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WORK TITLE: The Division of Heaven and Earth
WORK NOTES: trans by Matthew Akester
PSEUDONYM(S): Shogdung; Tagyal
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Tibetan
http://globalimportune.org/listing/tagyal-of-china/ * http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/division-heaven-earth/ * https://www.savetibet.org/tibetan-writer-tagyal-released-from-prison-on-bail/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and academic.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Shokdung is the pseudonym of Tagyal, one of Tibet’s leading intellectuals. After a wave of demonstrations in 2008 against Chinese policies in Tibet and expressions of Tibetan solidarity, Shokdung wrote The Division of Heaven and Earth: On Tibet’s Peaceful Revolution, published illegally in Tibet in 2010, an indictment of Chinese policies and analysis of the Tibetan protests. After publication of the book, he was arrested and imprisoned as part of China’s crackdown on Tibetan writers, artists, and educators. After about six months, he was released from prison on bail. His book has officially been banned yet thousands of copies began to circulate underground in Tibet.
The book has been translated into English by Matthew Akester, a translator of classical and modern literary Tibetan, based in the Himalayan region. In The Division of Heaven and Earth, Shokdung (meaning “wake-up call”) explores how the 2008 protests were a re-awakening of Tibetan national consciousness, solidarity, and national identity. He called the protests the peaceful revolution in the Year of the Earth Rat. The significance of the protests and Shokdung’s imprisonment are changing the political landscape in Tibet and eliciting a heavy handed response by Chinese authorities. His critique of China’s policies in Tibet are being compared to the 10th Panchen Lama’s famous “70,000-character Petition” addressed to Mao Zedong in 1962.
The irony of Shokdung’s situation is that he was once the darling of Beijing, after he wrote in the 1990s against Tibet’s deeply religious traditional culture, calling it a “tumor of ignorance.” However, in 2008, thousands of Tibetans took to the streets to protest Chinese occupation and to demand the return of the Dalai Lama. In response, China expelled journalists from Tibet, and the military attacked the protestors. After witnessing these events, Shokdung considered an appropriate response suited to their situation. He writes that Tibetans need to adopt a strategic philosophy with which to combat the Chinese, and after considering various Western options, he discarded them. He concluded that Gandhian principles would best suite Tibet, that non-violence can undo the violence of the Chinese. He discusses his fears about the future, and writes about Western political philosophy. He knows that Tibet cannot rely on the West siding with them, as western authors self-censor to gain favor from China.
According Kapil Komireddi in Spectator, “This remarkable book, written to fortify the Tibetan spirit against the assaults of colonialism, has already performed an important service by exposing the fragility of China’s hold on the Tibetan mind.” Komireddi added: “If Shokdung, an intellectual moulded by China’s ideological schools, can turn so abruptly hostile, what hope does Beijing have of controlling others?” Noting how his writing is clear, graceful, and in the analytical style of classic Buddhists texts, a Publishers Weekly contributor commented: “Shokdung’s lucid arguments and compelling appeal for peaceful political change will interest those following contemporary Tibet.”
Commenting on the Cold Noon Web site, Anjana Basu assessed the book and Shokdung’s writing: “Shokdung writes as Buddhist commentators have always written, drawing on Tibetan tradition as he talks about the peaceful revolution which will enable the Tibetans to be self reliant and combat the Chinese without calling on external help. His style is clear and his method analytical — again in the style of the commentators whose example he follows. Somehow fitting the mountains and the prayer flags.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, November 14, 2016, review of The Division of Heaven and Earth, p. 51.
Spectator, February 4, 2017, Kapil Komireddi, review of The Division of Heaven and Earth, p. 39.
ONLINE
Cold Noon, http://coldnoon.com/ (August 25, 2017), Anjana Basu, review of The Division of Heaven and Earth.
International Campaign for Tibet, https://www.savetibet.org/ (October 15, 2010), “Tibetan writer Tagyal released from prison on bail.”*
Tibetan writer Tagyal released from prison on bail
International Campaign For Tibet ON OCTOBER 15, 2010
Tragyal
Tragyal’s arrest is one of the most significant in the context of a broadening crackdown on Tibetan writers, artists and educators.
The well-known Tibetan writer Tagyal (pen name: Shogdung) has been released from prison under a form of probationary bail, apparently pending trial, and is now at home according to a report by his lawyer (High Peaks, Pure Earth).
