to their western followers, and it isunlikely that these works will be incorporated into the Tibetan canon.

The majority of Tibetans living either in exile or in Tibet are not con-scious of the western discourse on Tibet, and they continue to practicetheir faith as they did in the past, albeit mutatis mutandis. For Tibetansliving in the West, their identity is shaped not so much by the westernconstruct of Buddhism but, rather, by global capitalism and the market.Their engagement with the West is primarily through market forces andwhat they entail.

Therefore, Lopez's emphasis on the western construct as shaping thecontemporary Tibetan alterity is not reflected on the ground. It is truethat there is a process of invention of tradition and identity occurring inTibetan society; such a process takes place in all nationalist projects. Evenin the West, that which is considered the western cultural heritage andantiquity is a recent invention and has much to do with the creation ofthe western nation-states and the ascendancy of nationalism. The culturalheritage and the notion of a culture are products of the rise of capitalismand the concomitant emergence of the bourgeois class.

During this process, there is a rewriting of history and a reinventionof the past. In many colonized territories, the rewriting of history and thesearch for an authentic and classical golden age have stimulated colonialdiscourse. For example, in the Indologist's representation of a golden-ageVedic culture, the nationalists implicitly accepted the colonial definition,which became the basis for the nationalist project of modernization. InIndia the Hindu reformist movement, carried out by men such as Raj RamMohan Roy, owes much to the orientalist construct of classical Hinduismand the Indian past. The colonialist discourse made a great impact on thecolonized intellectuals, and their brand of Hinduism owes much to thewestern liberal humanist tradition. Even an archnationalist like Gandhi,while reverting to an Indian mode of dress, could not escape from hiscolonial formation. His humanist Hinduism shares much with BritishFabian socialism and its predecessors. Gandhi's ashrams resemble RobertOwen's cooperative movement in late-nineteenth-century Britain.

From this, we can see here how the colonialist construct can impingedirectly on nationalist aspirations. Now, if we look at the Tibetan situa-tion, I do not see any such process taking place. Lopez traces the longhistory of western discourses on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. How muchdoes the western invention of Buddhism impinge on the Tibetans? Lopezargues that it has directly affected the Tibetan view of self. As I mentionedearlier, even today, western writings, whether the popular writings ofLobsang Rampa or Lama Govinda or writings from the high world ofwestern academia, have had no real or discernible impact on the Tibetan

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rewriting of their past and their traditions. I remember that a few yearsago, when the Hungarian government wanted to celebrate the bicentenaryof Cosmos de Korsi, it dispatched a television film crew to India to solicita Tibetan eulogy for the Hungarian nationalist. They were shocked anddismayed to discover that they could not find a single Tibetan who hadheard of his name or who could be relied on to valorize this importantHungarian cultural figure.

In short, neither western romanticized popular discourse nor thewritings from the world of high academic discourse have penetrated theTibetan social world and the Tibetan definition of self. The western im-age of Tibet is essentially addressed to the home audience, and this gazehas never achieved the power of fixity within the indigenous society.

The Tibetans' reinvention of their past and nationhood is not relianton the western discovery of Tibet or on the mass of work that has accu-mulated in western academia. I do not see any Tibetans, whether lay orlama, delving into the wealth of literature that has been published in theWest in order to rediscover their past. It must be said that there is a hugegap between the refugee community and those living inside Tibet: therewriting of the past going on inside Tibet is no doubt considerably in-fluenced by western materialists or humanists, but they owe these influ-ences to the Chinese.

The Tibetan attitude to developments in western representation aboutTibet remains at best bewilderment and at worst amounts to total igno-rance. No western academic writings on Tibet or Buddhism have beentranslated into Tibetan, and so it would seem that Tibetans do not haverecourse to western publications to search for their past. Most lamas whowork with western scholars show no signs of having been altered by theirencounter. Therefore, it would hardly be possible to conclude that theTibetans have become prisoners of the western definition of themselves.If the Tibetans were prisoners of western discursive practices, at least theywould have to be familiar with the literature and appropriate it into theircanons.

