For The Sri Lankan Buddhist Sinhala Majority, A Visit From The Revered Dalai Lama Is Yearned For, But China Stands In The Way

The 70% plus Buddhist Sinhala population of Sri Lanka fervently want to welcome the 87 year-old Dalai Lama into their country at the earliest. A group of Sri Lankan Buddhist monks who met the Dalai Lama in Bodh Gaya in 2022 invited him to come. He is revered by his direct followers and other Buddhist sects as the 14^th reincarnation of the Buddha Avalokiteshvara. He was anointed at the age of 15 in 1950, the very year the Chinese took over Tibet.

The Sri Lankans have been trying to have the Dalai Lama visit since January 2023. They are trying once more now as fresh efforts intensify on the open invitation from the various Buddhist monasteries. Many Sri Lankan Buddhists feel the Dalai Lama can help to sort out the island nation’s economic woes with his wisdom and blessings.

Leading Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Dr Waskaduwe Mahindawansa went on TV to state that the Chinese had pressurised the Sri Lankan government to prevent the visit.

The Chinese, ever political and strategic, want the Sri Lankan Buddhists to team up with Gandharan Buddhists in Pakistan rather than the Indian orders opposed to the Chinese. And certainly, they do not want the Dalai Lama to visit and be honoured.

The impediment to a Sri Lankan visit comes every time by way of China, an outsize influence in Sri Lanka, a victim of its debt-trap diplomacy. China’s debt restructuring will play a crucial part in obtaining further soft loans from the IMF. This has tied the hands of the Sri Lankan government.

The Chinese still regard the elderly Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist, with massive influence, a living and highly popular symbol of resistance to the Chinese takeover of Tibet.

One of the thorny problems stretching beyond the present incumbent, is that the Buddhist monasteries in Tawang, Leh, and elsewhere in India, do not agree that the Dalai Lama’s successor can be chosen by the Chinese. The Buddhists everywhere are furious at the constant insults hurled by the Communist Chinese against the Dalai Lama, who do not recognise him as a spiritual leader at all, calling him a ‘wolf’ in monks robes.

 The internal facts in Tibet are quite damning. Since 1949, over 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed, over 6,000 monasteries destroyed, thousands of Tibetans imprisoned. The Tibetans are being relocated to dense city enclaves in Lhasa, their smart phones are monitored, and the Mandarin language is being pushed in place of the Tibetan.

With all this, and 74 years of effort including much infrastructure development and relocation of ethnic Han Chinese to Lhasa, the Chinese are still not the masters of Tibetan hearts and minds. Similar problems of non-acceptance of unbridled repression plague the Communist CCP in Xinkiang, Hong Kong, against dissidence of any kind in the country, and of course, Taiwan.

The Chinese authorities bristle at everything the Dalai Lama says and does, and are disturbed every time the Dalai Lama travels within India or internationally. Still, the Dalai Lama has been very successful at promoting the Tibetan cause. The Chinese don’t like the fact that the Dalai Lama is completely free in India. They objected strongly to the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Tawang Buddhist monastery and other parts of Arunachal Pradesh as a state guest in 2016.China, typically and audaciously, claims 90,000 sq. km of the state even today as ‘South Tibet’.

China is firmly opposed to the Nobel Laureate and international apostle of spiritual optimism. The fact that the young lama escaped to India that gave him sanctuary is a constant thorn in the flesh of the Chinese side. Even today, Tibetans in occupied Tibet are rarely given Chinese passports to travel. They are specifically discouraged from visiting the Dalai Lama in India, more so since 2012. There is also a ban extant on openly worshipping him.

China handed out brownie points to relatively smaller countries like South Africa, a part of BRICS when it was far more important and influential, for blocking a Dalai Lama visit in 2011.  

This was widely criticised internally.  The Lama was to go to Cape Town on the occasion of the 80^th birthday of fellow Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu at his invitation.

The Dalai Lama did visit South Africa to meet with Nelson Mandela in 1996. But he was prevented from doing so again before the 2010 World Cup. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in 2011, Hong Lei, laid out the unrelenting policy on the venerable monk when he said: ‘China’s position of opposing the Dalai Lama visiting any country with ties to China is clear and consistent’.

When the Dalai Lama met the Mexican president Felipe Calderon in 2011, China said it had ‘harmed Chinese-Mexican relations’. Likewise, Beijing was critical of President Barack Obama receiving the Dalai Lama in the White House in July 2011. However, Presidents Clinton and George W Bush also met the Dalai Lama ignoring Chinese protests. As did Angela Merkel of Germany, Nicholas Sarkozy of France and Gordon Brown of Britain.

Much was done to impact the careers of Hollywood stars like Richard Gere for backing Tibetan aspirations and regularly visiting McLeod Ganj.

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 on mule-back and on foot just ahead of the Chinese take-over of his Potala Palace in Lhasa. This followed a failed  Tibetan uprising against the Han Chinese occupation of Tibet. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in an admirable act of idealistic courage, allowed the young Dalai Lama and his small band of fellow monks/followers refuge at Dharamshala/McLeod Ganj, in what is now Himachal Pradesh. India signed a document recognising China’s take over of Tibet in 1954.

Yet, in hindsight, Nehru may have had to pay for harbouring the Dalai Lama, by way of the unprovoked Chinese invasion in NEFA in 1962. Of course, it wasn’t the only reason. However, it was a shock and humiliation that Nehru wasn’t able to survive for long.

Soon a nucleus of exiled Tibetans and enough monks to form a spiritual organisation grew around the Dalai Lama. More and more Indian and international devotees and admirers made the trip to McLeod Ganj as the time wore on. For the Tibetans trapped on the other side, in Chinese occupied Tibet, the Dalai Lama has remained a symbol of hope for ‘genuine autonomy’ instead of subjugation, over the years, from 1950.

A Tibetan government in exile formed in Mcleod Ganj, holds elections, and thrives to this day, frequently appearing to give its views on Indian TV. Its stated purpose is to one day see their way to a free Tibet or at least a truly ‘autonomous’ region.

Many of the Tibetans and their descendants have integrated into Indian society, marrying other communities, forming clusters and colonies in different parts of the hills and plains of India.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Force is a formidable military presence all along the LaC with China, and is being steadily expanded. By way of contrast, the Han Chinese have had great difficulty in motivating the natives of sparsely populated Tibet to work with them in any capacity, or help their efforts to man and defend the LaC with India.

Instead, the Chinese have been forced to use Han conscripts from the plains, ill-suited to the rare air and high altitude. Most, including the senior officers, fall sick, and have to be frequently replaced.

China puts out a different development narrative with impressive statistics. Tibet now has a prosperous economy with a GDP of $ 31 billion and a per capita income of $ 8,000. This is twice that of Sri Lanka and 4 times that of India they state. Life expectancy is now 72.19 years. There are 46,000 monks and nuns in over 1,700 monasteries in Tibet.

Critics say these statistics are fudged, and a debt-driven narrative. Most of all, there is no freedom of religion. The effort to nurture a phony Buddhist ethos is to legitimise Chinese efforts to name  a state-sponsored Dalai Lama successor.

 

 (1,330 words)

April 18^th, 2024

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee