Why is religion important and why do we need it?
H.H. the Dalai Lama, a Tibetan spiritual leader and 1989 Nobel Peace Laureate, has said that all religious teachings carry important messages of love, compassion, forgiveness, and non-violence. All the major religions in this world have a great potential to generate and contribute peace and harmony at all levels: of the individual, the family, societal, national, and international. To have a peaceful world, we first need peace within ourselves at a personal level. This will have a ripple effect. For this, we need religion and moral ethics to guide us properly to find this peace within and outside ourselves. It is this important sacred potential of religions that we must uphold and promote for a better and peaceful world.
In a free and democratic nation, this religious freedom is respected and it complements social and national harmony. But a dictatorial and authoritarian regime, which wants to have complete control over people’s minds and bodies, sees religion as a threat to its authority, hence the religious repression. The very fact that they are against the religious teachings that are based on love, compassion, forgiveness, and non-violence, shows the evil and dangerous nature of such a regime.
Tibet’s experience past and present
It’s more than 70 years since China occupied Tibet militarily. Despite their propaganda and claims of emancipation, prosperity, development, and socialist paradise, Tibetans are still suffering under the repressive brutal communist regime. The violation of human rights, religious freedom, repression, and destruction of Tibetan identity, which has been going on since the early occupation in the 1950s, has now reached the climax. Today, the situation in Tibet is described by sentences such as “total information blackout,” “Tibet has become a police state,” “Tibetan plateau militarized,” and so on. The US Freedom House survey has described Tibet as the most repressed and inaccessible country in several consecutive annual reports.
When China failed to gain legitimacy to rule Tibet even after 70 years of occupation and indoctrination, the communist regime decided to eliminate the root of the Tibetan identity, i.e., Tibetan language, culture, and religion.
More than 6,000 monasteries and nunneries were destroyed and thousands of monks and nuns were forced to disrobe in the early years of occupation. But the situation has become worse since the coming of Xi Jinping in 2012. Today, monasteries, religious statues and artifacts, and schools are destroyed in broad daylight before the eyes of the public, and information on these atrocities comes out only after the destruction and despite of cover-up measures.
CCP’s propaganda and misinformation on “separatism”
China insists that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Administration in Exile are separatists and anti-China. But the truth is different. It is the Chinese communist leadership that is separatist and anti-China. Many Tibetans and Chinese lived and studied peacefully and harmoniously together in two large monastic complexes of Larung-gar and Yachen-gar in the Kham region in Eastern Tibet. There were students from South Korea, Taiwan, and other countries too. However, Chinese authorities saw this good relationship between Tibetans and Chinese along with others studying Buddhism together as dangerous.
They started destroying the two monasteries in 2001 and sent the Chinese and the Tibetan students to their respective places. Tibetan monks were not allowed to teach Buddhism to Chinese, and Chinese people were banned from receiving teachings from Tibetan masters. So, who is the real separatist? It is the CCP regime with its “divide and rule” policy that is the real separatist.
Many protested peacefully. Three nuns, Rinzin Dolma, Tsering Dolma, and Semgha committed suicide to protest the destructions and evictions. It was reported that monks and nuns were arrested and forced into indoctrination classes where they were coerced to wear Chinese military outfits, dance, and sing songs praising the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Emboldened China and broad daylight repression
The silence of the international community has emboldened China to commit these religious atrocities in broad daylight.
In December 2021, China dismantled a 99-foot Buddha statue and a 30-foot Maitreya statue and destroyed 45 large prayer wheels and a monastic school in the Drago region in the Kham province of Tibet. They dismantled a 45-foot statue of Guru Padmasambhava, an Indian saint who introduced Buddhism and was revered as the second Buddha in Tibet, in Nyimo Township.
But very little news or information comes out because of the communication restrictions, strict surveillance, and threat of torture. The world thinks Tibet is safe and at peace because there is no news on Tibet. But the truth is the opposite.
Making laws to justify religious repression
The CCP, although it does not believe in and respect religions, knows the power of religion. To have total control over the people in China and the occupied territories, the CCP is trying to make religion its handy tool. When repressions, indoctrination, and destruction of monasteries, churches, and mosques failed to destroy people’s faith in religions, the CCP leadership came up with laws, rules, and regulations to control religions and the religious understanding of the people.
Last year, China came up with Religious Order No.19, the Administrative Measures for Religious Activity Venues, to administer the places of worship in China and in its occupied regions. Through this regulation, China is trying to justify the CCP’s interference in religious matters with the people and to stop the international community’s criticism by saying that they are acting within the law.
Article 3 of the Order states, “Places of religious activity shall uphold the leadership of the CCP and the socialist system, and thoroughly implement Xi Jinping’s ideology of Socialism with Chinese characteristics for the New Era.”
Here China has openly made it clear that under this regulation all religious bodies must adopt “Xi Jinping’s ideology of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” in their religious teachings and practices. This is ridiculous and unacceptable! Communist ideology and Xi Jinping do not respect and believe in religion. So it is preposterous and sacrilegious on the part of the CCP leadership to dilute and profane the religious teachings for their political agenda.
China also announced a law on patriotic education last year. Articles 3 and 6 of the law say, “Patriotic education shall hold the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, persist in using Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thought of the ‘Three Represents’, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era as guidance…”
From this, it is very clear that the CCP’s patriotic education is nothing more than indoctrinating and forcing the obsolete communist ideology on the masses and making it a mandatory part of education and social life. By idolizing Mao and Deng, the law also tries to erase the dark memories and records of all the deaths and sufferings that Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and Deng’s Tiananmen Square massacre brought to China.
Forced and repeated use of “Xi Jinping Thought” here and there is aimed at imposing the worship and deification of the Chinese President. This is evident from the fact that Tibetans are forced to make offerings and do prostrations before pictures of Xi Jinping.
Control of religious leaders
As religious leaders are respected and revered, the CCP tries to exert its authority over the selection and appointment of religious leaders and teachers. China Buddhist Association (CBA), the highest religious body theoretically looking after the teachings of Buddha in the country, is strictly controlled by the CCP. Through this body, the CCP is trying to control the Buddhists not only in China but around the world.
Arjia Rinpoche, a prominent Tibetan-Mongolian reincarnate lama, when he came to know that he was going to be appointed the head of the CBA, as he writes in his book “Surviving the Dragon“, “could no longer ignore the conflict between government interests and my own religious vows. Rather than betray my faith, I chose to leave my hometown, my friends, and my beloved monks at Kumbum Monastery. I chose the path of exile.” He fled Tibet in 1998. His book has now become a testament to the atrocities the CCP has perpetrated and is perpetrating in Tibet since its occupation in 1950.
Buddhism is very popular in China and around the world and Tibetan reincarnated lamas and teachers are highly revered in the Buddhist world. The CCP through their Religious Order No.5 in 2007 has asserted its power to select and control the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhist masters. China is now aggressively spreading disinformation that it has historical and political rights to select the next Dalai Lama. This is wrong and completely false. The policy behind this is to produce religious leaders under the guise of reincarnation who will parrot the CCP’s dictates. The Chinese-selected 11th Panchen Lama is a typical example of this policy.
Of course, the same is happening with Christian, Muslim, and Taoist communities. The churches, mosques, and temples are all controlled by CCP cadres and the official heads of these religions are all selected and groomed to stick to the CCP version of religion and Xi Jinping’s ideology of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. This is very dangerous, and we must not let it continue.
