Something Gives in Tibet
What do Levis Strauss & Co. and the Dalai Lama have in common, which sets them apart from Chris Patten? Well, the manufacturer of blue denim and the monk in saffron are both against China receiving most-favoured-nation status from the United States, while the Governor of HongKong was in Washington DC lobbying for retention of MFN.
In May, as President Bill Clinton was about to decide on the MFN status, Levi Strauss unilaterally announced that it would suspend business in China to protest human rights abuses there. Some cynics saw this as an attempt by the company to boost its image among "politically liberal jean wearers", many of whom might actually be sympathetic to the cause of Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has, in the meantime, emerged from his Dharamsala eyrie to go on a publicity blitz, and he seems to be gaining ground on Beijing. Tibet has always received sympathetic play in the Western media, but now the coverage is more broadbased, more politicised, and less quaint. Dharamsala´s public relations spin-artists have never had it so good. "Optimism Spreads among Tibetan Exiles," was the headline used by the Asian Wall Street Journal as the pressure built on China.
There was a little bit of everything in the media to enliven Tibet coverage: from demonstrations in Lhasa (with the BBC South Asia Report managing a live interview with a tourist staying at the Lhasa Holiday Inn), to actor Richard Gere asking his Oscar night audience to send out energy in support of Tibet. American Vice President Al Gore met with the Dalai Lama in his White House office, and the President had five minutes free and "just dropped by to say hi". Meanwhile, the Canadian House of Commons debated Tibet, Chinese dissidents were coming around, and Taiwan was beginning to make cooing noises.
A European Commission
delegation of ambassadors on a fact-finding tour to Lhasa cut short its trip protesting the arrest of some Tibetans. Over the last couple of months, many major Western newspapers have carried editorials, and numerous articles like the one in the Times of London the "Envoy of Peace: Faith of the Dalai Lama". Meanwhile, the Austrian Government set precedent and invited the Dalai Lama to attend the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna, under the old cover of being a "religious" rather than "political" leader. The fact that he was not allowed to speak from the podium just made for better press.
Besides the Dalai Lama´s power of persuasion, the Tibetans continue to use every available weapon in their arsenal, from dharma academics to celebrities to sand mandalas to kalachakra ceremonies — the latest of which was in Gangtok with Koo Stark in attendance as photographer.
In the end, Bill Clinton did agree to another year´s extension of MFN status for China, but with conditions on a renewal a year hence (having to do with human rights, arms transfers to third countries and "overall significant progress in protecting Tibet´s distinctive religious and cultural heritage"). Dharamsala seems to have taken the renewal in stride, secure in the knowledge that its friends in the US Congress had helped draft the legislation with longterm strategy in mind.
As the Chinese economy expands and as it seeks to firm up its ties with consumer nations of the West, something will have to give — and it can be either human rights within China generally, or Tibet. Beijing might find that compromising with the Dalai Lama is a less bitter pill than loosening the reigns on all of Chinese society.
In Kathmandu in early June, Indian legislator and staunch Dharamsala backer George Fernandes made a controversial foray across the border at Khasa. He agreed with a reporter that a "decisive" moment was at hand as far as Tibet was concerned. Fernandes had arrived straight from Dharamsala, where there had been the largest gathering ever on Tibet of Indian academics, pols and journalists. On hand were the likes of MPs Digvijay Singh, Ajit Singh and Rabi Ray; former Himachal CM Shanta Kumar; former Foreign Secre-taryMuchkund Dubey; journalist Nikhil Chakravarty; and so on.
Meanwhile, Nepal´s headless Ministry for Foreign Affairs continues to quake under Beijing´s glare, while the Kathmandu intelligentsia does not seem to care to relate the worldwide surge on Tibet to Nepal´s own situation and interests. The Government has become stricter with Tibetan in transit. On 8 June, the Foreign Ministry issued a press release reiterating that "Tibet is an autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China."
If it is true that Beijing is feeling the heat on Tibet, and something does give, then Levi Strauss, at least, can remain confident in the knowledge that Tibetans will always go for Levis.
The Fortieth What?
A
s far as anniversaries go, one is used to the tenth, twenty-fifth and fiftieth. But it was the fortieth anniversary of the first topping of the Big Brow of the Sky that was celebrated during all of May, with a surfeit of television soundbites.
As Maj. Gen. Patrick Fagan, Chairman of the Mount Everest Foundation, told a Himal representative in London, "Forty years is a significant time frame in the British psychology and tradition, because 40 years is the average man´s working life and serves as a career milestone. Besides, the 40th anniversary of the ascent of Everest is also closely associated with 40th anniversary of the Queen´s coronation. And the British have a protective attitude towards "Peak XV". It was our mountain, we discovered it."
Obviously, there was also concern that members of the 1953 expeditions might not be around-for the fiftieth, in 2003. Expedition leader John Hunt is 83 and Edmund Hillary. 73.
On hand in the Khumbu in late March for a little pre-anniversary tete-a-tete (which < provided footage for a BBC g television programme for the » anniversary week) were ¦= surviving members of 1953 g expedition, including Lord Hunt, Sir Ed, George Bande, Michael Westmacotte, Charles Wylie and George Lowe.
