China Now Trying To Usurp Tibetan medicine Even As India continues Promoting It
When the India’s Union Cabinet on November 20 approved setting up a national institute for Sowa-Rigpa in Leh, Ladakh., it angered the Chinese Government no end.
After forcefully capturing Tibet, now the Chinese are trying to usurp everything Tibetan and change history, culture, religion and other things too . In addition the Chinese have also occupied a large tract of India forming part of Union Territory of Ladhak.
No wonder a press statement was issued by a Chinese official stating “India set the Tibetan medicine institute in Ladakh on purpose, so that India could assimilate the region in order to merge Ladakh into India,”. This was said by one Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the institute of international relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
“India has been hyping its work on Tibetan medicine,” Hu said, adding that India wants to transfer its people’s attention away from economic decline by worsening China-India relations. How Hu has jumped from medicine to economic decline of India ( or is he talking about the actuals in China ? ) and then to relationship between the two countries is amazing and can be done by a Chinese only.
Reacting to illegal occupation of parts of Ladhak, the Chinese stated “This is illegal, null and void,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang said at that day’s press conference. “It will neither change the fact that the relevant region is under China’s actual control nor produce any effect.”
To counter India, now Chinese have quickly set up a university for Tibetan medicine, the school in Lhasa. This School in Tibet is now claiming to have maintained 7,000 items on Tibet medicine. The university is claiming six key national-level labs and provides seven undergraduate courses, according to the website of the university. The university has even sent experts to promote Tibetan medicine in 24 countries around the world……incidentally a major chunk of Tibetans waiting for their freedom are living in India and Nepal. The Chinese officials are also claiming that the development and achievements of Tibetan Traditional Medical University is going along with the process of developing Tibetan medicine in the region. Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa in Tibetan) as per them is over 2,000 years old.
Tibetan medicine was developed on the Tibet Plateau once it came from India . In the past thousand of years it has prospered in Tibet . Whereas Chinese claim that with public policy support this medicine system has bloomed only after the Chinese occupation of Tibet .Chinese claim that Tibet now has 94 Tibetan medicine public hospitals, a monastery hospital and five higher education institutes for maintaining talent . China is also attemting to give tax breaks and other concessions to those ready to manufacture Tibetan medicine .
In November 2018, UNESCO inscribed Tibet’s Lum medicinal bathing of Tibetan medicine, or Sowa Rigpa, a part of Tibetan medicine, on the representative list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Even India has been seeking to recognize Tibetan medicine as part of its intangible cultural heritage as it was exported along with Budhhism. It has approved establishment of an institute in Ladhak region bordering Tibet.
Tibetan medicine originally came to Tibet from India and developed both in Ladhak and on the Tibet Plateau, which evolved with local people’s production and daily life and finally developed into a comprehensive Tibetan medical system. It is being practiced in Leh, Dharamshala and even in Sikkim and Arunachal.
Tibetan medicine lacked support from recorded experimental data, which has been a barrier for it to work with modern medicine. People think that as Tibetan medicine uses minerals, so it is toxic, but minerals are just the ingredients. There is also the process to remove the toxin inside. Now the Leh institute is working on collecting experimental data and safely evaluating Tibetan medicine . It will also work to standardize Tibetan medicine.
India too has rightky approached UNESCO, seeking the enlisting of the Sowa Rigpa as its intangible cultural heritage. India is strongly pushing the UNESCO application. The Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Homoeopathy, has closely worked with the Ministry of External Affairs on the issue, according to PTI.
