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The Snow Lion and the Dragon:
Tibet-China Relations continues .....
Tibet, a high-altitude plateau with a short growing season for crops, has naturally never been in a position to produce enough food to support a large population. Therefore, it had always been an area with a low population, kept low by other causes also, such as poor health-care availability.
In order to prevent over-population, a major socio-economic response that had evolved over time, along with the spread of Buddhism since the 6th century CE, had been the institution of keeping large numbers of the potential reproductive-age population celibate. This was achieved by making them monks or nuns, and thus taking them out of the reproductive population.
This system developed along with the establishment of the monastery system, and the political economy that developed simultaneously which required everyone to donate in cash or kind to these monasteries, either directly or through their local monasteries.
The development of this political economy resulted in riches getting accumulated in the monasteries, and the eventual creation of a system in Central Tibet whereby political and financial power was in the hands of just two sets of people. These were the heads of the largest and most influential monasteries, and the feudal landlords with vast estates, which were run by bonded labour who were often practically slaves. Political power too, reflected this reality.
Even when temporal power in Tibet was formally given by the militarily all powerful Mongols to the Dalai Lama, the functions of government were generally handled by having two heads or Ministers for every department, one a monk and the other a feudal aristocrat.
Any decision therefore automatically had to take care of the political and financial interests of both these two pressure groups. Very often, both groups were loth to spend money on items such as a national army, since it would invariably have meant having to give more money from their own resources to the central government in Lhasa. Expenditure on defence is, of course, almost an age-old problem, and even the debates in India in the period 1947-1962 can be seen in this light.
To be continued......