life histories of forgotten heroes
TRANSCRIPT
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Life Histories of Forgotten Heroes? Transgression of
Boundaries and the Reconstruction of Tibet in the
post-Mao Era
HILDEGARD DIEMBERGER
University of Cambridge, UK
ABSTRACT
Oral-history projects in the Tibetan areas of China face the challenge of dealing
with a highly contested history and a sensitive political context that raises
numerous ethical questions. At the same time, this particular situation makes
them compelling. This paper looks at some examples of local cadres, heads of
monasteries and village elders who were a driving force in the reconstruction of
the Tibetan social and cultural fabric in the 1980s and 1990s. These are peoplewho had experienced Tibet before its radical reshaping through the Democratic
Reforms of 1959, survived the Cultural Revolution and, after 1978, led their
communities in their endeavours of reviving Tibetan traditions and promoting
local welfare. This generation of political and religious leaders has now largely
disappeared from the active scene. Their personal involvement, often above and
beyond their official roles, has been crucial in the shaping of contemporary Tibet.
However, Chinese official narratives and those of Tibetan exile - for opposite
reasons - tend to neglect or misrepresent their contribution. This paper shows
how the collecting of life histories and personal accounts makes it possible to
reconstruct a 'history from below', otherwise consigned to oblivion. At the same
time it provides some telling examples of how leaders negotiated the shifting
boundary between the religious and the secular while trying to reconcile the
moral authority of the past with a modernist vision of society. An engagement
with oral history may thus provide some insights into the current tensions within
the emerging Tibetan civil society that straddles a difficult pathway between thetenets of Chinese socialism and deeply engrained Buddhist morality.
Keywords: Tibet, oral history, policy and memory
Oral-history research in the Tibetan areas of China faces the challenge of havingto deal with a highly contested history and a restrictive political context. Scholars
Inner Asia 12 (2010): 113-25
2010 Global Oriental
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are confronted with numerous ethical questions when studying crucial events
which are perceived to be still sensitive. At the same time, such dilemmas make
this kind of research compelling. The recent publication of On the Cultural
Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident by Melvyn Goldstein, Ben Jiao andTanzen Lhundrup represents a step in this direction. One of the first studies to
explore events from the Cultural Revolution in Tibet using fieldwork and oral-
history data together with contemporary Chinese documents, it provides a
detailed account of the 'Nyemo incident'. In this incident, Tibetan villagers,
inspired by a possessed nun (Trinley Chdrn), but guided by the Gyenlog revo-
lutionary faction, attacked the local PLA garrison troops, and then marched on to
the local government seats in Nyemo County in June 1969, only to be thoroughly
squashed a few days later, costing many lives. This event captured the imagina-
tion both of Tibetan activists, who saw it as a fight for independent Tibet, and of
Chinese officials, who described it as a splittist uprising. But simplistic nation-
alist readings from opposite points of view obliterated important aspects of the
events, argue Goldstein et al. In their view, reality on the ground reflected the
entanglement of local and general issues, with internal conflicts in the commu-
nity and factional fights within the party. Despite the merits of this work, some
commentators expressed concerns about what could be expressed by informants.
