On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet: The Nyemo Incident of 1969

by Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, Tanzen Lhundrup

Among the conflicts to break out during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, the most famous took place in the summer of 1969 in Nyemo, a county to the south and west of Lhasa. In this incident, hundreds of villagers formed a mob led by a young nun who was said to be possessed by a deity associated with the famous warrior-king Gesar. In their rampage the mob attacked, mutilated, and killed county officials and local villagers as well as People's Liberation Army troops. This groundbreaking book, the first on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, revisits the Nyemo Incident, which has long been romanticized as the epitome of Tibetan nationalist resistance against China. Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, and Tanzen Lhundrup demonstrate that far from being a spontaneous battle for independence, this violent event was actually part of a struggle between rival revolutionary groups and was not ethnically based. On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet proffers a sober assessment of human malleability and challenges the tendency to view every sign of unrest in Tibet in ethno-nationalist terms.

Genres: History, Buddhism

264 pages, Hardcover

First published December 6, 2008

About the author

Melvyn C. Goldstein is John Reynolds Harkness Professor of Anthropology and Codirector of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Reviews

[P C]

I'm not a fan of the continual framing of bhoepas as either "pawns" or agents in our own demise, all of which are consistent across his works.

Read for the primary source material, if nothing else - there's a lot to draw on.

[Jeff Rigsby]

"By late 1968, the violent fighting between revolutionary factions that had devastated inland China during the Cultural Revolution was winding down.

"In Tibet, however, this conflict continued, and during the summer of 1969, bloody violence erupted in roughly a quarter of the rural counties. The most famous of these incidents took place in Nyemo, on 13-14 June 1969.

"Hundreds of Tibetan villagers led by Trinley Chodron, a young nun who believed gods were possessing and speaking through her, launched a series of bloody attacks against local officials and the troops of the People's Liberation Army stationed there. According to Chinese records, this force killed fifteen PLA soldiers, seven cadres, and thirty-two grassroots officials and activists. In addition, during a two-week period before and after the attacks, more than twenty local Tibetans had their arms and legs hacked off by the nun's followers..."

The first comprehensive study of perhaps the strangest event in modern Tibetan history—which is already strange enough