Lopez, in illustrating the subjugation of Tibet to the western gaze inhis concluding chapter, deals mainly with the increasingly high profile theDalai Lama now enjoys in the West. His image is used to sell Apple com-puters, and his picture is on billboards; he is today perhaps one of the mostwidely known religious figures in the world. There is an increasing de-mand for the Dalai Lama to speak and voice his opinions on a whole rangeof international issues. Therefore, today more than at any other period inhistory, the Dalai Lama is identified with Tibet, Tibetanness, and Bud-dhism. Therefore, on one level, it is right to examine how the representa-tion of Tibet and Buddhism has been constructed through the image of

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the Dalai Lama. However, this presents the danger of talking about Tibetthrough an essentialist view and speaking only of a singular Tibet.

First, let us deal with the representation of the Dalai Lama. Lopez pre-sents the Dalai Lama as having what might be described as a hidden agendain his dealings with the West. In turn that would imply that Tibetan Bud-dhism has a deeper and even sinister motive, that is, propagating Bud-dhism in the West.

It is true that having lost the material and economic bases for socialformation that enabled Buddhism to flourish on the Tibetan plateau,Tibetan Buddhism found itself in crisis after 1959. In terms of a perceivedneed to preserve Tibetan Buddhist culture, the project of continuation ofthe faith would not have been possible without something of an economicand social basis. Therefore, the growing interest in Buddhism in the Westwas welcome news for the Tibetans and provided a much needed sourceof patronage.

Lopez argues that the traditional cultural system of priest and patron(mchod yon) has been adapted, or redeployed, in the solicitation of west-ern patronage. Certainly, many westerners have become powerful patronsof Tibetan Buddhism. However, to describe this as an application of themchod yon relationship, which had traditionally characterized the DalaiLama's relationship with the Mongols or the Qing emperors, is funda-mentally inappropriate. When the history of the mchod yon relationshipis considered, it was essentially a political construct, and material supportgiven by the Mongols or Qing dynasty was negligible; the Mongols andQing dynasty were seen as political allies for an essentially noncoerciveregime. (This is not meant to imply that the Tibetans were not capable ofresorting to violence.) Particularly after the ascendancy of Gelugpa rulein Tibet, the regime's ability to resist external aggression or concertedinternal uprising was severely hampered. As such, the state sought to dis-arm any potential aggressor by neutralizing any possible threat.

In this sense, current western Buddhists are not and have never beena political or military ally of Tibetan Buddhism. Although the Dalai Lamahas had to solicit western support for the cause of Tibet, this has largelybeen a failure. It is abundantly clear that whatever compelling moral ar-gument one can make for Tibet, unless that argument is consistent withthe strategic and economic interests of western powers, real political sup-port will not be forthcoming. Even the current grassroots support for Tibetin the West has not been generated among faithful Buddhist followers.

The upsurge in support comes from the liberal and humanitariancommunity, as a type of what might be termed middle-class radicalism.There is no doubt that the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama have been skilfulin altering their campaign message to harmonize with fashionable trends

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in the metropolitan political milieu, be they human rights issues, ecol-ogy, spiritual values, or antiabortionism. But this change in emphasis doesnot entail a change in value system among the Tibetans: this has to beviewed in terms of the addresser and the addressee. The Tibetan invoca-tion of the language of popular political rhetoric is a strategic calculationrather than a transformation of the Tibetan value system.

There are, moreover, differences in the means of mobilization amongTibetans and the campaign tactics used in the West. There is no attemptby the Dalai Lama, or any other lama, to mobilize Tibetans through anappeal to Buddhist modernism or a rediscovery of a classical age of Bud-dhism. There is no real reformist tradition in Buddhism emerging amongTibetans. Even the controversial banning of the propitiation of Shugdenis couched in traditional discourse, as to whether Shugden is a benevo-lent or malevolent force. The Dalai Lama believes it to be malevolent, whilethe followers of Shugden hold it to be benevolent. There is no question ofBuddhist modernism or an appeal to humanist rationalism.

In short, Lopez's conclusion that the Tibetans are altered by the west-ern representation of Tibet and Buddhism is not fully evidenced by thefacts. The Dalai Lama's pronouncements should be seen in the context ofnegotiations between addresser and addressee rather than as an indica-tion of a fundamental change in the Tibetan belief system. However, Iwould agree, as Lopez implies, that the Tibetan exile elite is increasinglyfashioning its political cause by the utilization of popular western politi-cal language, that of human rights and environmental concerns.

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