One review is particularly pertinent:
It should be no surprise that in Tibet not one person taking an active part in an
armed uprising wanted to mention independence, as participating in any inde-
pendent activities is punished with long prison sentences in Tibet today. Even if
the uprising was a long time ago, Tibetans know very well what can be said
and what is better not told. It seems incredible to me that such an insight is
missing from the book, because making an interview in Cleveland or in Nyemo is
just not the same thing. The real views of the people and what they say in an inter-
view recorded by an employee of the Chinese govemment are obviously two
different stories. (, accessed20 December 2009)
The lingering sensitivity and controversy surrounding this four-decade-old event
shows that what Portelli calls 'the public struggle for meaning and memory' is
still open. This study is caught in a tension between the stated aim of recon-
structing what had happened and a more subtle exploration of perceptions which
have been part of the history of this event in their own right. As Portelli shows in
his study of the 1944 Fosse Ardeatine Massacre in Rome:
When an incorrect reconstruction of history becomes popular belief, we are not
called on onlyto rectify the factsbut also to interrogateourselveson how and why
this commonsensetook shape and on its meaning and uses. This is where the spe-
cific reliability of oral sources arises: even when they do not tell the events as they
occurred, the discrepancies and the errors are themselves events, clues for the
work of desire and pain over time, for the painful search for meaning. (portelli
2003: 16)
http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Revolution-Tibet-Nyemo-Incident/http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Revolution-Tibet-Nyemo-Incident/http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Revolution-Tibet-Nyemo-Incident/http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Revolution-Tibet-Nyemo-Incident/ -
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LIFE HISTORIES OF FORGOTTEN HEROES? 115
Over the past twenty years I have been involved in anthropological fieldwork in
Central and Eastern Tibet and I was often made acutely aware of the importance
of different perceptions of the past. Although not involved in any oral-history
research project nor with the study of major historical events, I have collectedmany materials that show how oral-history research can promote a better under-
standing of contemporary Tibetan society and highlight the link between politics
and memory. China as a state based on secularist ideology betrays a remarkable
uneasiness in its dealings with a deeply religious society such as the Tibetan,
despite the fact that freedom of religious belief is guaranteed in China's
Constitution. My research shows the importance of Tibetan Buddhist roots not
only for the Tibetan population but also for Tibetan cadres, and highlights the
anxiety on the part of the local authorities in dealing with anything that cuts
across the boundary between what is religious and what is secular. It also shows
the impact of recent policies on the mechanisms through which memory of
people and deeds is preserved or forgotten.
In this article I look at some examples oflocal cadres, heads of monasteries
and village elders who were a driving force in the reconstruction of the Tibetan
social and cultural fabric in the 1980s and 1990s. These are people who had
experienced Tibetan society before its integration into the PRC (and its radical
reshaping through the Democratic Reforms of 1959), survived the Cultural
Revolution and, after 1978, led their communities in efforts to revive Tibetan
traditions and promote local welfare. Their personal involvement, often above
and beyond their official roles, has been crucial in the shaping of contemporary
Tibet and provided remarkable examples of what Stephan Feuchtwang and
Wang Mingming (2001) would call 'grass-roots charisma'. Celebrated in narra-
tives of reconstruction that had almost an epic character, they recalled the greatBuddhist figures that had brought to the fore the shrines, texts and festivals that
they were recovering. They were a sort of local modem hero in the Buddhist
revival of the post-Mao era, which is sometimes called the 'further spread ofthe
Buddhist doctrine' (yang dar) in continuity with the 'first spread of the
Buddhist doctrine' (snga dar) during the Tibetan imperial period (sixth-ninth
centuries) and the later spread of the Buddhist doctrine (phyi dar) after the tenth
century. This generation of political and religious leaders has now largely disap-peared from the active scene as a result of more restrictive policies on religion
and culture and the passing of time, as most of them have retired or died.
Chinese official narratives and those of Tibetan exile, for opposite reasons, tend
to neglect or misrepresent their contribution. We could say that they were too
involved with the Chinese administration to be admired and recruited by
Tibetan activists and too devoted to local religious interest to be relied upon
and promoted by the Chinese authorities. They now seem to have disappeared
from the public narrative space that would make them part of a collective
process of connecting the past to the present and the future. With their demise,
the memory of a generation that experienced and contributed to crucial histor-
ical changes in Tibetan society risks remaining untold and unrecorded. Their
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fate excludes them from what Passerini described as the inter-subjective process
of remembering:
What is required is indeednot a simple and spontaneousmemory,not the one that
stems from a need for vengeance, for instance, but a memory of a memory, a
memory that is possible because it evokes another memory. We can remember
onlythanks to the fact that somebodyhas rememberedbefore us, that otherpeople
in the past have challenged death and terror on the basis of their memory.
