Politics of Religion (October, 1984)
A couple of years ago, shortly after the People’s Republic of China started sending delegates to International Seminars of Tibetologists, a convenor of one such meeting in New York prevented Tibetan observers from attending it. The explanation given was that potential rabble-rousers had no business to be mixing with dispassionate scholars.
Since then the same attitude seems to have permeated to organisers of religious conferences in general and Buddhist ones in particular. Interestingly enough, the emergence of this phenomenon is also accompanised by Chinese presence in these meetings. The recent Buddhist conferences in Colombo witnessed a scene of protest demonstration by the Chinese delegates when they found Tibetans also on the panel. Short afterwards, the World Conference of Religion for Peace in Nairobi faced disruption when the Chinese delegation sought to ban a speech containing references to the Dalai Lama’s contributions towards world peace and Chinese’s suppression of religious activities in the People’s Republic. The crisis was averted by deleting the offensive references from the speech.
While preparing for the First International Conference on Budhdism held this moth, the Indian hosts seem to have taken the necessary precautions to see that no ‘incident’ marred their efforts. Since it was not possible to ignore Tibetans completely, some of them were invited to attend as ‘individual’ scholars and were also quietly advised not to make their Tibetanness too conspicuous. The Dalai Lama, who has always been happy to attend any gathering of this kind was not invited. The proferred excuse that it was a religious and not a political meeting is far from adequate in view of the fact that he has so far never attended, nor expressed a desire to attend, any political meetings anywhere. On the other hand, many non political gatherings are known to have risen in prestige simply because of his celebrated presence.
All this because China has graciously decided to send their own experts in these fields. However, judg ing from the comments of some, of the participants, the contributions from these experts have of exactly broken new grounds. This fact leaves one with no choice but to view the fastididiousness surrounding the Chinese delegates itself as nothing but a political move. One wants to see how long it will be before it achieves the desired purpose of the organizers—whatever it may be.
A couple of years ago, shortly after the People’s Republic of China started sending delegates to International Seminars of Tibetologists, a convenor of one such meeting in New York prevented Tibetan observers from attending it. The explanation given was that potential rabble-rousers had no business to be mixing with dispassionate scholars.
Since then the same attitude seems to have permeated to organisers of religious conferences in general and Buddhist ones in particular. Interestingly enough, the emergence of this phenomenon is also accompanised by Chinese presence in these meetings. The recent Buddhist conferences in Colombo witnessed a scene of protest demonstration by the Chinese delegates when they found Tibetans also on the panel. Short afterwards, the World Conference of Religion for Peace in Nairobi faced disruption when the Chinese delegation sought to ban a speech containing references to the Dalai Lama’s contributions towards world peace and Chinese’s suppression of religious activities in the People’s Republic. The crisis was averted by deleting the offensive references from the speech.
While preparing for the First International Conference on Budhdism held this moth, the Indian hosts seem to have taken the necessary precautions to see that no ‘incident’ marred their efforts. Since it was not possible to ignore Tibetans completely, some of them were invited to attend as ‘individual’ scholars and were also quietly advised not to make their Tibetanness too conspicuous. The Dalai Lama, who has always been happy to attend any gathering of this kind was not invited. The proferred excuse that it was a religious and not a political meeting is far from adequate in view of the fact that he has so far never attended, nor expressed a desire to attend, any political meetings anywhere. On the other hand, many non political gatherings are known to have risen in prestige simply because of his celebrated presence.
All this because China has graciously decided to send their own experts in these fields. However, judg ing from the comments of some, of the participants, the contributions from these experts have of exactly broken new grounds. This fact leaves one with no choice but to view the fastididiousness surrounding the Chinese delegates itself as nothing but a political move. One wants to see how long it will be before it achieves the desired purpose of the organizers—whatever it may be.
posted by editorla at
9:22 PM
<< Home