The Historical Ties of Tibet and Nepal

The Tibet Post International - 18th May 2008

The historical ties of Tibet and Nepal dates back to thousands of years with deep political, economic, cultural and religious activities as forming the basis of bilateral relationships. The bringing to Tibet of Princess Brikuti Devi of Nepal as a bride of King Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century AD had shaped the Tibetan political and cultural alliance with the Kingdom of Nepal.

In due course of time, the relationship between Tibet and Nepal bolstered with people from both the countries visiting each other on pilgrimage and for trade and business activities. It further grew when the Tibetan Government started to send its emissaries into Nepal for renovation of ancient Buddhist pilgrimage sites.
 
This historical relationship is further reinforced by the openhanded gestures of the people and government of Nepal when it gave political refuge to thousands of Tibetan refugees after the invasion of Tibet by China. We, as Tibetans will always cherish these acts of selfless generosity of the people and government of Nepal that ranges from providing rehabilitation and other humanitarian assistances to overcome the sufferings of the Tibetan people at such a critical time of our history.

The only reason behind Tibetan people’s leaving their homeland is to struggle for the freedom of their country and nothing else. This struggle would, therefore, continue until the day when our goal is fulfilled. However, recent developments in Nepal have been of deep concern for all of us Tibetans. Under apparent Chinese Government pressure, the Government of Nepal has in recent times responded to the peaceful Tibetan protesters with excessive force. In particular, the Nepalese authorities have resorted to curtail the fundamental rights of the Tibetan people to freely express their political views and freedom of assembly. In the past couple of months, numbers of Tibetan refugees have been beaten so badly that many of them have had their legs broken and ribs fractured. 

Being a member state of the United Nations and above all, Nepal’s status as a civilized democratic society and particularly in view of its past political, cultural and religious relationship with its erstwhile neighbour Tibet, it is but Nepal’s moral duty to support the rights of the Tibetan refugees in Nepal to peaceful expression of their political views. This has also direct implication to Nepal’s reputation with the international community. As a sovereign State, it is but imperative that Nepal must uphold its sovereignty and independent status by not succumbing to outside pressures. This is a sincere appeal to the Government of Nepal from the Tibetan refugees who have lost their freedom.

Russia’s Buddhist republic Kalmykia sees the light

Russia’s republic of Kalmykia is the only region in Europe where Buddhism is the dominant religion. Temples were destroyed there during the Soviet era and Buddhism went into decline. But in a new age of tolerance, the steppe region is enjoying a religious renaissance.

Temples, Buddha statues and pictures of the Dalai Lama abound in Kalmykia’s capital Elista.

Its Temple of Buddha Shakyamuni is the largest Buddhist temple in Europe. Visible from every part of the city, it serves as a giant centre piece around which life in the tiny capital revolves.

Temple of Buddha Shakyamuni in Elista

Specialist painters from Tibet are painstakingly redecorating the temple’s interior - a process that could take another four years.

Across the republic, Kalmykian and Tibetan monks work side by side.

Abbot Anja Gelong says: “Buddhism is such an important part of our lives here. Everyday, anyone can come to the temple and meet with any monk to talk about anything they want.”

Stupa of Enlightenment in Elista

And come morning prayers, the temple is full. A blessing from a visiting Tibetan Lama Geshe Thinley draws a crowd of thousands. A regular visitor to Kalmykia for the past 15 years, he’s impressed with the changes.

Chess fan, self-made millionaire and head of the republic since 1993, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has personally overseen Kalmykia’s Buddhist renaissance.
 
“All Buddhist churches and temples were destroyed during the Soviet period. Fifteen years ago there were none, and now there are 67 Buddhist temples and Christian churches in Kalmykia.  I paid for most of them from my own pocket,” Ilyumzhinov said.

However, not everyone is happy. Some say the $US 8 million spent on building temples could have been better used alleviating poverty in one of Russia’s poorest regions.

Source: russiatoday.com

Old and New Links Between Israel and India

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
November 28, 2008

Midway through Wednesday afternoon, Ani Anighotri was doing his multitasking thing, cruising the Internet while chatting with a friend about a recent business trip to his homeland, India, from his home in Georgia. Then an e-mail message popped onto his screen and ended the jocular conversation. The subject line said, “Attack in Mumbai.”

The accompanying message told Mr. Anighotri of reports of random shooting in Mumbai. He went to a Web site and found an account of a second, similar assault. Then, turning on an Indian cable television station, Mr. Anighotri saw a fire set by terrorists blazing in the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, the same hotel in which he had stayed just three weeks earlier.