Remembering has to be conceived as a highly inter-subjective relationship.
(passerini 1992:2)
THE DEVOUT CADRE AND THE HOLY SHRINE
In Tibetan landscapes, special places are often linked to the lives of important
people so that narratives of place and narratives of life become tightly inter-
twined. Located in Kyirong County in southwestern Tibet, the monastery of
Trakar Taso, built where the famous twelfth-century mystic Milarepa is said to
have meditated for nine years, is one of these places. It shared the destiny of
many other religious sites that faced destruction by intention or neglect duringthe Cultural Revolution, when erasing the past seemed indispensable to estab-
lishing the new Tibet. In the post-Mao era it saw the involvement of a number of
people trying to reconstruct this shrine. These included Lhasa officials, an ex-
monk who had returned to religious life, a growing community of nuns, a local
administrator, and so on. I remember the stories of these people being told along
with those of the great spiritual masters from the past, as if they had become part
of the local mythology. They had been able to achieve those feats in the 1980s
and early 1990s, an era when China's religious policy in Tibet was at its most lib-
eral. After 1994, new policies showed an increasing uneasiness towards anything
that blurred the boundary between religion and politics, sacred and secular and,
more generally, what is defmed as 'old society' (spyi tshags rnyingpa) and 'new
society' (spyi tshags gsar pa). When religious policy became tighter, and the sep-
aration between religion and politics more stringent, their remembrance started
to pose a particular challenge.
By the end of the Cultural Revolution, Trakar Taso, with its monastic build-
ings and ancient printing house perched on a steep slope on a gorge south of
Dzongkha town,2 was in ruins. It was found in this condition by a group of
Tibetan scholars who were carrying out surveys into what had survived the
Cultural Revolution. One of them said in November 2009:
I first went to Trakar Taso in 1989 with two colleagues. They were senior
researchers,much older than me; I was very young then and mainly followedtheir
lead. At that time we were deeply aware that a lot had been destroyed during the
Cultural Revolution and we felt that we had to care for what had survived. I had
also a strong influence from my mother who had exposedme to Tibetan texts and
relics. We saw many places and eventually found the ruins of Trakar Taso.There
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LIFE HISTORIES OF FORGOTTEN HEROES? 117
we saw ancient printing blocks exposed to the rain, ritual items and objects that we
felt to be very precious scattered all over the place. My two colleagues highlighted
how famous Trakar Taso was in Tibetan history. This contrasted with the desolate
place in front of our eyes, now completely ernpty, abandoned. We felt great pity,we felt very sad ... especially sad, at that view. We felt that we should at least take
care of the ancient printing blocks.
These feelings prompted the scholars to ask the local authorities about the aban-
doned shrine:
We went back to the county seat and asked the local governor for advice, men-
tioning that all this should be looked after. We asked whether there were some
monks from the monastery left. The county governor said that we should speak to
Pho L.3 He introduced him to us - he was great! From Pho L. we leamed that there
was one Trakar Taso monk that had survived, called Shedra T.,4 and we went to
meet him. He lived in a small house of mud bricks and as we arrived there I saw a
middle-aged man carrying a baby. I rernernber this very clearly. He said that he
was sad about Trakar Taso's current condition and from time to time he would
visit the ruins. We said we would like to see the monastery restored and asked
whether he could look after that. He was hesitant at first and pointed out that he
had had to disrobe and marry and thus he might not be in the most suitable posi-
tion to lead a new monastic community. Eventually he said that if there was some
support he would do so.
The scholars discovered that the destiny ofTrakar Taso had already been a con-
cern to many in the community and in this way the restoration project started,
relying on very modest private funding:
At first we did not get big money, we collected some private funding among our-
selves and asked people for more private support. There were also some donations
of wood. Among the local people Pho L. really understood the situation and he
supported the operation. The county leader said that he would not support us but
he would not obstruct the operation, either. Pho L. gathered support among local
people in a private capacity.
