Dalai Lama and the China-India Conflict

Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the head monk of the Gelug Tibetan tradition, recently made a four-day detour to Tawang, Arunachal, as part of his preaching trip to Northeastern India. An official guest of the local government, he was invited to give several speeches regarding secular ethics and the principles of nonviolence. At least one thousand people travelled to Tawang just to catch a glimpse of him, and many faithful Buddhists flocked into monasteries with prayer flags in anticipation of his arrival. Pictures of the preparations spread across mainstream media in India and China.

On the surface, the four-day visit of a Tibetan monk to a tiny mountain town in India is nothing extraordinary, with little consequence to anyone but the devout villagers and the monk himself. Yet this recent trip has caused a political stir which sent shockwaves across Asia and deeply strained China-India relations in the last month, with Chinese officials commenting that the Indian government’s decision to let it happen had “damaged ties with China.” All throughout his trip, the Dalai Lama was closely followed by a band of Indo-Tibetan Border police, anxious to prevent possible attacks. It was not until he had safely returned to his abode in Dharamsala that everyone could breathe a temporary sigh of relief.

There are two distinct stories that combined to form the political significance of this visit. First, the Dalai Lama’s destination, Tawang, though fully administered by the Indian Arunachal Pradesh (state), is in fact part of disputed territory on the Sino-India border. The international community unanimously agrees that Arunachal Pradesh belongs to India after the withdrawal of Chinese troops in the 1962 Sino-India war; however, China still stakes its claim to the region, dubbed “Southern Tibet” by the CPC. The presence of any important figures in Arunachal have not been taken lightly by Beijing, as was seen when the U.S. Ambassador to India, Richard Verma, visited the area in 2016. From their perspective, all such visits, however apolitical, serves to further buttress Indian claims to Arunachal and threaten Beijing’s territorial rights. 

To further complicate matters, Tenzin Gyatso is not just any religious leader. As the successor of a long line of tulkus, the Lama is believed to be the reincarnation of Avalokiteśvara himself, one of the twenty-five bodhisattvas who had attained buddhahood. The large Tibetan Buddhist demographics in countries such as Mongolia, Siberia, Russia, India and even China worship him as a semi-deified figure, and a Harris Interactive survey in 2012 concluded that he was even more well-known and influential throughout the world than Vatican’s Pope Benedict. Aside from his religious influence however, Gyatso is also the face of the Tibetan diaspora movement to rally support for Tibetan independence from China. In fact, the Lama considers himself a refugee, having fled his homeland to avoid persecution by the Chinese government after the Riots of 1957, when Tibetans fought against the CPC’s “Seventeen Point Agreement for the Liberation of Tibet” (liberation being interpreted as communist deliverance from the ills of religious statehood, a.k.a subjugation to the CPC). In 1989, Gyatso received the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy of nonviolent resistance in Tibet, which further consolidated his role as both a model practitioner of the Buddha’s peace philosophy and an adamant spokesman for human rights in a militarized region.

China, of course, does not agree. It has, from time to time, branded Gyatso as a “deceptive actor,” a “betrayer of the Buddhist religion,” and his followers people who “don’t know right from wrong.” To mitigate secession calls in Tibet, the CPC has recently focused on building more dams, factories and mega infrastructure in the region, which would allegedly “alleviate the locals from poverty and agricultural dependency.” Yet, aside from the fact that most recent developments only benefit Chinese immigrants rather than Tibetan natives, Chinese intervention in Tibet can never be justified, as the aforementioned Seventeen Point agreement was signed under duress, rendering it null and void. Since then, the CPC has marginalized Tibetan language and culture by making Mandarin the only widely used language in the education system. Peaceful monks protesting against cultural genocide in Lhasa are frequently rounded up and beaten by police forces in bloody clampdowns that result in nearly a hundred deaths.

Although India has frequently expressed support for the Lama’s nonviolent calls for more autonomy in Tibet, it needs to step up its game in the face of threats from the CPC. Similarly, the international community needs to realize that simply praising Gyatso for his efforts does not change anything. Until human rights violations are stopped and Tibetans are returned the independence that is rightfully theirs, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in exile will not stop fighting. His followers should lend a helping hand.