By Thursday morning, Mr. Anighotri had discovered another subtler point of connection. It was now clear that besides hotels, a café, a train station and two hospitals, the terrorists had invaded a Jewish outreach center, operated by the Chabad Lubavitch movement. Mr. Anighotri absorbed the news as the co-chairman of an 80-member group in the Atlanta area called the Indo-Jewish Coalition.

In its modest way, the coalition attests to the deepening bonds between Jews and Indians, whether in Israel, India or the United States; and this week’s events demonstrate perhaps the most visceral and grisly element of connection, though far from the only one.

“I am seeing that there is some natural affinity being developed between India and Israel and Jewish people,” said Mr. Anighotri, 48, who owns technology and consulting companies. “Because both these countries and people have been affected by this kind of terror — killing of civilians, something despicable that is happening year after year.”

Cedric Suzman, who until recently was co-chairman of the Atlanta group, echoed the sentiment. “In times like this, you suddenly realize that you’ve built bridges,” Mr. Suzman said in a telephone interview. “So instead of recrimination and accusation, you have a huge coming together of sympathy and understanding.”

The affinity of which both men spoke extends well beyond the shared experience of being the target of Islamist terrorism, or the resulting military and security ties between India and Israel. The softer tissue of human experience — culture, religion, values — also binds Indians and Jews.

“The best way to explain it is that I was telling my daughter, ‘If you have to marry outside India, marry a Jew,’ ” said Shoba Narayan, a writer in Bangalore who has visited Israel with her husband, an investment banker. “The cultures are so similar — the commitment to education, the ability to delay gratification, hard work, the guilt, the fatalism. And I think this is because we are both old cultures.”

Indeed, a Jewish community known as the Bene Israel has lived in India for more than 2,400 years, fully tolerated by the surrounding Hindu and Sikh populations. Yet in its first decades after independence, India was also a frequent critic of Zionism and at least a partial ally of the Soviet Union.

With the end of the cold war, and of a reliable flow of Russian weapons and spare parts, India turned to Israel as a supplier of arms and military expertise, said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Israel now sells more than $1 billion in arms annually to India, including the Falcon early-warning system and sea-to-air missiles.

In a less obvious way, too, soldiers have forged ties. About 30,000 Israelis visit India each year, many of them on lengthy vacations after having finished their army service. They, in turn, have brought back to Israel the food, fabric, music and mysticism of India, particularly its Hindus.

The popular Israeli band Sheva has incorporated Indian instruments and chordal structures into its music. Yoga classes proliferate in Israel. Hindu food, with its emphasis on vegetarian dishes, has been easily adapted for kosher cuisine. An annual festival called Boombamela celebrates all things Indian, if with a somewhat naïve, New Age tilt.

For American Jews of the baby boom generation, the fascination with India began with spiritual searches during the 1960s. Over time, Buddhist meditation became a staple of the Jewish renewal movement and a book by Rodger Kamenetz, “The Jew in the Lotus,” a revered text. By the past decade, enough Jews were practicing some Buddhism to give birth to a new proper noun: Jew-Bu.

Even more recently, the term “Hinjew” has emerged. It does not reflect a religious amalgamation, which would be nearly impossible given Hindu polytheism, as much as it does the cultural common ground of American Jews and Indian Americans who have grown up and gone to school together.

In suburbs like Great Neck on Long Island or West Windsor, N.J., the same top-flight public schools that attracted Jews moving out of cities in the 1950s have more recently drawn Indian immigrants.

“Some of us in the Indian-American community feel our Jewish-American friends set a very good example of being good citizens,” Mr. Anighotri said. “Their activism, their social values, their family values, the educational values. Many of them are professionals and entrepreneurs, and that’s what we see in the Indian community as well.”

The comfort level between Jews and Indians has allowed for a specific strain of self-mockery, too, which might be some psychic balm in this time of atrocity. As an imitation news story on the Web site SatireWire put it:

“Hinjew leaders today conceded the merger of Hinduism and Judaism has not worked out as planned, as instead of forming a super-religion to fight off the common Islamic enemy, they have instead created a race of 900 million people who, no matter how many times they are reincarnated, can never please their mothers.”

Source: NYT

Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?

By ROBERT BARNETT
November 24, 2008

The financial crisis is going to do more than increase unemployment, bankruptcy and homelessness. It is also likely to reshape international alignments, sometimes in ways that we would not expect.

As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked China to give money to the International Monetary Fund, in return for which Beijing would expect an increase in its voting share.

