Modi’s greeting to Dalai Lama likely to rile up China

The Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India after fleeing China in 1959

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday called the 14th Dalai Lama to greet him on his 87th birthday and later tweeted praying for his long life, thus tacitly sending out a message to President Xi Jinping’s regime in Beijing.

As the Tibetan Government in Exile (TGiE) held an event to celebrate the birthday of the Dalai Lama at its headquarters in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, the Chief Minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s government in the state, Jai Ram Thakur, joined it virtually and lauded the monk for his life-long commitment to promoting compassion and non-violence. The celebrity actor Richard Gere from Hollywood was also present at the ceremony, which was led by the Sikyong (President) of the TGiE, Penpa Tsering.

“Conveyed 87th birthday greetings to His Holiness the @DalaiLama over phone earlier today. We pray for his long life and good health,” Modi tweeted on Wednesday.

Meenakshi Lekhi, the Minister of State for External Affairs, represented the Government of India at another event held in New Delhi on the occasion of the birthday of the Tibetan Buddhist monk.

The involvement of India’s government officials in the celebration of the birthday of the Dalai Lama is likely to rile up China.

This is the second year the prime minister went public about his call to the global icon of the protest against China’s rule over Tibet on his birthday. New Delhi started it last year, apparently to send a message to Beijing after the military stand-off between India and China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) brought the relations between the two nations to a new low.

The Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India following his 1959 escape from Tibet, which had been occupied by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1950-51.

The monk, a staunch advocate for non-violence and freedom, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He has been arguing for “genuine autonomy” – not independence from the Chinese Government’s rule – for Tibet.

Beijing, however, still calls him a “separatist” and accuses him of running a campaign to split China. His meeting with the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in August 2010 or his visit to Rashtrapati Bhavan on an invitation from the then President Pranab Mukherjee in December 2016 triggered strong protests from China.

So did New Delhi’s decisions in 2009 and 2017 to allow him to visit Arunachal Pradesh, where China claims nearly 90000 sq kms of the territory of India to be its own.

Modi, however, did not have any public contact or engagement with the Dalai Lama till last year, ostensibly to avoid hurting the sensitivity of China. He did not change the policy of maintaining distance from the Dalai Lama and refrained from publicly wishing the octogenarian on his birthday on July 6, 2020, even though New Delhi’s relations with Beijing nosedived after the June 15, 2020 clash between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army along the LAC in Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh.

The last public engagement between the two had taken place in January 2010, when Modi had been heading the Gujarat Government as the Chief Minister.