Tibet was a feudal society before the revolutionary changes that started in 1949. There were two main classes: the serfs and the aristocratic serf owners. The people lived like serfs in Europe’s “Dark Ages,” or like African slaves and sharecroppers of the U.S. South.
Tibetan serfs scratched barley harvest from the hard earth with wooden plows and sickles. Goats, sheep and yaks were raised for milk, butter, cheese and meat. The aristocratic and monastery masters owned the people, the land and most of the animals. They forced the serfs to hand over most grain and demanded all kinds of forced labor (called ulag). Among the serfs, both men and women participated in hard labor, including ulag. The scattered nomadic peoples of Tibet’s barren western highlands were also owned by lords and lamas.
The Dalai Lama’s older brother Thubten Jigme Norbu claims that in the lamaist social order, “There is no class system and the mobility from class to class makes any class prejudice impossible.” But the whole existence of this religious order was based on a rigid and brutal class system.
Serfs were treated like despised “inferiors”–the way Black people were treated in the Jim Crow South. Serfs could not use the same seats, vocabulary or eating utensils as serf owners. Even touching one of the master’s belongings could be punished by whipping. The masters and serfs were so distant from each other that in much of Tibet they spoke different languages.
It was the custom for a serf to kneel on all fours so his master could step on his back to mount a horse. Tibet scholar A. Tom Grunfeld describes how one ruling class girl routinely had servants carry her up and down stairs just because she was lazy. Masters often rode on their serfs’ backs across streams.
The only thing worse than a serf in Tibet was a “chattel slave,” who had no right to even grow a few crops for themselves. These slaves were often starved, beaten and worked to death. A master could turn a serf into a slave any time he wanted. Children were routinely bought and sold in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa. About 5 percent of the Tibetan people were counted as chattel slaves. And at least another 10 percent were poor monks who were really “slaves in robes.”
The lamaist system tried to prevent any escape. Runaway slaves couldn’t just set up free farms in the vast empty lands. Former serfs explained to revolutionary writer Anna Louise Strong that before liberation, “You could not live in Tibet without a master. Anyone might pick you up as an outlaw unless you had a legal owner.”
Born Female–Proof of Past Sins?
The Dalai Lama writes, “In Tibet there was no special discrimination against women.” The Dalai Lama’s authorized biographer Robert Hicks argues that Tibetan women were content with their status and “influenced their husbands.” But in Tibet, being born a woman was considered a punishment for “impious” (sinful) behavior in a previous life. The word for “woman” in old Tibet, kiemen, meant “inferior birth.” Women were told to pray, “May I reject a feminine body and be reborn a male one.”
Lamaist superstition associated women with evil and sin. It was said “among ten women you’ll find nine devils.” Anything women touched was considered tainted–so all kinds of taboos were placed on women. Women were forbidden to handle medicine. Han Suyin reports, “No woman was allowed to touch a lama’s belongings, nor could she raise a wall, or ‘the wall will fall.’… A widow was a despicable being, already a devil. No woman was allowed to use iron instruments or touch iron. Religion forbade her to lift her eyes above the knee of a man, as serfs and slaves were not allowed to life the eyes upon the face of the nobles or great lamas.”
Monks of the major sects of Tibetan Buddhism rejected sexual intimacy (or even contact) with women, as part of their plan to be holy. Before the revolution, no woman had ever set foot in most monasteries or the palaces of the Dalai Lama.
There are reports of women being burned for giving birth to twins and for practicing the pre-Buddhist traditional religion (called Bon). Twins were considered proof that a woman had mated with an evil spirit. The rituals and folk medicine of Bon were considered “witchcraft.” Like in other feudal societies, upperclass women were sold into arranged marriages. Custom allowed a husband to cut off the tip of his wife’s nose if he discovered she had slept with someone else. The patriarchal practices included polygyny, where a wealthy man could have many wives; and polyandry, where in land-poor noble families one woman was forced to be wife to several brothers.
Among the lower classes, family life was similar to slavery in the U.S. South. (See The Life of a Tibetan Slave.) Serfs could not marry or leave the estate without the master’s permission. Masters transferred serfs from one estate to another at will, breaking up serf families forever. Rape of women serfs was common–under the ulag system, a lord could demand “temporary wives.”"
