The Treasury of Lives

Rapga Tendzin Lhundrub Pangdatsang (rab dga' bstan 'dzin lhun 'grub spang mda' tshang) was born in 1902, the year of the water tiger. He was the son of Nyigyel Pangdatsang (nyi rgyal spang mda' tshang, d. 1921), a Khampa trader who built the Pangdatsang family into one of the great trading firms of early twentieth century Tibet, and his wife Nyi Karma (nyi kar ma), a member of the Drongmetsang (grong smad tshang) family of Markham (rmar khams). He had three brothers: Nyima (nyi ma, 1883-1940s), Lobzang Yampel (blo bzang yar 'phel, c.1900-1972/3) and Tobgyal (stobs rgyal, 1904-1972/3). Within the span of two generations, the Pangdatsang family accrued great wealth, power and influence for a time, rising to become one of the wealthiest families in all of Tibet such that there was a saying: "The earth is Pangda's, the sky is Pangda's" (sa spang mda' gnam spang mda').

While social status was still overwhelmingly ascribed via birth rather than acquired wealth, early twentieth century Tibet did see the formation of a new merchant class. National in category, this merchant class was dominated by trading families from Kham. Their financial power – and the important patronage of powerful religious and social figures in Lhasa – earned these families significant social status. By 1920 Rapga's father Nyigyel Pangdatsang was the leading Tibetan trader, with representatives in China and India as well as different regions of Tibet. The family rose from the new bourgeoisie to become aristocracy, with family members placed highly in the Tibetan government.

When Rapga was young he was given to childless relatives in the Markham area who raised him as their son. Technically therefore, he was an inheritor of this second family rather than the Pangdatsang family. However, although they were raised separately, the four brothers considered themselves members of one family and they were very close. When people spoke of the Pangdatsang family, they often spoke of "the three brothers" (bu gsum), referring to the three youngest.

The death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Tubten Gyatso (ta la'i bla ma 13 thub bstan rgya mtsho, 1876-1933) led to a power struggle in Lhasa during which the Kashag and the Assembly arrested and exiled Tubten Kunpel (P9124, kun 'phel, 1905-1963), the Dalai Lama's favorite, accusing him of complicity in various plots. Kunpel had had enormous influence and power and the Pangdatsang family had enjoyed a close relationship with both the Dalai Lama and Kunpel. When the news of Kunpel's arrest and exile reached Rapga and Tobgyal in Markham, they were also mistakenly informed that their brother Yampel was in trouble.

Tobgyal was not only head of the Pangdatsang territories in Markham, he was also a captain (ru dpon) in the Tibetan army. Under the impression that their brother had been arrested, he and Rapga decided to stage a rebellion. Tobgyal gathered five hundred private troops and attacked the government's regimental headquarters in Markham. Tobgyal and Rapga managed to capture a one hundred-troop regiment, one hundred rifles and three mountain guns. Then under threat of attack by a large Tibetan government force, they fled to Batang ('ba' thang) where they set up a base.

Some accounts state that the brothers' intention was to set up a separate Khampa state, while others, including British colonial accounts, stress that the rebellion was part of their general dissatisfaction with the status quo in Lhasa as well as anger at Kunpel's arrest. In Lhasa, Yampel was held financially responsible for the damages caused by his brothers and for the replacement of the guns and ammunition that his brothers had captured, but he escaped other consequences. Both Rapga and Tobgyal eventually reconciled their differences with the Tibetan government.

During the period from 1934 through the mid 1940s, Kham was the site for numerous political and military battles for control of territory, most small-scale involving some combination of local Tibetan troops, Communist troops, Guomindang troops and the troops of Liu Wenhui (劉文輝, 1895-1976), the governor of the Republican Chinese Xikang Province. These unsettled border disputes between Tibet, China, and British India served to reinforce the autonomous status and sentiment of many Khampa districts.

After the 1934 revolt by the Pangdatsang brothers, known also as Tobgyal's revolt, Rapga went to Sichuan to talk with Guomindang leaders there about the Tibetan state of affairs. Although officials there made promises to him, he secretly left for Nanjing where he had a meeting with the Guomindang general Chiang Kai-shek in 1935. One result of Rapga's trip to China was that he became employed by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Office in Nanjing. Disgusted with events in Lhasa, critical of British imperial rule in India, and sympathetic to the founder of the Chinese Republic, Sun Yat-sen, it is not surprising that he turned to the Guomindang for aid in his plan to transform Tibet.

Political rhetoric in China at the time included support for the self-determination of all nationalities; from Rapga's personal archives, it appears that he was confident that working with Guomindang would allow him to work to modernize Tibetan governance. In the late 1930s Rapga travelled to Kalimpong, a northeast Indian town that had long been a center of Tibetan commerce, where he met with Indian nationalists. He returned to China in 1938 via Tibet.

On his 1938 trip to China, he met with Chiang Kai-shek several times and was funded by him, both directly in cash and also with goods to sell such as silk brocades. He returned to Kalimpong in 1943.