Tagyal was detained on April 23, 2010 from his home in Xining following the publication of his now-banned book, ‘The Division of Heaven and Earth: On the Peaceful Revolution of the Earth Rat Year.’ The book is an indictment of Chinese policies in Tibet and a discussion of events since March, 2008, in which he described Tibet becoming “a place of terror” and gives a detailed analysis of the 2008 spring protests as a re-awakening of Tibetan national consciousness and solidarity. Tagyal’s arrest was one of the most significant in the context of a broadening crackdown on Tibetan writers, artists and educators since protests against the Chinese state began in March, 2008.
According to the Tibetan writer, Woeser, Tagyal’s lawyer Li Fangping confirmed that Tagyal was released from custody yesterday (October 14) and allowed to go home under qubao houshen (取保候审) terms. It is understood that this is pending trial, although details are unclear. Qubao houshen literally means “obtain a guarantor while pending trial” and can be described as non-custodial detention and as a form of probation, since conditions may be imposed on the movements and activities of the suspect, who can subsequently be jailed for violating the conditions. Typically, qubao houshen includes restrictions on who the person meets, whom they communicate with, and sometimes includes subjective standards imposed by police, such as people’s ‘attitude’ towards their alleged crimes.
Tagyal’s new and influential book, ‘The Division of Heaven and Earth’, is believed to be selling widely underground. He was apparently held in Xining No.1 Detention Center during his period of imprisonment. In August, news emerged that his trial on charges of “splittism” appeared to have been delayed (ICT report, Trial delayed for Tibetan writer imprisoned for critique of Chinese policies, expression of Tibetan identity). Tagyal’s detention was particularly significant because he is a well-established editor and an ‘official intellectual’ whose views have been seen by many Tibetans as close to the Party and the Chinese state.
The Division of Heaven and Earth
On Tibet’s Peaceful Revolution
Shokdung and Matthew Akester
‘A remarkable book by one of Tibet’s most important contemporary authors.’ — Richard Gere
Bibliographic Details
Paperback
December 2016 • £14.99
9781849046770 • 176pp
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Description
The Division of Heaven and Earth is one of the most influential and important books from Tibet in the modern era — a passionate indictment of Chinese policies and an eloquent analysis of protests that swept Tibet from March 2008 as a re-awakening of Tibetan national consciousness and solidarity.
Publication of the original Tibetan edition saw Shokdung (a pseudonym), one of Tibet’s leading intellectuals, imprisoned for nearly six months, and the book immediately banned. This English translation is being made available for the first time since copies began to circulate underground in Tibet.
Written in response to an unprecedented wave of bold demonstrations and expressions of Tibetan solidarity and national identity, Shokdung’s book is regarded as one of the most daring and wide-ranging critiques of China’s policies in Tibet since the 10th Panchen Lama’s famous ‘70,000-character Petition’ addressed to Mao Zedong in 1962.
Author
Tagyal, who uses the pen name Shokdung, is the author of several books and until his arrest in 2010 was employed by a Chinese publishing house.
Matthew Akester is a translator of classical and modern literary Tibetan, based in the Himalayan region. His translations include The Life of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, by Jamgon Kongtrul and Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule by Tubten Khetsun. He has worked as consultant for the Tibet Information Network, Human Rights Watch, the Tibet Heritage Fund, and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, among others.
Tagyal of China
Our Group’s Letters of Concern Helped Release Tagyal of China.
Tagyal is a Tibetan scholar and writer. He was held under suspicion of “inciting separatism.” He was at risk of torture and other ill-treatment, he had been denied visitors and that authorities closed down his family-run bookshop this past time he was arrested solely for his peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression.
Tagyal
Tagyal
He was believed to have been arrested because of a letter he wrote to express condolences to victims of the earthquake in Yushu in April 2010, which also criticized Chinese authorities for their handling of relief efforts.
The Global Importune letter signing group began sending letters of concern on behalf of Tagyal to officials in the government of China sometime around July 2010.
The national and international outcry helped secured the release of Tagyal on October 8, 2010.
Tragyal’s arrest is one of the most significant in the context of a broadening crackdown on Tibetan writers, artists and educators.
