Was very much attracted to Marxism: Dalai Lama

"I was very much attracted to the internationalism of Marxism. I wanted to join the Chinese Communist party, (but) today the Chinese Communist Party is without Communist ideology," he said in an interaction after delivering a lecture in memory of Buddhist scholar D D Kosambi.

The spiritual and temporal leader of Tibetan Buddhists, living in exile in India for decades, still does not find anything wrong about Marxism as an ideology. "As far as socio-economic theory is concerned, I am a Marxist," he said terming the present day Communism in China as "Capitalist Communism".

Maintaining that there was a time when Chinese Communists really worked for the needy, the Dalai Lama said, "The spirit of Marxism died in China, after the Chinese Communist Party started silencing both criticism and critics of people in power." He said although former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu was a Marxist, he enjoyed a "bourgeois" lifestyle. "Jyoti Basu, I knew him. His own lifestyle was more bourgeois," he said.