Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

government, priesthood and kingship, is a completely open question. He will at any rate — as Tibetan
history and his previous incarnations have taught us — tactically orient himself to the particular
political constellations of power.
The democratic faction
Within the Tibetan community there are a few exiled Tibetans brought up in western cultures who
have carefully begun to examine the ostensible democracy of Dharamsala. In a letter to the Tibetan
Review for example, one Lobsang Tsering wrote: „The Tibetan society in its 33-years of exile has
witnessed many scandals and turmoils. But do the people know all the details about these events? ...
The latest scandal has been the 'Yabshi vs. Yabshi' affair concerning the two older brothers of the
Dalai Lama. [Yabshi is the family name of the Dalai Lama’s relatives.] The rumours keep on rolling
and spreading like wildfire. Many still are not sure exactly what the affair is all about. Who are to
blame for this lack of information? Up till now. anything controversial has been kept as a state secret
by our government. It is true that not every government policy should be conducted in the open.
However, in our case, nothing is done in the open” (Tibetan Review, September 1992, p. 22). [4]
We should also take seriously the liberal democratic intentions of younger Tibetans in the homeland.
For instance, the so-called Drepung Manifesto, which appeared in 1988 in Lhasa, makes a
refreshingly critical impression, although formulated by monks: „Having completely eradicated the
practices of the old society with all its faults,” it says there. „the future Tibet will not resemble our
former condition and be a restoration of serfdom or be like the so-called ‘old system’ of rule a
succession of feudal masters or monastic estates.” (Schwartz, 1994, p. 127). Whether such statements
are really intended seriously is something about which one can only speculate. The democratic reality
among the Tibetans in exile gives rise to some doubts about this.
It is likewise a fact that the protest movement in Tibet, continually expanding since the eighties,
draws together everyone who is dissatisfied in some way, from upright democrats to the dark
monastic ritualists for whom any means is acceptable in the quest to restore through magic the power
of the Dalai Lama on the “roof of the world”. We shall return to discuss several examples of this in
our chapter War and Peace. Western tourists who are far more interested in the occult and mystic
currents of the country than in the establishment of a “western” democracy, encourage such atavisms
as best they can.
For the Tibetan within and outside of their country, the situation is extremely complicated. They are
confronted daily with professions of faith in western democracy on the one hand and a Buddhocratic,
archaic reality on the other and are supposed to (the Kundun imagines) decide in favor of two social
systems at once which are not compatible with one another. In connection with the still to be
described Shugden affair this contradiction has become highly visible and self-evident.
Additionally, the Tibetans are only now in the process of establishing themselves as a nation, a selfconcept
which did not exist at all before — at least since the country has been under clerical control.
We have to refer to the Tibet of the past as a cultural community and not as a nation. It was precisely
Lamaism and the predecessors of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who now sets himself at the forefront of
the Tibetan Nation, who prevented the development of a real feeling of national identity among the
populace. The “yellow church” advocated their Buddhist teachings, invoked their deities and pursued
their economic interests — yet not those of the Tibetans as a united people. For this reason the clergy
also never had the slightest qualms about allying themselves with the Mongolians or the Chinese