The well-known Tibetan writer Tagyal (pen name: Shogdung) has been released from prison under a form of probationary bail, apparently pending trial, and is now at home according to a report by his lawyer (High Peaks, Pure Earth).
Tagyal was detained on April 23, 2010 from his home in Xining following the publication of his now-banned book, ‘The Division of Heaven and Earth: On the Peaceful Revolution of the Earth Rat Year.’ The book is an indictment of Chinese policies in Tibet and a discussion of events since March, 2008, in which he described Tibet becoming “a place of terror” and gives a detailed analysis of the 2008 spring protests as a re-awakening of Tibetan national consciousness and solidarity. Tagyal’s arrest was one of the most significant in the context of a broadening crackdown on Tibetan writers, artists and educators since protests against the Chinese state began in March, 2008.
According to the Tibetan writer, Woeser, Tagyal’s lawyer Li Fangping confirmed that Tagyal was released from custody yesterday (October 14) and allowed to go home under qubao houshen (取保候审) terms. It is understood that this is pending trial, although details are unclear. Qubao houshen literally means “obtain a guarantor while pending trial” and can be described as non-custodial detention and as a form of probation, since conditions may be imposed on the movements and activities of the suspect, who can subsequently be jailed for violating the conditions. Typically, qubao houshen includes restrictions on who the person meets, whom they communicate with, and sometimes includes subjective standards imposed by police, such as people’s ‘attitude’ towards their alleged crimes.
Tagyal’s new and influential book, ‘The Division of Heaven and Earth’, is believed to be selling widely underground. He was apparently held in Xining No.1 Detention Center during his period of imprisonment. In August, news emerged that his trial on charges of “splittism” appeared to have been delayed (ICT report, Trial delayed for Tibetan writer imprisoned for critique of Chinese policies, expression of Tibetan identity). Tagyal’s detention was particularly significant because he is a well-established editor and an ‘official intellectual’ whose views have been seen by many Tibetans as close to the Party and the Chinese state.
Still giving peace a chance
Kapil Komireddi
Spectator. 333.9832 (Feb. 4, 2017): p39.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
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The Division of Heaven and Earth: On Tibet's Peaceful Revolution
by Shokdung, translated by Matthew Akester Hurst, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 176
Tibetans were once fabled warriors. Their empire, at the summit of its power in the eighth century, extended to northern India, western China and central Asia. The Arabs, making inroads into central Asia, were in awe of them. And China, according to an inscription commissioned to memorialise Tibet's conquest of the Tang Chinese capital of Changan in 763, 'shivered with fear' at their mention. But the Tibet annexed by Mao Zedong in the 20th century bore no trace of its imperial past.
When the People's Liberation Army struck in 1950, Tibet, having metamorphosed over a millennium into a reclusive hagiarchy, possessed neither the vocabulary to parley with the communists nor the strength to resist them. Its response to this worldly threat was to retreat into ritual. A 15-year-old boy called Tenzin Gyatso, identified some years before as the 14th Dalai Lama, was hastily confirmed as Tibet's supreme ruler. His delegation to Beijing the following year signed away Tibet's sovereignty without consulting him. What ensued was a protracted act of gratuitous savagery. Mao called it 'liberation'. Monasteries were razed, monks executed, thousands of nonviolent protesters massacred, and many thousands more detained, starved, tortured, uprooted and carted away to communes
to toil in conditions so severe that some resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. In 1959, the Dalai Lama, facing imminent capture, escaped to India.
At no point in their history, the influential Tibetan author Tragya, who publishes under the pen name Shokdung ('wake-up call'), writes in The Division of Heaven and Earth, were Tibetans made to endure such sustained misery. Swiftly banned by the Chinese Communist party when it was first published in Tibet in 2008, the book is now available for the first time in English. It is a haunting indictment of China's colonial project in Tibet, and if the charges contained in it are so bruising for Beijing, it is because the person making them was not long ago regarded by the CCP as a fellow traveller. Shokdung attained notoriety in the 1990s for his attacks on Tibet's religious 'tumour of ignorance'. Beijing immediately sought to co-opt him.
The uprising of 2008, when thousands of Tibetans streamed into the streets demanding an end to Chinese occupation and the return of the Dalai Lama, upended Shokdung's world. China expelled journalists from Tibet and set its military loose on the protesters. It was a bloodbath. Witnessing the crackdown with increasing self-revulsion from his office in a state-run publishing house, Shokdung arrived at the conclusion that what Tibetans lacked was not the will but a political philosophy suited to their conditions. Here, he advances Gandhi as the model for Tibetan resistance.
