Editing Gendun Chompel (section)

== Biography ==

Gendün Chömpel (GC) was born, on the now-standard scholarly dating, on 14 August 1903 in Amdo; his father, A ''lags rgyal po'', was an incarnate lama and tantric practitioner of the Nyingma sect, and GC's own birth was accompanied by a prophecy that a recently deceased Nyingma lama would be reborn as the son of GC's parents.<ref>Lopez, Donald S., Jr. (2006). ''The Madman's Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel''. University of Chicago Press, p. 31.</ref> (Heather Stoddard's own research dates his birth to 1905, a minor discrepancy this article does not attempt to resolve.)<ref>Stoddard, Heather Marie (2011). "Gedun Chopel, 20th Century Tibet's Finest Writer". ''The Newsletter'' (International Institute for Asian Studies), no. 56, pp. 30–31, at p. 31 n.2.</ref> He entered monastic life at Drepung's Gomang College, joining Klu 'bum House, where he studied under [[Geshe Sherab Gyatso]]; the two men's famous public shouting matches there became the origin of GC's later "madman" epithet.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', pp. 297, 318.</ref>

In 1934, at Labrang monastery, GC met the Indian scholar Rahul Sankrityayan, a Sanskritist and independence-movement figure who, following a six-month British prison term, had become a member of the Indian Communist Party and a founder of the All India Kisan Sabha peasant movement; Sankrityayan invited GC to join his manuscript-hunting expedition, first to Nepal and then India, beginning a twelve-year stay abroad.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', p. 39.</ref> During these years GC read exceptionally widely, including Kant, Marx, Hitler, and Spinoza, Sufi poetry, and material on Judaism, Zen, Shintoism, and modern science, and became both the first modern Tibetan cartographer and the first Tibetan scholar to read the Dunhuang manuscripts.<ref>Stoddard, Heather (1986). "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism". ''Government and Opposition'' 21, no. 1, p. 94.</ref> A Hindi-language observer who knew him in 1938 recalled him as a man wholly devoted to the radical transformation of Tibetan society, yet frustrated at facing the combined weight of Tibet's religious establishment largely alone.<ref>Stoddard (1986), "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism", p. 94, quoting Phēnī Moukherjī, "Rāhuljī kē sāth Tibbat kē abhiyān mem", ''Sarasvatī'' (July 1964), p. 64.</ref>

In this same period GC moved in the Kalimpong circle around the Tibet Improvement Party, personally designing its emblem of a sickle, sword, and loom, though his own formal membership in the party remains unconfirmed and no other overtly political writings of his have surfaced beyond his own travel-journal prose.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', pp. 73–74.</ref> That travel journal, probably composed around 1940–41, contains GC's richest surviving first-person political writing: a visceral account of the Atlantic slave trade and a blunt verdict on British colonial rule in India, concluding that "the marvelous land of India appears to be filled with hungry ghosts."<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', pp. 41–42.</ref> Lopez reads this material as expressing a clear sense of solidarity with the colonized peoples of "the East and the South" generally, alongside GC's own admiration for specific British reforms and for European scientific knowledge.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', p. 42.</ref>

GC returned to Lhasa and was arrested in 1946, officially on a counterfeiting charge that is now understood to have been fabricated; contemporaries and later biographers have proposed a range of true motives, including his Tibet Improvement Party associations, suspected espionage for Russia, the Kuomintang, or a Fascist power, his own philosophical views, or personal embarrassment caused to a government minister, with recent Tibetan biographers increasingly implicating the British trade representative Hugh Richardson.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', p. 77.</ref> He was first held at the Lhasa courthouse jail, where he was given some fifty lashes under interrogation, before being transferred to Zhol prison at the base of the Potala, where he was permitted to continue writing. His in-progress history of Tibet, recorded on cigarette-wrapper notes, vanished along with his personal papers and was never recovered.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', p. 77.</ref> A hostile secondhand account relayed decades later by the Tibetan government minister Surkhang attributes to GC, around the time of his arrest, a wish to bring about a "French-style Revolution" and to behead the Tibetan nobility; this characterization should be read as Surkhang's own hostile framing rather than as GC's own recorded words.<ref>Stoddard (2011), "Gedun Chopel, 20th Century Tibet's Finest Writer", p. 30.</ref>

GC was released from prison in 1949 and placed under city arrest, being appointed government historiographer resident at the Jokhang temple.<ref>Stoddard (1986), "Tibet from Buddhism to Communism", p. 95.</ref> He died in Lhasa at 4 p.m. on 12, 14, or 15 October 1951 (sources disagree on the exact day), aged 48, apparently of complications of advanced cirrhosis of the liver, three weeks after Chinese People's Liberation Army troops entered the city on 9 September 1951; his body was cremated three days later.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', pp. 79–80.</ref> A 1989 tribute published in the PRC's own academic journal ''Tibet Studies'', written by GC's close friend Hor-khang bsod-nams dpal-'bar, describes him as a patriot who "consistently considered that Tibet was the inalienable territory of China"; Lopez himself judges that the author was likely compelled by his editors to include this characterization, and this article follows Lopez's skepticism in treating it as a contested, state-inflected posthumous framing rather than reliable evidence of GC's own views.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', p. 30.</ref> GC's own former teacher, Geshe Sherab Gyatso, later wrote one of two lengthy contemporary refutations of GC's final philosophical work, a 246-page response Lopez characterizes as patronizing in tone but markedly less harsh than the other main refutation.<ref>Lopez (2006), ''Madman's Middle Way'', pp. 297–299.</ref>