A student catalogues the cremation of a man who self-immolated for his nation

by Adams Pryor

I first became interested in Tibet when I traveled to India in 2015 on the University of Arkansas’ Tibetans in Exile Today program. The study abroad trip, led by Geshe Thupten Dorjee and Professor Sidney Burris, takes about 15 American students to Tibetan exile communities in India. In the summer of 2017, I returned to India alone to work on an extensive photo project documenting two Tibetan exile communities. With the help of Geshe Dorjee, I lived at the remote Drepung Loseling monastery in southwestern India for over six weeks. I then traveled north to Dharamshala, the home of the Dalai Lama since 1959 and the heart of the Tibetan community in exile. While staying in Dharamshala, a Tibetan journalist told me that a young man named Tenzin Choeying had self-immolated in Varanasi, India, and his family planned to bring his body to Dharamshala for a cremation ceremony.

Self-immolation is the practice of setting oneself on fire with the intention of dying. Tibetan self-immolations are done to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet and to raise international awareness about the issue. To date, at least 150 Tibetans have died from self-immolation in Tibet or China and 10 have died in exile. In Tibet today, every aspect of life is under siege by Chinese authorities. Peaceful protests are often subdued with violence, political prisoners are arrested and detained in largely arbitrary fashions, the practice of Buddhism is greatly restricted, young Tibetan children can only speak Chinese in most schools, the Tibetan flag has been outlawed and it is even illegal to own a photograph of the Dalai Lama.

The practice of self-immolation is controversial among Tibetans. Most do not consider it to be suicide in the traditional sense but rather a sacrifice for the people of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has remained officially neutral on the issue and believes that it is a form of nonviolent protest. He has never publicly condemned self-immolation. I found it incredibly difficult to talk about self-immolation with many of the Tibetans I knew over the summer. People I considered to be close friends simply would not discuss the issue with me. For anyone who has not lost his country and been displaced, I think it is impossible to imagine the pain one would experience with an occupying force in one’s homeland.

I would estimate that over 300 people attended Tenzin Choeying’s cremation ceremony in Dharamshala. The crowd was made up exclusively of Tibetans except for two Indian police officers, one Indian journalist and myself. In attendance were several members of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, members of the Tibetan Youth Congress, several dozen monks and nuns and hundreds of laypeople who came to pay their respects to Tenzin. The Tibetan-language service looked very similar to a Western funeral. Several speakers spoke of Tenzin’s life and the sacrifice he made for Tibet. Overall, it was an incredibly private and somber event that I felt truly privileged to witness.