Beijing fumes as Dalai Lama rules out China's role in choosing successor

As Delhi and Beijing seek to mend fences, Tibetan leader assigns full responsibility of choosing his successor to a trust based in India.

New Delhi: The Dalai Lama on Wednesday entrusted the full responsibility of selecting his reincarnation to a trust based in India – a move to counter Beijing’s bid to influence the process and to fizzle out the global movement against the occupation of Tibet by China.

Beijing, however, underlined that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama must have its approval.

Four days ahead of his 90th birthday, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, not only confirmed that the institution of the Dalai Lama would continue beyond his lifetime but also announced that no one else but the Gaden Phodrang Trust, which he had set up in India in 2011, would have the sole authority to recognise his future reincarnation. The move by the spiritual leader of the Tibetans came even as Beijing planned to make Gyaincain Norbu, whom it had declared ‘Panchen Lama’ in 1995 rejecting Dalai Lama’s choice Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, play a key role in selecting the 15th Dalai Lama, using the ‘Golden Urn’ process of lottery, with the approval from the government of China.

The Dalai Lama recalled his September 24, 2011, statement, which had stated that the responsibility of recognising his reincarnation would rest exclusively with the members of the Gaden Phodrang Foundation. “They should consult the various heads of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and the reliable oath-bound ‘Dharma Protectors’ linked inseparably to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas. They should accordingly carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition,” he said at the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh.

“I hereby reiterate that the Gaden Phodrang Trust has sole authority to recognise the future reincarnation; no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter,” he said at the inauguration of the Tibetan Religious Conference, attended by the senior monks of the different sects of Tibetan Buddhism. He had earlier said that his reincarnation would be born in the ‘free world’, not in Tibet under the occupation of China.

The Dalai Lama’s move to resist Beijing’s bid to control the process of selecting his reincarnation came at a time when India and China were trying to add momentum to the bilateral relations, which had nosedived during the more-than-four-year-long military stand-off along the disputed boundary between the two neighbours in eastern Ladakh.

China strongly reacted to the Dalai Lama’s statement on Wednesday. “The Chinese government implements a policy of freedom of religious belief, but there are regulations on religious affairs and methods for managing the reincarnation of Tibetan Living Buddhas,” Mao Ning, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of China, told journalists in Beijing, adding: “The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama and other great Buddhist figures must be chosen by drawing lots from a golden urn, and approved by the central government.” She was referring to a method introduced in the 18th century.

The spiritual leaders of the Gelug Pa school of Tibetan Buddhism have been known as the Dalai Lama since the 16th century. The successive Dalai Lamas, beginning from the 5th, have been both the spiritual and temporal leaders of Tibet since the 17th century.

The 14th 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.

He, however, had in 2011 transferred his temporal power to the Sikyong (earlier known as Kalon Tripa), the democratically elected leader of the Tibetan Government in Exile, formally known as the Central Tibetan Administration, which had been set up in Dharamshala after his escape to India, as a continuation of the government of the independent Tibet.

“His Holiness had, in the 1960s and 1970s, proposed that the institution of the Dalai Lama should be ended,” Samdhong Rinpoche, a senior monk and a key functionary of the Gaden Phodrang Foundation, told journalists in Dharamsala on Wednesday. “Today’s message (from His Holiness) is that the Dalai Lama institution will continue — that after the 14th Dalai Lama, there will be a 15th Dalai Lama, there will be a 16th Dalai Lama,” Rinpoche said shortly after the Dalai Lama read out his statement. He also clarified that the Dalai Lama was healthy and expected to live long, and would pass on instructions to guide the search for his reincarnation when the time would come.