At that time, I was told, although there was hardly any government support, the
fact that no permits were required made such spontaneous reconstruction
endeavours relatively simple. That experience deeply impressed the young
scholar, who decided to pursue his interest in Tibetan culture with a pragmatic
approach and joined an organisation established by the Panchen Lama and
Ngabo Ngawang Jigme to promote welfare projects and the restoration of Tibet's
cultural heritage:
In 1991 I moved from my academic institution to an organisation that was looking
after Tibetan cultural heritage and promoted international fund raising to this
effect. At that time Trakar Taso was adopted as a project and we managed to
channel international funding towards it. This was possible only for a limited
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period oftime, in 1994there was a big policy change ... After Shedra T. and Pho
L. died, I remained in touch with the nuns who managed to run the place, retrieve
books and manuscripts that had been hidden and get them catalogued.
The local township governor (xiangzhang) Pho L. (who had promoted and sup-
ported the endeavour inspired by the scholars' visit to Trakar Taso) was an
imposing man, highly charismatic and popular in his community. I first met him
in June 1993, during one of my research trips to that area. This administrator of a
modernist, secularist state seemed to behave like a traditional community elder,
but I was not too surprised as I had already come across party secretaries blessing
community fields, and other religiously engaged governors. He immediately
started to tell about his homeland, his own story and what he did to revive the
sanctuary of one of Tibet's most famous mystics:
This used to be the ancientkingdom of Gungthang and in ancienttimes this was a
main trade route and dhanna route. We can still se the ruins of the royal palace.
The kings had the name of Thride (Khri Ide)5because they were descendants of
the ancient Tibetan emperors.6That snow mountain is the protector of the kings.
They built the fortressand many monasteriesandtemples.Insidethe fortressthere
is Dzonkha Chode monastery and the Droma temple, which is very ancient and
built in Nepalese style. Down in the souththere is the famous PhagpaWatitemple
which used to house a very holy statue. On the way there is Trakar Taso,
Milarepa's meditationplace.
He mentioned the ancient Tibetan emperors and the Buddhist kings of
Gungthang who saw the support of Buddhist deeds as part of their rule; they were
apparently an important reference for him. He blended themes from Buddhisthistories and biographies with his own story and that ofthe people with whom he
shared his vision. 'I was once a monk in Dzonkha Chde, the main monastery
here', he said, and then 'I spent three years injail during the Cultural Revolution.
That was very hard but after Deng's policy change I was rehabilitated and even-
tually recruited by the administration. Now I am here and I can do things for the
community and for the holy places of this area.' His was a narrative of both sur-
vival and celebration, rooted in the past and looking towards the future and thenew opportunities. In fact he had not only enthusiastically supported cultural
revival but had opened a successful mechanical workshop and was looking after
the welfare of the community with commitment.
I met Pho L. again one year later, at the end of July 1994. He was leading the
summer festival in an encampment of white tents amidst the barley fields and
was surrounded by men and women wearing their best traditional costumes. In
the middle of the dancing crowd was a central pole with Mao's portrait attached
to it. It was the meeting of two worlds, communist modernity and Tibetan tradi-
tion. In this second encounter Pho L. mentioned events surrounding the
restoration of Trakar Taso. In between, however, he voiced a sense of anxiety
and disbelief: according to new administrative procedures, he was going to be
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reappointed to an administrative position but only as deputy xiangzhang. The
notion of' deputy' contrasted with Pho L.'s apparent seniority? and popularity. At
that time I could not make much sense of his statement. I met him once more in
1997. By then he had retired and was rather depressed. By my next visit to thearea, a few years later, I heard that he had died. On a visit in 2009 to the same
area, I looked for memories of what used to be this great community leader. I
realised that newly appointed cadres were completely unaware of what he had
been, and after having encountered some awkwardness among local people, I
was given an account of what had happened to him. This account casts his experi-
ence in the broader framework of 1994 administrative reforms promoting radical
policy changes and centralisation. I was told by a local official that:
Pho L. was one of those people who had originally been selected as community
representatives. At that time this was to a large extent based on volunteering and
the compensation was very limited and was raised by the community itself In
1992 Pho L. was officially recognised as a cadre (las byed pa) and he received a
proper government salary in his capacity of township govemor (xiangzhang).