Among historians, Rapga is primarily known for his activities in Kalimpong in the mid 1940s. He started the Tibet Improvement Party in Kalimpong in 1939, with the aristocratic poet Changlochen Kung Sonam Gyelpo (lcang lo can kung bsod nams rgyal po, b. 1898) and Kunpel, the former favorite of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who served as the secretaries of the party. Kunpel and Changlochen, who had both been arrested and exiled to Kongpo following the Thirteenth Dalai Lama's death, had fled to India in 1937. Gendun Chopel (dge 'dun chos 'phel 1903-1951), the brilliant and iconoclastic monk, was also associated with the party although he did not join it officially. Later when Gendun Chopel returned to Tibet via Bhutan and Mon Tawang, he made a map of the area, particularly of Tibet's boundaries at the MacMahon Line, that Rapga had asked him to make. Whether Gendun Chopel knew it or not, Rapga intended the map for the Guomindang's use. Back in Lhasa, the Tibetan government accused Gendun Chopel of working for both the Communists and the Guomindang and jailed him.

Based on the Guomindang model, Rapga envisioned his party as a first step towards modernizing the Tibetan government and society. But the Tibetan government abhorred the idea of an intellectual-led, popularly-subscribed party devoted to social and political reform. The British also found it objectionable. While Rapga had been devoted to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and was an ardent Tibetan nationalist, in British eyes, this was overshadowed by his affinity for Sun Yat-sen's philosophies and his political and financial links to Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang party.

In Kalimpong, Rapga had developed a close friendship with Tharchin Babu (mthar phyin ba bu, 1890-1986) the publisher of Tibet Mirror (yul chog so so'i gsar rgyur me long), the first Tibetan language newspaper, whose subscribers included the Dalai Lama. Rapga often visited Tharchin at the Tibet Mirror Press in Mackenzie Cottage or at his home on the ridge above Tenth Mile. In an interview with Heather Stoddard in 1975, Tharchin said of Rapga's party that the aim of the group was the unification of Tibet but that the Lhasa aristocrats misunderstood him, and accused him of working against the Tibetan government. The Tibetan Foreign Affairs Bureau in fact requested the Government of India to extradite Rapga to Tibet.  

Although he had not been secretive about his political party – the British allowed Indian political parties at the time – British colonial officials worked hard to find a reason to arrest him for his antagonistic efforts towards a "friendly government," meaning Tibet. Eventually the British deported him on an immigration technicality. Since Rapga had a Chinese passport, he couldn’t be deported to Tibet but the British deported him to China. Rapga was charged with routine violations of the Foreigners Act of 1940 and the Registration of Foreigners Act of 1939. This effectively disbanded the Tibet Improvement Party before it was able to effect any change.

Following his deportation from India, Rapga spent the late 1940s in China, living in Shanghai and Nanjing, working in the family business. He was very much a part of the Tibetan political and social worlds, meeting with Chinese and Tibetan leaders including Gyalo Thondup (rgya lo don grub,  b. 1928), the older brother of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tendzin Gyatso (bstan 'dzin rgya mtsho, b. 1935).  He also acted as unofficial advisor to Tibetan religious and political missions to China, including the Tibetan Trade Mission of 1948, headed by Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa (zhwa sgab pa dbang phyug bde ldan, 1908-1989) and including Yampel Pangdatsang as one of the three other delegates, which was en route to the United States and England. It was Rapga Pangdatsang who advised them to create the first Tibetan passports and to use their Tibetan passports, rather than accepting Chinese ones, for their travels.  

In 1949, distressed by Communist victory in China, Rapga returned to Kham to see if he could encourage Chinese officials to proceed slowly in Tibet. After briefly holding a minor post in Chamdo given to him by the Chinese Communist government, he left Tibet, for the last time, in the early 1950s. Back in Kalimpong, he was involved in initial plans for Tibetan resistance to the Chinese, offering the family's troops and a plan for the resistance to operate out of India's Northeast Frontier.

On August 25, 1962, Rapga was taking a stroll down Kalimpong's main street when he stopped in the popular Eng Son Shoe store to buy a pair of shoes. A young Tibetan came into the store, pulled a pistol from his clothes and fired. Luckily for Rapga, the man missed and instead hit the Chinese shopkeeper in her foot. The shooting was reported in the Calcutta and Darjeeling newspapers, and the September 8, 1962 edition of the Tibetan newspaper Rangwang Sarshog (rang dbang gsar shog) discussed the shooting in an editorial. Although articles published at the time imply that the culprit was unknown, several oral histories of the murder attempt include the names of the people involved. Rapga's family maintained that the person behind the assassination attempt was Gyalo Thondup, who had turned against the Pangdatsang family.

Following the shooting Rapga withdrew from public life, living out the rest of his life surrounded by books, friends and family, and running a modest transportation business covering the Kalimpong-Darjeeling route. He died in Kalimpong on February 26, 1976, at the age of seventy-four. He left behind a son named Sonam.