New Delhi, Feb 13 : China's coercive and violently assimilationist policies towards its religious and racial minorities are not unknown. Despite the regular condemnation that it receives from the international community and civil society regarding its egregious violations of human rights, China disregards all opposition and persists unabated on its path.

A glaring example of this is the unmitigated political, physical, cultural, and spiritual violence that the CCP metes out to the Tibetans. The Tibetans, many of them exiled from their native homeland, continue to struggle for autonomy as well as the freedom to live with dignity and practice their unique cultural traditions, and represent one of the most powerful forces against Chinese hegemonic aggression today.

After invading the Tibetan plateau in 1949, the CCP enacted complete annexation of the region in 1951, which till date is referred to by the Chinese government as ‘peaceful liberation from feudal serfdom’.

Thereafter, the subsequent decade was characterized by mass protests and uprisings by Tibetans, which were brutally suppressed by the Chinese regime, forcing the Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism, to flee Tibet in 1949 and seek asylum in neighboring India.

The Dalai Lama’s flight was followed by more than 80,000 Tibetans over the years, thereby constituting a significant population of Tibetans who are forced to live outside of Tibet.

The ones who live inside are subjected by the Chinese government to a host of policies aimed at erasing their culture, severing the next generation from the consciousness of a distinct Tibetan identity, and demographic engineering in order to marginalize the Tibetans further.

Often termed as ‘cultural genocide’ and ‘Sinicization’, these policies range from banning the Tibetan language in favour of Mandarin in schools and public institutions, to official interference in the religious practises of the Tibetans such as the determination of reincarnations of major spiritual leaders.

For the Tibetans, their form of Buddhism, i.e., Tibetan Buddhism, plays a profound and fundamental role in structuring the social, political, cultural, philosophical, and spiritual mores of their society.

So intertwined have the political and the religious been for the Tibetans that their highest spiritual leader also serves as the highest seat of political power.