After parties and receptions in Kathmandu, the members held a three day reunion camp at Lukla. On 2 April, Hillary and Hunt were feted by the Abbot of Tengboche Gumba, where they posed for TV against the Lhotse-Nuptse backdrop.
By 11 April, the septagenarians had departed Nepal, to turn up in late May in England for the real tamasha. The Royal Geographic Society, the Alpine Club and the Mount Everest Foundation teamed up
to organise a week-long series of slide shows, luncheons and conferences, one of which Queen Elizabeth II attended. Back in 1953, she had described the news of the success on Chomolongma, scooped by Times man (later woman — he changed sex), "as the best coronation present".
In their commemorative mood, the participants and organisers of the 40th anniversary celebrations preferred not to bring up the live issues of contemporary Himalayan climbing. Rather than vague denunciations of pollution and commercialisation of the Himalaya, which everyone knows of by now, it would have been more appropriate to use the occasion to debate the strategies of cleanup, mountaineering equity, and use of new equipment and techniques. Instead, all we got was a mushy retrospective.
Dipesh Risal
A Spiti Iconoclast
Thought we would go far from the madding crowd.
Thought so the madding crowd too. Thought Zanskar was a ´new discovered" land,
Thought so the madding crowd, too.
Z
anskar down. Ladakh down. Mustang Down. Manaslu down. Now it is Spiti´s turn to submit itself to the voracious Tourism Beast. Delhi-based activist Shubendu Kausik, who penned the verse on Zanskar. is determined to raise a stink on Spiti.
As the formerly ´closed´ valleys of the Himalaya are flung open to tourists, it seems that we are condemned to repeat mistakes endlessly. And how
pould it be otherwise, when officials from Tibet, Nepal, India and Bhutan have never met to compare notes?
Spiti is a valley bracketed between Kinnaur on one end and the Kunzam La and Lahaul on the other. The road from Shimla and Kinnaur traverses the valley and travels onward to Lahaul, Rohtang La, Manali and beyond. The Valley has a population of about ten thousand and five major gumbas. Unlike Ladakh and Zanskar, Spiti had remained relatively isolated because it fell within the Inner Line. However, the area was opened in the Summer of 1992, and the "mad rush" began.
Writing in ANLetter, a quarterly on Third World tourism from Bangalore, Kausik says, "The people of Spiti ought to prepare themselves for touri¬sm before things get out of hand. They must make sure that if tou¬rism is inevitable as it seems to be, its ill effects should be minimised, and its good effects (money, that is) should not be siphoned off by outside agencies."
Kaushik has taken it upon himself to study tourism´s impact on resources, lifestyles, economy and ecology of the valley. But he wants to do things differently: "I intend to collabo¬rate extensively with individuals and organisations that have the information, knowledge or expertise that I might need as I
go along, but I want to work essentially alone and in my own way, which is characterised by down-to-earth informality, by freedom from strict schedules and. quite importantly, a freedom from accountability to any organisation or individual."
Kaushik: "the funding source or sources will have to rely on my integrity, for I do not intend to have anything to do with accounts. All this might sound quite strange, even un¬reasonable, but that is how it is."
Grant-making agencies are rarely confronted with such audacity. But then, perhaps atypical proposals are what we need. To test his case, write to: S. Kaushik, C-404 Somvihar Apartments, R.K.Puram, New Delhi 110022.
Selling Gift Rhinos
The Kathmandu Post daily broke the story, but nobody else picked it up: more rhinoceros have been gifted and sold by the Nepali Government than have been poached between the years 1980 and 1992. So it turns out that while one hand of the Government goes about organising conservation and anti-poaching programmes, the other merrily goes about distributing rhinos.
Wildlife specialist Pralad Yonzon. who blew the whistle on the rhino scam, calculates that two rhinos a year have been exported during the two years of parliamentary democracy, "whereas the earlier average was 1.8". Asks Yonzon, who was recently inducted by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala into Nepal´s National Environment Council, "Why should Nepal take the contract to stock wild rhinos in zoos around the world, especially when the Chitwan rhino population is only 350 and the carrying capacity is 500 animals?"
The most recent deal-in-making is between the Nepali Government and the Stuttgart Zoo. which is said to have ordered´ a female rhino calf of 18 to 30 months age from the Royal Chitwan National Park. According to sources in Germany, some Nepali and German collaborators have designed this export to appear as the theme exhibit for the coming Nepal Festival being organised in Stuttgart in July, after which the calf will be moved to the city´s zoo.
If anyone was expecting CITES to stop Nepal´s lavish gift-giving, past experience has shown that this international treaty prohibiting trade in endangered species has not restrained the Government. And it has not always been alturistic gift-giving either — Kathmandu´s vernacular weeklies have reported
that the going rate for Nepali female rhinos in the past has been US 150,000 each.
So the question arises whether Nepal is exporting rhinos to spread the gene pool of an endangered species internationally, as is sometimes claimed, or whether it is simply the money involved.
German zoos already have two female rhinos
from Nepal, and there seems to be little need for Chitwan
to lose one more. As far as genetic enhancement is concerned, "Nepal´s rhino do not need any help," says Yonzon. The genetic vigour of the Chitwan rhinos
(measured in terms of "heterozygosity") is high compared to other wild species, he maintains.