While The Gods Slept

One evening in 1952 we heard that Acho Dawa, the husband of our next-door neighbour Namgyal, had arrived home unexpectedly. A mercenary by profession, he had been away for three long years in Kham, in eastern Tibet. Usually he would send a verbal message or letter, through a fellow-soldier or a trader bound for Sakya, well in advance. But this time his return was a complete surprise to his family as well as to his neighbours.

As soon as we heard of his arrival, Donkar was sent to offer him welcome chang. Tibetan welcomes and farewells were more than a handshake and a few apt words. We welcome a new arrival with a kettle of chang and another of tea, and sometimes with presents too. We bade farewell in the same manner, adding a ceremonial scarf as a good luck token.

 

Rushing home in a fever of excitement and perturbation Donkar accidentally knocked the chang container against the door frame and broke it to pieces. It was a bad omen. Whos chasing our sex-mad daughter? asked Mother, jokingly, but Donkar, paying no attention, said excitedly: Acho Dawa says that the Red Chinese are coming to our land! The enemies of the faith have come! Mother replied: Good news seldom comes true, but bad news always does. We were just about to eat our dinner and begin our daily prayers when Donkar brought this incredible news. Mother did not eat her usual amount, but we all declaimed our prayers more earnestly and loudly than usual. As I went to bed that night I was both afraid and longing to know more.

The next morning Acho Dawa was surrounded by an anxious, attentive crowd. He told us: The sun of bliss will set from the land of snows. Our dreaded enemies are already knocking at the frontiers of Kham. They are the foes of our faith, and have destroyed the monks and monasteries in China and Mongolia. They are bloodthirsty monsters; they eat human beings and any animal they can lay their hands on. They are devils incarnate.

His audience was thunderstruck by the vehement manner in which he gave this astounding news. The destruction of holy monasteries and the slaughter of revered monks were unbelievable. If the Red Chinese exterminated what we worshipped and adored most in our life, then they must indeed be devils and evil spirits incarnate.

Such was the news from the East. Whenever our elders talked about the Red Chinese, I visualised them as being other than human, ready to swallow up the Buddhists. If I gave any trouble, my sisters would warn me: Keep quiet! The Red Chinese are coming! From time to time other aspects of communism trickled through to us. Our impoverished neighbour Namgyal would say jokingly: I hear that someone is coming to distribute wealth. Who knows whose best clothes we shall be wearing?

We learned that Acho Dawa had fled from Amdo, on the Chinese border, where he was stationed. He belonged to Tibets crack troops, the Gyantse Regiment. He and his company were guarding a strategic bridge. One evening the local inhabitants gave them too much to drink, and while the Tibetan troops were incapacitated the Red Army simply walked across the bridge with the greatest ease. Acho Dawa felt that some of the local inhabitants were Chinese spies and fifth columnists. When the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet, on 7 October 1950, a number of Khampas collaborated with them. In Kham generally the people were dissatisfied with the Lhasa administration; and the inhabitants of the border area had always enjoyed the opportunity of flirting with the Chinese. They paid very little tax either to the old China or to Tibet, but their spiritual allegiance to the Dalai Lama was absolute. Unfortunately, local and tribal interests took precedence over national concerns. It was not until about 1954 that the Khampas came to realise that the Chinese Communists were not liberators but oppressors, and started the revolt which spread from Kham to central and southern Tibet.

Like any other nation, we Tibetans exaggerated our own insignificant little successes and played down the enemys landslide victory. We were constantly boasting about the Tibetan armys strength, courage and tenacity. There were fantastic stories of how a certain captain, or some gallant Khampa warrior was bullet-proof. The big guns, tanks mortars and hand grenades of the Red Chinese could not kill our soldiers. Donkars present husband, who is a Khampa, even told me: If you have a profound belief in your lama, and wear his relic to protect yourself against weapons, you will never be injured, even when the bullets hit your heart. They will bounce back. As the world knows, the ill-organised, ill-equipped, inexperienced Tibetan army was a mockery when pitted against the modern, well-equipped, well-disciplined veteran guerrillas of the Red Army. The exact strength of the Tibetans consisted of 8,500 rifles, 50 pieces of artillery, 250 mortars and 200 machine guns. The credit for such strength as we had should go to the XIIIth Dalai Lama, who was more politically realistic than his predecessors.

That year I saw more religious functions than usual. The Sakya Monastery performed several magdogs (rituals to prevent war), at which gigantic tormas and effigies were burnt. When dharma was in grave danger, the guardian gods were invoked to prevent, divert, or minimise the rising forces of evil. Each magdog pushed the imminent danger further away in the middle of the religious Tibetans, though the Red Army was rapidly advancing. The Tibetans believed right upto 1959 that they would be saved by the gods and the Precious Trinity. But, alas, victory is on the side of the big battalions; and the gods were fast asleep.

Extracted from: Tibet: The Road Ahead, published by HarperCollins Publishers, Rs 395, 391 pages