A review of YAK HORNS
By Swati Chopra, author of Dharamsala Diaries and Buddhism: On the Path to Nirvana
THE narrative of
Tibet has never lacked for commentators and those willing and eager to tell its
story on its behalf. Beginning in the twelfth century, the land, its culture
and its people have been scrutinized and written about by a steady stream of
explorers who managed to breach its defences and sneak into the remote
Himalayan kingdom. These accounts, and those who braved the land of snows to
gather them, became invaluable in the nineteenth century when secret spying and
mapping missions were despatched to Tibet, as the Great Game began to unfold in
Asia.
By Swati Chopra, author of Dharamsala Diaries and Buddhism: On the Path to Nirvana
The review appeared in the Seminar Journal April 2013
YAK HORNS available online at:
THE narrative of
Tibet has never lacked for commentators and those willing and eager to tell its
story on its behalf. Beginning in the twelfth century, the land, its culture
and its people have been scrutinized and written about by a steady stream of
explorers who managed to breach its defences and sneak into the remote
Himalayan kingdom. These accounts, and those who braved the land of snows to
gather them, became invaluable in the nineteenth century when secret spying and
mapping missions were despatched to Tibet, as the Great Game began to unfold in
Asia.
Its strategic
location, its geopolitical importance, and its exotic appeal as a sort of a
last unexplored frontier, ensured that Tibet remained an area of interest for
‘outsiders’ who commented upon it, told and retold its story, and continued to
add to the body of writing on it, even as it passed into an era of turmoil and
occupation by the People’s Republic of China in the twentieth century, and a
section of its population fled their troubled homeland. What is interesting is
that a large part of this body of work on Tibet, scholarly, literary and
otherwise, was written by non-Tibetan ‘experts’.
As the Buddhism of
Tibet, represented most prominently by Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai
Lama, began to gain currency as a credible spiritual path in the western world
circa 1970s and ’80s, a new wave of writings emerged. A host of Tibetan
Rinpoches became popular teachers and began travelling the world, setting up
centres and acquiring students who were affected not only by their teachings of
the dharma, but also by their joie de vivre in the face of adversity. The writings
that emerged from the dharma’s interaction with the world, most notably the
West, are a testimony to its ability and willingness to converse with new
perspectives and worldviews that were quite different from its own.
So, the world fell
in love with the Thunderbolt Vehicle to enlightenment (Vajrayana Buddhism)
taught by affable, ruddy-cheeked Rinpoches, leading to a ‘dharma publishing’
phenomenon. Glossy-backed books on personal growth, often compilations of
teachings given by a Tibetan teacher, began appearing on bestseller lists.
Though I have never heard or seen any Rinpoche actively reinforce a
Shambhala-esque view of Tibet, either in lectures or in their writings, the
fact that there had existed this very practical system of mind-training in Tibet,
preserved and practised by human beings, who stood before the world and whose
equanimity was palpable, did add to the halo of spiritual accomplishment around
Tibet. I wouldn’t say it further exoticized Tibet, but it did lead to a
somewhat distorted popular perception of the country – that it was a paradise,
disturbed but nevertheless idyllic, filled with enlightened, angelic
maroon-robed monks.
This is why
Bhuchung D. Sonam’s writings, along with those of a small but growing group of
Tibetan writers within and outside Tibet, become so crucial. Along with the
older Lhasang Tsering and Jamyang Norbu, writers like Sonam, Tenzin Tsundue,
Woeser, Jamyang Kyi and others, are engaged in intently surveying and mapping
the spectrum of the contemporary Tibetan experience – that ranges from
repression at home in Tibet, to a ‘stateless, homeless’ existence as refugees
in India and other parts of the world.
Bhuchung D. Sonam’s Yak
Horns is a collection of the
author’s writings – essays, literary criticism, film and music reviews, et al –
that have appeared in journals, the author’s blog at burningtibet.blogspot.in,
and on websites dedicated to Tibetan writing, like www.tibetwrites.org. Through
the diverse topics he tackles in the book, Sonam amplifies the voice of an entire
generation of Tibetan refugees – those who grew up in exile, never quite at
home, assimilating in their adoptive homelands yet never free of the persistent
remembrance of the true one they had never seen. In this, Yak Horns presents an
invaluable insight into the soul of the young refugee, whose ‘permanent address
has been stolen’, as Sonam’s biography in the book so poignantly states.
The collection of
articles and essay in Yak Horns also serves as both a mirror of,
and a commentary on, the contemporary Tibetan cultural and literary scene.
Those who may not regularly read the blogs and magazines where these articles
appear will find in this book an opportunity of a snapshot of the same
delivered to them, which suffices as a useful introduction to contemporary
Tibetan perspectives and realities. Sonam is an intrepid chronicler, and little
seems to have escaped his prolific pen in the years represented in the book.
What one also gets is a sense of the secular literary and cultural traditions
of Tibet, through his cataloguing of the works of individuals such as the
inveterate traveller and controversial writer of the early twentieth century,
Gendun Choephel, who could be seen as a precursor to the secular Tibetan
intellectual movement of which Bhuchung D. Sonam is a contemporary
representative and to which he owes allegiance.
Along with past
intellectuals, Sonam keeps his lens trained on the contemporary community of
writers within and outside Tibet. For those within Tibet, writing and blogging
have proven to be a crucial means to resist mounting repression by a paranoid
state-machinery wary of Tibetan insistence on a unique and distinct nationhood,
identity and culture. By telling the truth about what is happening in Tibet,
one that is often at variance with the ‘official’ version, they risk
imprisonment, torture, loss of careers and separation from loved ones.
A case in point is
Jamyang Kyi, a journalist employed with the state-run Qinghai Television, whose
account of her imprisonment in the aftermath of the widespread protests in
Tibet in 2008, was smuggled out of the country and published as a book in
exile, titled A Sequence of Tortures: A Diary of
Interrogations. This happened after the blog where her account first
appeared in 2008 was taken down. Another prolific, and fearless, blogger is
Tsering Woeser, who lives and works in Beijing and has often spoken about the
‘imperialist cultural invasion’ of Tibet. Despite repeated curbs and threats to
her freedom, she and her husband, the author Wang Lixiong, continue to post
content on-line that attempts to reflect ground realities in both Tibet and
China.
Time and again in
Bhuchung D. Sonam’s writing emerges the voice of a people chafing at and
struggling with the yoke of a brutal colonization. The only ray of hope seems
to be their resilience, and their refusal to give in to their oppressors
despite overwhelming odds. This is evident in this quote from Gartse Jigme, a
monk from a nomadic family in Amdo, who writes in his book, The Warrior’s Courage, and who Bhuchung
D. Sonam quotes:
‘As a Tibetan, I
will never give up the struggle for the rights of my people
As a religious
person, I will never criticize the leader of my religion
As a writer, I am
committed to the power of truth and reality
This is the pledge
I make to my fellow Tibetans.’
Indeed, it is a
pledge that resonates through this book and the many paths it traverses, the
many stories it tells, and the one homeland it pays homage to – Tibet.
