[Assam] From the NYT - Dont Know Much About Tibetan History

[baruah at bard.edu]

Dear Deka,

Actually the question is more complicated than what Elliot Sperling  
says in today?s New York Times article. I have said the following in a  
recent article about historical Tibet that relates to Assam as well.  
Below are the relevant passages from the article. My article may be a  
little too academic, but in case you are interested here is the link.

http://www.epw.org.in/epw/user/viewAbstract.jsp#

Good wishes,

Sanjib

Unlike political scientists of a generation ago that took the modern  
idea of absolute and indivisible sovereignty as normal and desirable,  
many today look to shared sovereignty as an aspect of the usable past  
that could provide a framework for resolving many stubborn territorial  
disputes of today.  For instance, Tibet, as International Relations  
theorist Stephen Krasner points out, used to symbolically recognize  
the supremacy of the Chinese emperor by paying occasional tributes,  
yet there was extensive local control.  ?Both the Chinese and the  
Tibetans,? he believes, ?might be better off if Tibet could regain  
some of the autonomy it had as a tributary state within the  
traditional Chinese empire.?  Yet it is hard to translate a tributary  
relation into an arrangement consistent with the modern notion of  
indivisible sovereignty (Krasner, 2001:28).  Indeed most states tend  
to resist compromises on the notion of absolute and indivisible  
sovereignty, even as they confront stubborn ethno-territorial  
conflicts that become eminently resolvable outside the framework of  
this modern dogma. However, there are examples such as ?two systems  
one country? formula for Hong Kong in China that can be read as shifts  
away from the idea of indivisible sovereignty.

???..

Everywhere in the world political maps that typically represent the  
?national order of things,? for instance, make it difficult to make  
sense of the logic of political, economic and cultural systems that in  
earlier periods crisscrossed those borders. The pre-colonial history  
of Western Assam and North Bengal (including parts of Bangladesh), for  
instance, is inseparable from Bhutan. Historian Sanghamitra Misra  
tells us of the ?ambiguous nature? of the tributary relationship  
between the kings of Bhutan and the zamindars of Bijni and Sidli in  
Goalpara. Thus the Dharma raja of Bhutan every year sent horses to the  
Bijni raja and in exchange, the chief of Bijni sent dried fish, endi  
silk and salami. That the relationship between the king and his  
tributary rulers had a degree of reciprocity, and that the gifts given  
by the Bhutanese king were of greater value than the tribute received  
from Bijni and Sidli, was a source of utter confusion for British  
officials (Misra 2005: 220-21).
As if that was not confusing enough, the powers of Bhutanese officials  
and those of the rulers of Bijni and Sidli overlapped. The Kuriapara  
Dooar for instance, was under the occupation of Bhutanese officials  
for eight months of the year, while local powers claimed revenue  
during the rest of the year. Nor were the kings of Bhutan the only  
claimants to such rights in this part of pre-colonial Northeast India.  
The Ahom kings also asserted their ?rights over the produce of the  
Dooar region and were frequently in conflict with the state of  
Bhutan.?  At the same time the Ahom court acknowledged ?the  
sovereignty of the Dalai Lama of Tibet over the region? and paid an  
annual tribute (Misra 2005: 227-228).


Quoting Dilip/Dil Deka <dilipdeka at yahoo.com>:

> If you are curious about Tibet's relationship with China over the   
> centuries, in view of the recent incidents, you may find the article  
>  below useful. The article says that Tibet was never a part of China  
>  till Communist China marched into Lhasa.
>   The question arises - was there a country called Tibet at all? Was  
>  there a government in Tibet? Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader, not  
> a  political one. What makes a Tibetan a Tibetan? Religion, language  
> or  tribal division?
>   ============================================================
>   From the NYT
>   Op-Ed Contributor
>   Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History   function getSharePasskey()  
>  { return 'ex=1365739200&en=afcf239fbf818338&ei=5124';}     function  
>  getShareURL() {  return   
> encodeURIComponent('http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13sperling.html'); } function getShareHeadline() {  return encodeURIComponent('Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History'); } function getShareDescription() {    return encodeURIComponent('Tibet was not “Chinese” until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in and made it so.'); } function getShareKeywords() {  return encodeURIComponent('Politics and Government,History,Tibet,China,Dalai Lama,Mao Zedong'); } function getShareSection() {  return encodeURIComponent('opinion'); } function getShareSectionDisplay() {   return encodeURIComponent('Op-Ed Contributor'); } function getShareSubSection() {  return encodeURIComponent(''); } function getShareByline() {  return encodeURIComponent('By ELLIOT SPERLING'); } function getSharePubdate() {    
> return
>  encodeURIComponent('April 13, 2008'); }
>   writePost();      
> new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13sperling.html
>
>
>   By ELLIOT SPERLING
>   Published: April 13, 2008
>     Bloomington, Ind.
>
>
>
>
>     FOR many Tibetans, the case for the historical independence of   
> their land is unequivocal. They assert that Tibet has always been   
> and by rights now ought to be an independent country. China’s   
> assertions are equally unequivocal: Tibet became a part of China   
> during Mongol rule and its status as a part of China has never   
> changed. Both of these assertions are at odds with Tibet’s history.
>
>
>   The Tibetan view holds that Tibet was never subject to foreign   
> rule after it emerged in the mid-seventh century as a dynamic power   
> holding sway over an Inner Asian empire. These Tibetans say the   
> appearance of subjugation to the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty   
> in the 13th and 14th centuries, and to the Manchu rulers of China’s   
> Qing Dynasty from the 18th century until the 20th century, is due to  
>  a modern, largely Western misunderstanding of the personal  
> relations  among the Yuan and Qing emperors and the pre-eminent  
> lamas of Tibet.  In this view, the lamas simply served as spiritual  
> mentors to the  emperors, with no compromise of Tibet’s independent  
> status.
>   In China’s view, the Western misunderstandings are about the   
> nature of China: Western critics don’t understand that China has a   
> history of thousands of years as a unified multinational state; all   
> of its nationalities are Chinese. The Mongols, who entered China as   
> conquerers, are claimed as Chinese, and their subjugation of Tibet   
> is claimed as a Chinese subjugation.
>   Here are the facts. The claim that Tibet entertained only personal  
>  relations with China at the leadership level is easily rebutted.   
> Administrative records and dynastic histories outline the governing   
> structures of Mongol and Manchu rule. These make it clear that Tibet  
>  was subject to rules, laws and decisions made by the Yuan and Qing   
> rulers. Tibet was not independent during these two periods. One of   
> the Tibetan cabinet ministers summoned to Beijing at the end of the   
> 18th century describes himself unambiguously in his memoirs as a   
> subject of the Manchu emperor.
>   But although Tibet did submit to the Mongol and Manchu Empires,   
> neither attached Tibet to China. The same documentary record that   
> shows Tibetan subjugation to the Mongols and Manchus also shows that  
>  China’s intervening Ming Dynasty (which ruled from 1368 to 1644)  
> had  no control over Tibet. This is problematic, given China’s  
> insistence  that Chinese sovereignty was exercised in an unbroken  
> line from the  13th century onward.
>   The idea that Tibet became part of China in the 13th century is a   
> very recent construction. In the early part of the 20th century,   
> Chinese writers generally dated the annexation of Tibet to the 18th   
> century. They described Tibet’s status under the Qing with a term   
> that designates a “feudal dependency,” not an integral part of a   
> country. And that’s because Tibet was ruled as such, within the   
> empires of the Mongols and the Manchus. When the Qing dynasty   
> collapsed in 1911, Tibet became independent once more.
>   From 1912 until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in   
> 1949, no Chinese government exercised control over what is today   
> China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama’s government alone   
> ruled the land until 1951.
>   Marxist China adopted the linguistic sleight of hand that asserts   
> it has always been a unitary multinational country, not the hub of   
> empires. There is now firm insistence that “Han,” actually one of   
> several ethnonyms for “Chinese,” refers to only one of the Chinese   
> nationalities. This was a conscious decision of those who   
> constructed 20th-century Chinese identity. (It stands in contrast to  
>  the Russian decision to use a political term, “Soviet,” for the   
> peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.)
>   There is something less to the arguments of both sides, but the   
> argument on the Chinese side is weaker. Tibet was not “Chinese”   
> until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in and made it so.
>     Elliot Sperling is the director of the Tibetan Studies program   
> at Indiana University’s department of Central Eurasia Studies.
>
>
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