Now there is speculation that a trade-off for this arrangement involved a major shift in the British position on Tibet, whose leading representatives in exile this weekend called on their leader, the Dalai Lama, to stop sending envoys to Beijing — bringing the faltering talks between China and the exiles to a standstill.

The exiles’ decision followed an announcement on Oct. 29 by David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, that after almost a century of recognizing Tibet as an autonomous entity, Britain had changed its mind. Mr. Miliband said that Britain had decided to recognize Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. He even apologized that Britain had not done so earlier.

Until that day, the British had described Tibet as autonomous, with China having a “special position” there. This formula did not endorse the Tibetan claim to independence. But it meant that in the British view China’s control over Tibet was limited to a condition once known as suzerainty, somewhat similar to administering a protectorate. Britain, alone among major powers, had exchanged official agreements with the Tibetan government before the Chinese takeover in 1951, so it could scarcely have said otherwise unless it was to vitiate those agreements.

After the People’s Republic of China joined the United Nations in 1971, British politicians refrained from referring to their country’s recognition of Tibet’s autonomy to avoid embarrassing Beijing. But that didn’t make it less significant. It remained the silent but enduring legal basis for 30 years of talks between the Dalai Lama and Beijing, in which the Tibetans have called only for autonomy and not independence — a position that a conference of Tibetan exiles in India reaffirmed on Saturday. Read more »

China Postpones EU Summit to Protest Dalai Lama Visit

By VOA News, 26 November 2008

China has postponed a summit with the European Union next week to protest plans by EU leaders to meet with Tibet’s political and spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

A statement from the EU says Chinese authorities made the decision because the Dalai Lama will be visiting several EU countries at the time of the summit.

Chinese officials signaled out plans by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to meet the Dalai Lama next week. Because France currently holds the rotating EU presidency, Mr. Sarkozy was to have hosted the summit with China beginning on December 1.

No date for a future summit has been set.

In its statement, the EU said it regrets China’s decision. The EU stressed, however, that it plans to continue to promote its strategic partnership with Beijing at a time when the world’s financial situation calls for close cooperation.

Earlier this month, China warned Mr. Sarkozy that his plans to meet with the Dalai Lama in Poland in December would hurt relations.

In Poland, the Dalai Lama and Mr. Sarkozy will attend ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize to Lech Walesa, the anti-communist activist who later became president.

The Dalai Lama is also scheduled to visit the Czech Republic and Belgium during his European trip. He is expected to visit the European Parliament while in Brussels.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama congratulates Barack Obama

(The Tibet Post International 6 November 2008) His Holiness the Dalai Lama congratulated United States President-elect Barack Obama on his election win in a message sent Wednesday November 5, 2008.

Obama defeated opposing candidate Senator John McCain to become the first African-American elected President of the United States in the election held on Tuesday November 4, 2008.
 
In his message, His Holiness wrote, “I am encouraged that the American people have chosen a President who reflects America’s diversity and her fundamental ideal that any person can rise up to the highest office in the land.  This is a proud moment for America and one that will be celebrated by many peoples around the world.”

As a United States Senator and Presidential candidate, Obama has repeatedly voiced his support for the Dalai Lama and the struggle of the Tibetan people for greater human rights in Tibet. In a statement following the uprisings in March of this year Obama said, “If Tibetans are to live in harmony with the rest of China’s people, their religion and culture must be respected and protected. Tibet should enjoy genuine and meaningful autonomy.”

The President-elect and His Holiness last met at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee event in 2005. During the Dalai Lama’s July 2008 visit to the United States they corresponded through telephone and post but were unable to meet face-to-face due to Obama’s tight campaign schedule.

The Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile also sent their congratulations to the new President-elect. In their  congratulatory message, Speaker Karma Chopel wrote, “During the course of the electioneering, we have noted with satisfaction your interest in the Tibetan issue and your growing support for the Tibetan cause. Your distinguished predecessors, irrespective of their party affiliations, have supported the Tibetan issue strongly and have had a close and friendly relationship with our leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We hope that you will not only maintain the tradition but give an added thrust in view of the strong resentment shown openly by our people living under the Chinese rule in Tibet,”

Full text of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s message to President-elect Barack Obama:

November 5, 2008

H.E. Barack Obama
President-elect of the United States of America
Washington, DC
U.S.A.

Dear President-elect Obama,

Congratulations on your election as the President of the United States of America.

I am encouraged that the American people have chosen a President who reflects America’s diversity and her fundamental ideal that any person can rise up to the highest office in the land.  This is a proud moment for America and one that will be celebrated by many peoples around the world.