People trusted him very much on all kinds of issues. He was even consulted to
assess whether a pair of earrings to be presented to a relative were made of gold orto give advice on business. Pho L. engaged in private fundraising for Trakar Taso.
Some people from the lower valleys offered wood, others work, others money.
People were very pleased with Pho L.'s engagement in the restoration of Trakar
Taso.
The change in Pho L.'s position was explained and commented as follows:
Later the government sent specific people to become xiangzhang, this is why he
was moved to the position of deputy. The new cadre was appointed to the position
of senior xiangzhang. This happened around 1994. This senior xiangzhang how-
ever did not have much funding to support something like the restoration of
Trakar Taso. He was different from Pho L. who was well connected in the com-
munity and also behaved like a trader. He was not linked up with the community
in the same way. He was also bound by new policies that demanded more control
of religious institutions and members of the monastic community.
Commenting on the current situation, there was a sense of appreciation for some
of the most recent developments despite tighter centralised control:
Later the government promoted the appointment of dedicated personnel to look
after sites like Trakar Taso and funding was made available for the preservation of
cultural heritage but all has been more tightly controlled. What then happens on
the ground depends very much on the motivation and ability of the officials and
how they can engage with the system; some are more able than others. Here rightnow we are doing fairly well ...
Pho L.'s deeds have survived him and have now become an important part of
local cultural heritage - Trakar Taso was even recently celebrated in a tourist
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advertisement. However, memory of his personal deeds is fading. The role he
played to make possible the revival ofTrakar Taso occurred at a time when cadres
could be relatively open about their deep feelings for their traditions and even
their religious motivations. They were locals and, according to a rather decen-tralised administrative setting promoted in the 1980s and early 1990s, they were
deeply rooted in the local community. This setting changed with administrative
and policy changes. The memory ofPho L. reflects an arrangement between reli-
gion and politics that had eventually become awkward and his memory is now a
private matter, consigned to those people who had a direct experience of him.
Shedra T., the monk who, with Pho L., had started the reconstruction project, is
now remembered through a brass reliquary in the shape of a stupa. This is located
just above the main reconstructed buildings and the ruins of the monastery, not
far from those of Trakar Taso's ancient spiritual masters, but at some distance
from the main pathway. For some of the visitors and pilgrims who have had a
long-standing relation to the monastery, he has become part of a 'place of
memory' with its narratives of spiritual deeds. For most, however, the golden reli-
quary is barely worthy of notice.
Pho L. and Shedra T. represent in different ways the generation that lived
across the divide between 'old society' and 'new society'. Since the cadre was
not supposed to have had religious feelings and the monk had had a civil life
before becoming the leader of the monastic community, their memory also stands
for the entanglement between the sacred and the secular and defies engrained
political and religious ideals. They seem to stand for awkward continuities in a
setting that has been predicated upon the celebration of discontinuities.
In a comer of southern Central Tibet I came across another example of pecu-
liar arrangements between the political and the religious that shows that activitiesofPho L. and Shedra T were not exceptional but reflected a widespread pattern in
Tibet.