Shokdung makes a powerful case. But can Gandhi really save Tibet? George Orwell once disappointed pacifists by saying that Gandhian tactics of nonviolent non-cooperation would not have worked against the Soviet Union. The same is true of China. As Shokdung himself concedes, 'The British rulers of India had some degree of moral conscience'. Gandhi had tea with George V. The Dalai Lama had to flee Mao in heavy disguise.
Tibet today enjoys virtually no meaningful external support. The liberal assumption that the West was more likely to influence China by making concessions to its rulers has proved to be a self-wounding fantasy. Far from moulding China's behaviour, it is the West that has incrementally surrendered to Beijing. Today, western authors self-censor for the tawdry privilege of being published in China; Hollywood modifies its films to placate the CCP, and governments that never tire of puffing their chests at the Middle East's tinpot tyrannies abase themselves before Beijing.
China, emboldened by the display of deference, continues remorselessly to disfigure the hypnotically beautiful plateau. In official documents, Tibet, a source of prized minerals and hydrocarbons, is classified as 'Water Tower Number One'. More than 140 Tibetans have immolated their own bodies in protest at China's plunder of their natural resources. No government has the moral courage to mourn them.
Shokdung recognises the isolated position of Tibetans. His Gandhian prescription, whether it succeeds or not, has the merit of being self-reliant. Shokdung has been jailed for defying the CCP. His family continues to be harassed. Meanwhile, copies of his book circulate underground in Tibet. Tibet's overlords are evidently terrified. If Shokdung, an intellectual moulded by China's ideological schools, can turn so abruptly hostile, what hope does Beijing have of controlling others?
This remarkable book, written to fortify the Tibetan spirit against the assaults of colonialism, has already performed an important service by exposing the fragility of China's hold on the Tibetan mind.
Caption: A Tibetan woman prays at the Jokhang temple in Lhasa in September 2004 after one of many harsh crackdowns by the Chinese in Tibet
The Division of Heaven and Earth: On Tibet's Peaceful Revolution
Publishers Weekly. 263.46 (Nov. 14, 2016): p51.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Full Text:
The Division of Heaven and Earth: On Tibet's Peaceful Revolution
Shokdung, trans. from the Tibetan by Matthew Akester. Hurst, $19.95 trade paper (176p)
ISBN 978-1-84904-677-0
In this short book, written after the 2008 protests in.Tibet, Shokdung (the pen name ofTibetan intellectual Tagyal) responds with "joy, sorrow, and fear" to the renewed activism among his people and offers them a primer on civil disobedience and "nonviolent non-cooperation." Controversial for his previous works challenging Tibetans' deeply religious traditional culture, Shokdung writes that it was "truly gratifying to see the Tibetan people ... standing up for freedom and equality, rights, democracy and religious freedom." After exploring .with lyrical precision the significance of what he calls "the peaceful revolution in the Year of the Earth Rat," the Tibetan people's suffering under Chinese governance, and his fears about the future, Shokdung briefly discusses Western political philosophy and concludes with an introduction to Mahatma Gandhi's theory and practice of satyagraha, or truth-insistence (a form of nonviolent resistance), which Shokdung offers as a possible path forward. His writing, which draws on traditional Tibetan imagery and Mahayana concepts, is clear, graceful, and analytical in the style of classic Buddhist texts. First published in 2009, this book drew attention both in Tibet and in the West; its author was imprisoned in 2010 for almost six months. Shokdung's lucid arguments and compelling appeal for peaceful political change will interest those following contemporary Tibet and the emergence of democratic movements worldwide. (Jan.)
Tibetan Satyagraha: Division of Heaven and Earth
By: Anjana Basu
On: August 25, 2017
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Review: Division of Heaven and Earth: On Tibet’s Peaceful Revolution (Speaking Tiger)
Author: Shokdung. Translated by Matthew Akester
93
Lhasa. A train chugs into the station decanting tourists who gasp in the thin mountain air. The train is one of the triumphs of Chinese engineering, the highest railway in the world, designed to make Tibet more accessible. The heart of Lhasa however, the red Potala palace lies empty – its ruler the Dalai Lama is in India where he has been since 1959. Tibet’s second highest ranking monk, the Panchen Lama however, is in Chinese hands and is reportedly being groomed to succeed the Dalai Lama when the latter shuffles off his mortal coil. What this will do to the precarious balance of power in Tibet can only be conjectured.
