Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War

Tsering Shakya reviews "Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War"

The China Quarterly (2011)
Book Reviews

Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War.
Carole McGranahan.
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.
xviiii + 307 pp. £16.99.
ISBN 978-0-8223-4771-2

Book review by Prof. Tsering Shakya

TSERING SHAKYA is the author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows, A History of Tibet since 1947 (Penguin, 2000) and currently holds the Canadian research chair in religion and society in Asia at the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia.

The pervasive perception of Buddhism as a pacifist religion is one that Tibetans, at least among exiles, have appropriated in their global campaigns. It is embodied in the international image of the Dalai Lama, epitomized by the award of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. By contrast, Carole McGranahan's Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War tells the story of a war, waged against the People's Liberation Army by Tibetans from Kham, eastern Tibet, an area situated in present-day Sichuan province and the adjacent part of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Relatively autonomous, Kham has always occupied a middle ground between China and Central Tibet. Following1956 Communist land reforms, the Khampas revolted and later founded the resistance army named the Chushi Gangdrug or "Four Rivers Six Ranges," after their homeland. In the late 1950s, they secured aid and training from the CIA. It fought within Tibet until it followed the Dalai Lama into exile in 1959, and operated as a guerrilla unit from Mustang, Nepal. It was forced to disband in 1974.

To describe this operation, McGranahan borrows anthropologist Michael Tausig's term "public secret," referring to "something quietly and publicly known, but not ... made much of" (p.11). The "public secret" here is that Khampas were involved in armed rather than peaceful resistance and received covert funding from the CIA. According to McGranahan, these two facts present an awkward dilemma for the Tibetan diaspora, who have projected their struggle as non-violent. The book argues that the history of Khampa armed resistance has challenged the dominant narrative and that therefore,the history of this resistance, the people who fought in it, and the groups that led it have been marginalized by the Tibetan diaspora's discourse. The dominant narrative amongst Tibetans, she argues, privileges the view of the Lhasa elite (p.9), which is elevated into a national history. McGranahan sees her telling of "Khampa history" as giving voice to subaltern Khampas.

In chapter one, which explores the complexity of defining Tibet, McGranahan eschews the legal definition of Tibet as a territory under the jurisdiction of the Dalai Lama's government, preferring to describe it as a number of regions populated by Tibetan-speaking people (p.49). Here, McGranahan is confronted with the problem of dating PLA entry to Tibet and ends up using the awkward hyphenated phrase 1949-50. The PLA and the Chinese Communist Party are described as having first appeared in Kham in 1949, which implies the region was free of Chinese presence before that date, thus itself becoming part of a myth-creating process. The CCP presence in Kham goes back to the Long March in 1935, since when Party organizations had been established.

McGranahan is interested in what happened to participants of the revolt and concentrates on accounts of their lives after the main resistance camp in Mustang was shut down in 1974. McGranahan provides an excellent account, based on personal encounter, of old soldiers such as Baba Lekshey and Lobsang Tenley, who had gone on to eke out a meagre living in Kathmandu, and whose stories provide the author with the opportunity to examine what it means to be stateless. Here, the author perceptively notes that in exile, "Tibetan worlds both expanded and contracted" (p.63). New imaginings of Tibet and being Tibetan were made possible through the encounter with diversity that took place within the Tibetan exile population, but at the same time there was a process of homogenization and contraction in the diaspora experience. McGranahan argues that the dominant narrative of Tibetan identity and history relegated Khampa fighters to the "realm of personal history rather than that of national history" (p.179). In the annual diasporac calendar, events have been selected for creating national identity: 10 March, the date of the 1959 Lhasa uprising, is celebrated as "National Uprising Day," and marked by formal ceremonies in Tibetan exile communities. McGranahan contrasts this with 16 June, the founding date of Chushi Gangdrug, a day that is commemorated only by its remaining members (p.118). This, the author sees as confirmation of the lack of recognition from the Tibetan diaspora elite, describing the absence ofthe Dalai Lama and his government during the ceremony as "withdrawing the culturally meaningful frameworks that would validate the [event] with national significance" (p.115).

If the Khampa armed resistance does not coalesce comfortably with the image of Tibetans as peaceful Buddhists, the involvement of the US intelligence services is even more complicated. The author argues that as the Tibetan elite in exile came to realize the global reputation of CIA, they began to "distance" themselves, not only from the CIA but also from the Khampas (p.183).

Carole McGranahan's Arrested Histories is an important and refreshing treatment of the politics of memory and myth-making within the Tibetan diaspora. The author rightly identifies the constructive nature of national history, which entails finding a "correct" chronology and identifying events that are marked as national and enduring, while other events are "arrested" or glossed over in terms of historical importance.

Although the main thrust of this argument has much to recommend it, the marginalization of the Khampas is not the consequence of the military nature of the resistance, nor of the CIA's involvement. An important factor in the re-imagining of the Tibetan nation after 1959 was its regionalism, and the Chushi Gangdrug, which saw itself as a Khampa resistance group, was founded on basis of specific local ethnic identity. The group's failure to acknowledge and reconstitute itself within the national identity positioned itself out of the national narrative. It is also arguable whether the Khampa groups in exile can be regarded as a subaltern. The Chushi Gangdrug remains active in exile, occupying a key position in the diaspora politics, until recently seen as king-maker behind the scenes in Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan "government-in-exile."

Arrested Histories is a book about the attempt of the Tibetan diaspora to construct its global image and about those who played a crucial role in a history but remain relegated to its edges. The book should be of great interest not only to specialists in Tibetan studies but also to those working in the social sciences, as McGranahan skilfully interweaves ethnographic detail with discussions about memory, history and the construction of historical facts.