THE WORLDLY NUN AND THE PARTY SECRETARY
In November 2009 I was looking for Ani T., the senior nun of a nunnery of theBodongpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Nearing the relevant village not very
far from the city of Gyantse in southern Tibet, I asked a woman about her where-
abouts. 'Ah yes, the worldly nun', said she with a somewhat enigmatic
expression. 'She died last year'. I was both saddened by the news and slightly
puzzled by the expression she had used to define her. I had met this remarkable
nun several times before, during my research into the tradition to which she
belonged. The first time it was almost by chance in 1997 during a festival at
Samding, the main monastery of her tradition. Eight years later I visited her in
her nunnery perched on a red spur above the village. On that occasion she told me
the story of her nunnery and linked her own story to that of sacred women of the
past:
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My nunnery was originally established in a land tenure of a local ruler from
Bonpo Tengchen. He had a daughter, a princess who wished to become a nun ... I
became a nun when I was seventeen. I was bom in a family of farmers and as one
nun had left the nunnery, I became a nun in her stead. At that time, we used to par-ticipate in family life and go to the nunnery for ceremonies. When I was
twenty-eight-twenty-nine [around 1960], the nunnery was closed down and was
eventually destroyed. At that time I did not have two avenues to choose from. I
had only one. So I married. I then had seven children. When I was about fifty
[around 1982], a small group of friends came together and decided to rebuild the
nunnery. We started to collect funds as begging nuns, wandering all over the
region. Part of that original group was a nun who had stayed at Chagsam Chubori,
the residence of Thangtong Gyalpo. She died some seven years ago. At first we
asked the local authorities for permission to rebuild a small place, the size of two
pillars, for the practice of ritual fasting (nyungne). It was very difficult. We applied
to one official, who then referred us to another official, and so on. We were
allowed to practise, for the local authorities were good to us, but it was difficult to
get a formal permit to establish the nunnery. Eventually we managed to receive it.
It was 1993. I then became the formal head of the nunnery and some nuns joined
in. For the construction we received some donations from Samding, including
some wood. The local people provided labour and we kept collecting funds as
begging nuns. Recently because of my health I moved away, but I still go back
when there are ceremonies.
What she did not tell me at that time was that her husband had been the party
secretary of the township (xiang). Her narrative was fully focused on her indi-
vidual life as a nun and was apparently informed by Tibetan traditional ideals -
the begging nun is a popular trope in the biography of religious women. A party
secretary as a husband was, it seemed, extraneous to the story. When I met her
two years later, I visited her in her house. She was there with her husband and her
elder daughter. It was there that her family context emerged. Although he said
that he did not actively help her in her efforts to get permits, his support was
nonetheless significant, especially in the earlier phase of her effort.
In 2009 I returned to the nunnery in the hope of getting a more detailed
account. She had died, but her husband told their story as follows:
We met in 1960. I was a local party cadre and she was an ex-nun. At that time nuns
could not practise and it was decided that we should marry. Our first child was
bom in 1962. I had become a party cadre because I was once a servant. I had the
right kind of background for that. However, in fact, I was bom as the son of the
steward of a noble family. When my father died I was only six and I was adopted
by a family of herders under the same noble family. I thus became their personal
servant and later looked after transportation with yaks. Because of my class back-
ground, as a former servant, in the early '60s I was summoned to help mediate
conflicts among the people and explain democratic refonns. In 1966 I became
Party Secretary. I was originally illiterate but I started to look at newspapers and I
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learnt how to read and write from them. My wife already knew how to read and
write from having been a nun. At that time [i.e. the beginning of the Cultural
Revolution] we were requested to take a stand andjoin either the Gyenlog or the
Nyamdrel. I said that we would rather not join either of them. However,since wewere told that we had to choose we decided to opt for Gyenlog. Since the whole
village followed the same choice there was no major infighting as had happened
elsewhere.
His account would support the hypothesis that the Cultural Revolution was par-
ticularly destructive where party factional fights intersected with tensions inside
the local community for economic and religious reasons, and that he played his
role strategically. After the major policy change of 1978, his wife expressed thewish to restore her former nunnery. Asked whether he helped her in getting per-
mits, he denied that this was the case and added that she had all her dealing with
the Buddhist Association in Gyantse. However, he supported her personally. 'I
did not make any obstacles and looked after the family so that she could pursue
her efforts, raise funds as a begging nun and go to the relevant offices to get
permits.'
Seated next to the images of Buddhist deities, great lamas and Communistleaders in the house that he had constructed for his family, this local party secre-
tary was recalling the story of the woman with whom he had shared his life and
whom he was still deeply missing. He showed not only love but great respect for
her spiritual aims which she pursued with great commitment and with much skill.
