Potala Palace
ancient state printing house located below the Potala Palace destroyed
Under the guise of protection and preservation of Tibetan heritage, China has made significant efforts to control the Potala Palace, diminishing the Tibetan culture and altering the collective memoryscapes of its people. 1
1959 arrived. Late in the night of March 19, in the midst of unprecedented shelling of Lhasa, the Norbulingka and Potala Palace were turned into killing fields,silent witnesses to this earthshaking event in Tibetan history.A soldier from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who took part in“pacifying armed rebels in Tibet” recalls PLA’s 308th Artillery Regiment,which had been stationed for years at the foot of Bumpa Ri on the far bank of the Lhasa River, had long been targeting several howitzers at Potala Palace….” the Potala was almost robbed empty. 2
All over Tibet, printing presses and texts were broken up, burned, desecrated, and turned into waste. The ancient state printing house located below the Potala Palace, known for producing magnificent large sacred books, was destroyed3.
The Potala Palace is implicated in the academic and public conversations surrounding the portrayal of difficult history. The concept of difficult history refers to stories of oppression, violence, and trauma (Rose, 2016). In the case of Tibet, it is a subjugated history, where stories are told by the victors, silencing or marginalizing other voices, and there is intentional altering of material records at the hands of the Chinese government, resulting in a collective loss or “social forgetting.” 4
China’s measures to rule over Tibet entailed mass-scale physical destruction combined with policies aimed at erasing Tibetan culture, religion and ultimately its identity. “Since its occupation of Tibet, Beijing has destroyed over 6,000 monasteries and religious institutions.
The handful of monasteries that remain today – and many others renovated by Tibetans themselves – are used simply as tourist attractions and not serious spiritual centers.
Ancient scriptures, images and sculptures were destroyed, melted or sold in international art markets. In the early years of its occupation, Chinese used religious scriptures as shoe soles.
The physical torture and psychological traumas Tibetans experienced during interrogations and imprisonment and public struggle sessions were beyond human comprehension. Reportedly, about 1.2 million Tibetans died as a direct result of Chinese rule through executions, torture, hunger and in labor camps.
Yet, it is the destruction of the Tibetan psyche that has been most severe. The stealing of our homeland, attempts to eradicate our religion, and the creation of conflict and distrust among Tibetans have caused long-term damage to the Tibetan mentality and way of life.5
The monumentalization of the Potala with a state-led agenda of organized forgetting – the displays cultivate state-approved ‘memories’ that Tibetans should embrace, while preserving personal histories and possessions as ‘cultural relics’ outside of the Palace…This is a clear instance of the Chinese government imposing their perspectives on the narratives provided to tourists to Lhasa. It is evident the Chinese authorities do not feel any moral responsibility towards creating accurate and sensitive representations of a living history and culture. 6
Additional background.7
Jordan Vetter. 2020. Through the eyes of the Potala Palace: Difficult heritage and memory in Tibet. The iJounal 6:1 (Fall).
DECLINE OF POTALA PALACE , China Rights Forum. 2007.
Knuth R.J. (2004) China’s Destruction of the Libraries of Tibet. In: Raven J. (eds) Lost Libraries. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Rose, J. (2016). Defining difficult history: risks, reasons and tools. In Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites (pp. 1-24). Rowman & Littlefield.
Tibet Museum- Curator: Hortsang Jigme, former director of the Cultural and Research Center, Norbulingka Institute, Dharamshala.
Ibid. Vetter.
Melvyn C. Goldstein. 1999. The Snow Lion and the Dragon : China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama. Berkeley: University of California Press; Harris, C. (2012). The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet. University of Chicago Press; Harris, C. (2013). The Potala Palace: Remembering to Forget in Contemporary Tibet. South Asian Studies, 29(1), 61-75.and Carole McGranahan. 2010. Arrested Histories : Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War. E-Duke Books Scholarly Collection. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press Books.
If memory does not fail me, this is the equivalent of erasing the history, teachings, philosophy and existence of Greece in the West. Except that the same in Tibet was more important to the East than Greece has been to the West. Consider a Western World without Plato, Socrates, Hippocrates, Diogenes and hundreds of others. That is what China has accomplished in the East.