Tibetans, the new Indians?

An interesting comparison of the plight of today's Tibetans and yesterday's Indians. Not only are they similar, but the author chose the Indian analogy precisely to make his point.

The last of the Tibetans

Their culture may survive only outside of China's sweeping modernization.Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to being little more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what was once a great culture? In Tibet

itself, that sad fate is looking more and more likely. And the Olympic year is already soured by the way the Chinese government is trying to suppress resistance to just that fate.Some Tibetan-Indian parallels:[I]nstead of reforming Tibetan society and culture, the Chinese communists wrecked it. Religion was crushed in the name of Marxist secularism. Monasteries and temples were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (often with the help of Tibetan Red Guards). Nomads were forced into concrete settlements. Tibetan arts were frozen into folkloric emblems of an officially promoted "minority culture." And the Dalai Lama and his entourage were forced to flee to India.And:The Chinese have exported their version of modern development to Tibet, not just in terms of architecture and infrastructure but people, wave after wave of them: businessmen from Sichuan, prostitutes from Hunan, technocrats from Beijing, party officials from Shanghai, shopkeepers from Yunnan. The majority of the people living today in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, are no longer Tibetan. Most people in rural areas are Tibetan, but their way of life is not likely to survive Chinese modernization any more than the ways of the Apaches did in the United States.

Because Chinese is the language of instruction at Tibetan schools and universities, anyone who wishes to be more than a poor peasant, beggar or seller of trinkets has to conform to it--that is to say, in a crucial way, become Chinese. Even the Tibetan intellectuals who want to study their own classical literature have to do so in Chinese translation. Meanwhile, Chinese and other foreign tourists dress up in traditional Tibetan dress to have souvenir pictures taken in front of the Dalai Lama's old palace.Comment:  For more on how modernization and globalization have affected indigenous cultures, see Globalization:  Exporting the American Way.

Below:  An Indian shows how to dress up in traditional (i.e., stereotypical) garb for tourists.