What she had achieved was remarkable indeed. 1 came across other nuns who
had tried to re-establish their nunneries but had never been able to get formal per-
mission. It was precisely the ability of this woman to navigate both the worldly
and the religious that made her success possible. Yet among the nuns she is con-
sidered 'the worldly nun', and her position is deeply ambiguous. Like Shedra T.,
she had had a civil life and this had put her in an awkward position in relation to
religious ideals and prototypes.
MEMORY AND POLICY
Religious revival in a socialist state would seem at first sight a paradox. But it has
been happening all over China, and Tibet in particular, over the last three
decades. This phenomenon has sometimes been interpreted as an innovation and
linked to an assumed fading away of the socialist nature of the Chinese state.
However, this view underplays the fact that the CCP had in the 1950s a pragmatic
attitude towards religion expressed by Mao himself. Goldstein and Kapstein
(1998: 2), writing about the religious policy in the 1950s, observed that' despite
the CCP adherence to a Marxist, atheist ideology, it initially adopted a flexible
policy regarding religion in the new state'. A similar flexible and pragmatic
arrangement was re-instated with the policy shift launched by Deng Xiaoping in
1978 after the Cultural Revolution, during which anything religious had been
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LIFE HISTORIES OF FORGOTTEN HEROES? 123
attacked as a symbol of the old society. However, the implementation of the
'freedom of religious belief' which was enshrined in the Chinese constitution has
over time reflected different ways of understanding how religion had to be cir-
cumscribed with respect to politics. Its implementation in a society in whichreligion and politics had traditionally not been separated was thus confronted
with the challenge of defining a boundary between the acceptable and the non-
acceptable, and as this shifted with policy changes it often allowed for
contradictions and paradoxes as well as huge differences in implementation
between one place and another. Only by looking at individual cases and at the
narratives of people involved in these processes is it possible to gain an insight
into this complexity and variation.
The nun T. managed to obtain the permit for her nunnery in 1993. This
remains up to now the only nunnery of her tradition to have achieved this. One
year later everything would have been much more difficult, perhaps impossible. I
was told of another nunnery of the same tradition that had been informally estab-
lished in the same period and was dissolved because it had failed to obtain official
permits. I also heard of other nuns who had tried to restore their nunnery but were
discouraged by the difficulties and continued their practice privately. Perhaps T.'s
family situation had an impact on her success.
In 1994 new policies linked to a radical change of direction announced with
the Third Work Forum on Tibet were introduced. Religious containment became
a priority and local arrangements such as the ones described above became
impossible. For example, in the main document, called The Golden Bridge
Leading to a New Era, it is stated:
There are too many places where monasteries have been opened without pennis-
sion from the authorities,and having too much religious activity ... the waste of
materials, manpower and money has been tremendous ... sometimes leading to
interference in administration, law, education, marriages, birth control, produc-
tivity and daily life. (The Golden Bridge Leading to a New Era, p. 37, quoted in
Barnett 1996:25)
This shift in religious policy reflected a more general shift in the attitude of the
Chinese govermnent towards Tibet. The idea that Tibet had special characteris-tics that needed to be taken into account had been earlier voiced in documents
and newspapers. For example, in an article published in Tibet Daily it was stated:
'The special characteristics of the Tibetan region must be recognised and there
must be special measures and flexible methods' (Zhang Shurin and Guo Wutian
in Tibet Daily, 7 January 1991, cited in Barnett 1996: 24). This attitude was now
strongly criticised: 'Is Tibet willing to accept the label of "being special" and
stand at the rear of reform and opening up? ... ' (People 5 0 Daily, 16 May 1994,
cited in Barnett 1996: 24).