This is where Shokdung’s book comes in with its vision of satyagraha amongst the snows — nonviolence thrown down as a gauntlet in the face of the red army and its invading masses.
Tibet was once a warlike power that made the medieval Chinese armies shiver. Its Bon saints reputedly herded tigers and guarded the roof of the world with the flames of faith. Today all that is reduced to the speed of a Sky Train and the throng of Chinese dialects that crowd the streets. Lhasa is losing its mystery and with it hope.
Shokdung’s theories of non-violent aggression forced the Chinese to ban The Division of Heaven and Earth after its publication in 2008. His was a lucid, penetrating voice, though Shokdung, or wake up call, was the name that the Tibetan author Tragya assumed to write his story of a hidden land that was suddenly over run by Mao Zedong’s forces in the 1950s and signed over by those who were supposed to guard Tibet’s spiritual ruler the Dalai Lama, then a 15 year old boy. The Dalai Lama was forced to abandon the Potala Palace for India while Tibet was crushed by the iron fist of the Chinese, with monasteries set on fire and monks dismembered.
This was a low in the history of Tibet. Where Tibetan warriors had once made the Chinese shiver in medieval times, now it was the Chinese in control cutting off all hopes of escape or salvation. Another low was hit in 2008, when Shokdung wrote his book.
2008 was a violent year — there were uprisings in Tibet and thousands marched demanding the return of the Dalai Lama. Shokdung watched the mayhem unfold from the state run publishing firm where he worked and decided that he could no longer side with his employers. Journalists were expelled, there was a media blackout and while the Chinese attempted to win Shokdung over, the writer came to certain conclusions about the situation unfolding in Tibet.
This vital work has recently been translated into English and the reasons for the ban are clear to the wider audience of historians and political students. Shokdung’s is an indictment of China’s Tibetan policy and a clarion call for change so that the division between heaven and earth can be settled, without more blood being shed.
His theory is that the Tibetans lack a strategic philosophy to combat the Chinese with. Turning to the various histories of conflict for a solution, after considering and discarding Western options, he reasons that Gandhian principles would be best suited to the Tibetan condition. Staying true he implies to the Buddha’s teachings by blunting the path of violence with non-violence.
Shokdung writes as Buddhist commentators have always written, drawing on Tibetan tradition as he talks about the peaceful revolution which will enable the Tibetans to be self reliant and combat the Chinese without calling on external help. His style is clear and his method analytical — again in the style of the commentators whose example he follows. Somehow fitting the mountains and the prayer flags.
The question is whether Gandhian tactics would work against the Chinese. There is no real answer to this — though George Orwell once famously commented that while the British Empire could be amenable to non violence, a communist state like the Soviets would never consider it. Orwell’s theory can possibly be applied to Maoist China. Shokdung wrote that the British rulers of India had some vestiges of conscience — George V invited the ‘naked fakir’ to tea. The Dalai Lama on the other hand was forced to flee in disguise while the Chinese were alarmed enough by The Division of Heaven and Earth to throw Shokdung into jail for six months in 2010 with no question of mild banter over pots of chai and sweet biscuits.
Currently the Tibetan cause seems to be under wraps. World opinion, barring entertaining the Dalai Lama has said little or nothing on the subject, despite some 140 self-immolations by monks. Perhaps there are greater causes to tackle, perhaps not. Tibet and its plight remain isolated from the rest of the world, to which it is linked by a Chinese railway that travels up to Lhasa for the benefit of tourists and with a second line from Chengdu being proposed.
All the reader has to set against this is Shokdung’s clear, analytical treatise. Whether the Gandhian philosophy has any merit can only be decided by history. However his book controversial or otherwise, his book remains one of the most important to come out of Tibet in the past eight years.
When the sky train was complete, Tibet was in the news, though not for any great reason. The world’s highest railway had suddenly put it on the traveller’s map; many felt that taking the train up from Beijing would help them acclimatize to the rarefied atmosphere, though that is far from being the case. Tibet’s high altitudes do not suit everyone.