Thailand and Southeast Asia Regional Office

Cultural Heritage and Development in Mongolia

Teach your children well

by Naurin Ahmad-Zaki

Surenguin is a 22-year-old Mongolian youth who earns his living as a saddle-maker. His father and his ancestors before him, have been in the business of saddle-making since centuries, handing down their skills and know-how of this ancient craft from one generation to the next. But in the earlier part of this century, their ancient family trade of saddle-making nearly became extinct within the span of a few decades due to the way the communist government, which ruled Mongolia for 70 years till 1990, ran the country’s economy.

Surenguin belongs to the largest segment of Mongolian society, the nomads, who make up 95 per cent of the rural population, retaining up to this day their original traditions and civilisation. However, the communist government brought about many changes in the traditions of the nomads, as in the case of the nomads‘ barter system, which is an integral part of their lifestyle. They replaced it with measures such as specialisation and labour-sharing in order to run the country on the lines of the communist ideology. Surenguin’s family was forced to give up the production of the whole saddle and instead, they were required to produce only the saddle frames of  the camel saddles. Gradually, over a period spanning from 1920 to 1990, individual members of the saddle-maker family forgot the craft of making saddles and the only skills they were able to hand down to their children were those of making saddle frames.

The other major setback this labour-sharing brought in its wake was the dependence on others (for example on those who were producing the other parts of the saddle). Thus these families had to give up their centuries-old habit of nomadism and were forced to live in communities, which made it possible for the state to control their whereabouts more easily.

Through these measures, the nomads became totally dependent on the state as their main source of income, although Mongolia is a scarcely populated country with ample natural resources for self-sufficiency. Thus, when the communist regime came to an end in March of 1990, and with it the collapse of the state infrastructure, the nomads without any existence of the government as a sure customer of their products felt helpless and faced a multitude of problems.

In the summer of 1997, a Tibetan lama, an academician, a Mongolian interpreter and a Mongolian lama travelled through 12 regions south, west and east of the country’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. The visit of a monk to these remote places was of great significance to the nomads, as it traditionally always had been. They travelled great distances to see the monk and to participate in the discussions on their social, economic and ecological problems. Since that visit, the nomads have started to feel that they are not entirely forgotten by the outside world and that their problems are taken seriously. In a way they felt that the ice had been broken and the prejudices and cynicism with which outsiders were usually treated by the nomads vanished to a great extent. Annual visits of this team to other remote areas are a welcome initiative and help greatly in improving the economic, moral and ecological well-being of the nomads.

After the collapse of the communist regime, a political and economic reform process took place in Mongolia, much similar to the one in Cambodia. Even despite facing very different circumstances, both countries are undergoing the freeing, yet painful experiences of the transformation from political suppression and a socialist, planned economy to political self-determination and a change-over to a market economy.

Elections took place after seventy years, and the several governments which have been in power since then are determined to bring Mongolia onto the road of progress. But along with political development and economic progress, Mongolia is in desperate need of a cultural identity, a cultural future, in order to be able to develop a stable base and the self-confidence required by any modern and young state integrated into the international community.

Since centuries, a religious and cultural exchange has taken place between Mongolia and Tibet. The Mongolians have made the Tibetan form of Buddhism their main religion. On the other hand, the tradition of the Dalai Lama as the spiritual head goes back to a Mongolian prince who lived in the 16th century and underlines the close links between the two countries. Till the beginning of the 20th century, many Mongolian scholars and artists were trained in Tibet and once they returned to their homeland, they spread their newly-acquired knowledge and art among their fellow countrymen.

However, at the beginning of the 1940s, this fruitful exchange came to a sudden halt. The Mongolian Buddhist  elite was killed when radical political changes took place and only a few were able to flee to Tibet. Many of these survivors followed the Dalai Lama into exile in Dharamsala, India. During the next decades, very few Mongolian Buddhist scholars were allowed to study in Dharamsala and only a handful of Tibetans were permitted to teach in Mongolian monasteries.

The real renewal of the Tibetan-Mongolian exchange came with the political change in the 1990s. Since then almost a hundred students have started their studies in India and almost a dozen Tibetan teachers have been sent to Mongolia for teaching purposes. In 1994, a school for Tibetan culture was opened in Ulaanbaatar.

All these measures, however, can still not replace the loss which the Mongolians faced in their culture and traditions during the long years of a totalitarian regime. The Tibetans, on the other hand, have managed to retain much of their culture and art, even in exile, with the establishment of institutions such as the Norbulingka Institute in Dharamsala. These cultural institutes in exile together with a group of Mongolian priests trained either in Tibet and/or in the Indian exile, are the only hope and source to bring back the old common traditions to Mongolia.

The Heinrich-Böll Foundation believes that one effective way of working towards this goal is to build up institutional structures for a Mongolian-Tibetan cultural exchange on the lines of the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (see story ``One Step Forward´´), since both countries have had similar experiences in coping with life after communism. The aim of the foundation is to provide a permanent office and permanent staff members in the Mongolian capital, which would serve as the new culmination point for the organisation of the Mongolian-Tibetan cultural exchange. This way, the already existing exchange could be further deepened and institutionalised and could thus reach the Mongolian public.

The main area of work for the institute would be in educating the traditionally religious and other elite, such as monks, nuns, teachers at universities and schools as multiplicators and natural community leaders. Other fields are the revival and teaching of marketing skills, of traditional skills, of traditional crafts as income-generating measures as well as giving advice concerning the social norms and values. As a result of the transformation process from planned economy to a free market economy, Mongolians are facing a multitude of related problems such as alcoholism, a high divorce rate and violence against women as well as an increase in criminal activities and in deserted children. Many of these problems could be overcome by Buddhist traditions and rituals. In order to fight alcoholism, people could be convinced  to take the Buddhist vows to refrain from drinking. Buddhist Sunday schools could be set up for children and young people to teach them how to take strength from their religion.

One other important area in which the institute could play a major role is in the socio-political education of large segments of society. Tseeliin, a 20-year-old Mongolian youth from a small town in Central Mongolia moved to Ulaanbaatar in the hope of improving his standard of living. Although he had been brought up in the traditionally Mongolian way – he even mastered the shudraga, a Mongolian three-stringed lute – he adopted a somewhat more western lifestyle once he arrived in the city. He is not alone in this desire to acquire a more ``worldly´´, i.e. a westernised way of life, which by many of his peers is seen as the key to modern life and success. Most young Mongolians regard their own culture and traditions as old-fashioned and a hindrance to progress.

An important contribution of the institute in this particular field is the organisation of such events which could make especially the younger generation understand the significant link and similarities between the principles of Buddhism and modern western values such as human rights, women’s rights, violence-free solutions to conflicts, tolerance, pluralism etc. The aim of these events in the shape  of lectures, seminars and workshops would be to show that these same so-called modern western values are an integral part of their own traditional society and of Buddhism.

Other than the youth of the country, another very important target group is the urban population, students, members of the business community and bureaucrats, because they are less rooted in traditions and often face graver problems than their rural co-citizens. Presently, the consciousness to share responsibility for common problems, to build up a network for social services and to reintegrate the ``losers´´ after the political change in the country hardly exists. This will probably only come with the realisation that many solutions can be found in peoples‘ own traditions, in their own nomadic roots and in their own religion.