The tendency towards standardisation and centralisation was reflected in new
appointment policies such as the one experienced by Pho L. The 1994 policy
shift, analysed in detail by Robert Barnett (1996), had an impact not only on
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124 HILDEGARD DIEMBERGER
Tibet's administration and development but also on memory. Since then refer-
ence to any arrangement that cuts across the divide between religion and politics
and is rooted in the local community and its traditions has become awkward.
Narratives have thus become organised according to separate spheres, with reli-gion clearly separate from and subordinate to politics. Yet it was the people who
navigated both that were able to reconstruct Tibet after the upheavals of the
Cultural Revolution, and this heritage remains the one enjoyed by local inhabi-
tants and visitors; and is sometimes promoted by the Party as the showcase of
Tibetan culture.
CONCLUSION
In this paper I have shown how the collection of life histories and personal
accounts makes it possible to reconstruct a 'history from below', otherwise con-
signed to oblivion. The stories ofPho L. and Shedra T., of Ani T. and her husband
are not exceptional and have many similarities with many others across Tibet.
They are interesting because they reflect the history and the memory of a genera-
tion that lived across important historical divides: the one between 'old society'
and 'new society' and the one between Cultural Revolution and Deng Xiaoping's
new policies. They illustrate the entanglement of the religious and the political in
a process that made the reconstruction of Tibetan social and cultural fabric in the
post-Mao era possible. The collection oftheir individual histories brought to the
fore behaviour and local political handling of situations that often contrasted with
popular expectations and official master-narratives, but which have been crucial
in the shaping of modem Tibetan society. Although a discrepancy between ruleand practice is to be expected in most societies, the fact that Tibet underwent rad-
ical transformations in a short period of time created an extreme complexity that
can best be understood through the analysis oflife narratives, especially those of
the generation that lived across crucial historical divides.
Looking at specific life histories it is also possible to see how biographical
tropes have had an impact on subjectivity formation and personal narratives,
reflecting a 'morality of exemplars' (Humphrey 1996: 25--48) widespread inBuddhist societies across Inner Asia. The re-enactment of historical exemplars
has often bridged the divide across 'old society' and 'new society', inspiring
action in a completely new setting. This process has had a significant impact on
the modes in which leaders engaged with local traditions, navigating the shifting
boundary between the religious and the secular and reconciling the 'moral
authority of the past' (Humphrey 1992: 375-89) with a modernist vision of
society. Looking at the impact of policy and policy shifts on memory I wonder
whether silencing and forgetting did not come at a price of increased political ten-
sions, revealing an unspoken but still open struggle for meaning and memory. It
has been observed that 'in totalitarian regimes power is maintained in part
through the control of memory' (Perks &Thomson 1998: 449) and some of the
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LIFE HISTORIES OF FORGOTTEN HEROES? 125
effects of restrictive policies enacted in Tibet are reminiscent of this. However,
the fact that research projects such as the one carried out by Goldstein, Jiao and
Lhundrup have become possible is a sign that other tendencies are also present
and point towards a more open engagement with the past. Oral-history researchmay eventually provide important insights into the emerging Tibetan civil society
that straddles a difficult pathway between the tenets of Chinese socialism and a
deeply engrained Buddhist morality.
NOTES
1 This was one of two opposing factions, called the Gyenlog and the Nyamdrel, that dom-inated the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: see Shakya 1999.
2 The seat ofKyirong County in Shigatse Prefecture, TibetAutonomous Region.
3 In Tibetan rural areas traditional kinship tenns tenns likepho or mes, meaning 'grandfa-
ther, ancestor' , are often used as titles in front of the name oflocal officials.
4 The term shedra is a title that indicates that he had been part of a religious college.
5 Khri means 'throne' and was often part of the ancient Tibetan emperors' name; iDe was
the name of the imperial lineage.
6 The history of the Gungthang kings is known not only through the oral tradition but isalso recorded in historical sources such as 'The Royal Genealogy of Gungthang' (Gung
thang rgyal rabs), published as part of a modem book in 1995.
7 His role as community elder was not only apparent from his performance, it was also
made evident by the title pho, a tenn meaning 'grandfather, ancestor'.
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