The American Presidential elections are always a great source of encouragement to people throughout the world who believe in democracy, freedom and equality of opportunities.

May I also commend the determination and moral courage that you have demonstrated throughout the long campaign, as well as the kind heart and steady hand that you often showed when challenged.  I recall our own telephone conversation this spring and these same essential qualities came through in your concern for the situation in Tibet.

As the President of the United States, you will certainly have great and difficult tasks before you, but also many opportunities to create change in the lives of those millions who continue to struggle for basic human
needs.  You must also remember and work for these people, wherever they may be.

With my prayers and good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

THE DALAI LAMA

New Bamiyan Buddha find amid destruction

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan (AFP) — "We got him!" screamed Afghan archaeologist Anwar Khan Fayez as he leapt from the pit beneath the towering sandstone cliffs, where the Bamiyan Buddhas once stood.

Seven years after Taliban militants blew up the two 1,500-year-old statues in a fit of Islamist zealotry, a French-Afghan team in September uncovered a new, 19-metre (62-foot) "Sleeping Buddha" buried in the earth.

The news that a third Buddha escaped the Taliban’s wrath has caused excitement in this scenic valley, where the caverns that housed the ruined statues are an eerie reminder of Afghanistan’s past and present woes.

"It was a happy moment for all of us when the first signs appeared. Our years-long efforts had somehow paid off," Fayez told AFP.

The team, led by France-based archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi, made the find while hunting for a lost 300-metre reclining Buddha mentioned in an account by seventh-century Chinese monk Xuan Zang.

The Afghan-born Tarzi began mapping the site nearly 30 years ago but decades of conflict and the rise of the 1996-2001 Taliban regime put the search on hold.

Then in March 2001 came the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, until then the world’s largest standing Buddha statues.

Hewn into the cliffs in the sixth century by Buddhist pilgrims on the famed Silk Route, the statues had survived attacks by several Muslim emperors down the ages, while even Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan had spared them.

But with the backing of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda movement, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar declared that they were idols that were against Islamic law.

Defying international appeals, the Taliban spent a month using first anti-aircraft guns and then dynamite to obliterate them.

Saddened but with renewed determination, Tarzi and his team returned soon after US-led forces and the Northern Alliance ousted the Taliban in late 2001 to renew their search for the giant missing Buddha.

What they found instead, in September this year, were parts of a previously unknown, smaller Buddha figure, including a thumb, forefinger, palm, parts of its arm, body and the bed on which it lay. Read more »

Dalai Lama stresses on Gandhian values

Express India, November 09 - “India and Tibet share a teacher-disciple relationship, and if a disciple suffers, the teacher is responsible for it,” observed Dalai Lama, Tibetan leader.

The Dalai Lama was in the city on Saturday to inaugurate the Gita Mandir at Sadhu Vaswani Mission. He also attended the concluding day of the 42nd Sarvodaya Samaj Sammelan.

Speaking at the Mission’s function, he spoke about human relations to politics. The spiritual leader said that Tibet changed into a civilised society only when India’s message of love reached there. “Teachings of Buddha gave direction to the life of Tibetans. So, even if China has substantial control over our land, the people there look up to India for support and love,” he said.

He urged that while supporting the cause of Tibet’s liberation, ecological, cultural and humanitarian grounds should be given more importance than politics. Stressing on a friendly India, China relationship, he said, “Genuine friendship between India and China will not only make the world a safer place but also help in Tibet liberation.”

“People have had a century of bloodshed and killing and now they have realised the importance of peace. World peace will be achieved only when one practices inner peace.”

The disarmament may also mean to practice forgiveness and spiritual reconciliation. “Dialogue can help us avoid many conflicts at home and also beyond borders,” he said.

While felicitating the Dalai Lama on the occasion, J P Vaswani said, “The Dalai Lama is humble yet strong enough to stand against a mighty nation like China.”

At the Sarvodaya Samaj Sammelan, the Dalai Lama highlighted India’s long history of non violence and tolerance. “India should strive to spread these values throughout the world,” he said.

The Dalai Lama spoke about his two-point programme that should be emphasised upon — the first one is Ahimsa and the second one is promotion of religious harmony. He said, “It is gladdening to see that even after so many years, Gandhiji’s values, ideology and principles are deep rooted in the Indian way of life. It is nice to see that in India people continue to practice non-violence despite many hardships and struggles.”

The three-day long Sammelan had several Gandhian followers from India and around the world as speakers.