The Dalai Lama exiting the White House, after meeting President Obama, Feb 19, 2010. He was ushered out of the back door, “ where a mound of trash awaited him”, reported Christian Science Monitor. That sums up how, despite his announcements, as in March 2011, of retirement from politics, he was always used by hegemonists, through back-door methods: Now 89, he was taken all the way to USA, in June 2024, ostensibly for knee surgery, only an alibi. He returned with A Resolve Tibet Act signed by Biden.
USA and India are playing the so-called “Tibet card”, for their own strategic purposes. They use Dalai Lama as a pawn and instigate many things for that. His so-called “re-incarnation in a free country”, i.e., outside China, has been part of their games. The Lama released a book this March hinting at re-incarnation soon! This article, in two parts, seeks to briefly report the related and recent developments, including the latest meet on Tibet in Tokyo (June2-4), where they indulged in brazen interference. They raked up again, Tibet’s “self-determination”: In fact that was imperiled for over a century by the imperialists, and not by “communist China” (PRC), as painted by many authors and the media serving the imperialists, knowingly or otherwise. It concludes with how China is indeed practising the principle of “self-determination,” a question also raised by some people with genuine concerns.
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Dalai lama’s formal “retirement from politics”, talks with China
In Jan 2010, a delegation of Dalai Lama had visited China for talks. The talks were preceded by an Appeal he made on March 28, 2008: “Chinese brothers and sisters, I assure you I have no desire to seek Tibet’s separation. Nor do I have any wish to drive a wedge between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples.”
That was soon after some protests, including “self-immolations,” engineered by his lobbies in Tibet. They ended up in failure to stir up Tibet’s people, who resented his political activities from outside China. Soon after that, in 2011 March, the “monk” announced his retirement from politics: China had indeed been saying that the monk has been more a politician, playing separatist politics, at the behests of USA and its allies.
In his place, a new Head of CTA, the so-called Govt-in-exile with Dharamshala as its headquarters, was installed. He was groomed in USA. After he exited, another was “elected”; he was also an American protege.
After a few years of relative calm, the Lama was again activated by his handlers to indulge in politics and conspiracies, and the talks with China got stuck up. It was due to Dalai Lama’s anti-China activities, at the behests of USA and India, that the talks got stuck up.
The Great Game is revived, and the Lama was taken to USA. Prodded by USA, now he called for “unconditional” dialog with China. China had urged him to confine to his religious role, no politics.
But the Lama himself never left ‘politricks’. In all this game of politics of interference in China’s affairs, played on the Indian soil, he served as a pawn. PM Modi, Jayshankar the MEA, NSA Ajit Doval and RAW were explicitly complicit in the US game: A bi-partisan delegation from USA, led by Republican McCaul, in June 2024 had traveled to Dharamshala, India, and presented the Dalai Lama with a framed copy of “The Resolve Tibet Act,” a bipartisan bill passed by the US Congress the previous week to enhance US support for Tibet (Govt media, DD Report 20th June 2024). In fact, Modi wrote after meeting the US delegation that just returned after consultations with the Dalai Lama: “Had a very good exchange of views”, adding that he “deeply” valued the “strong bipartisan support in advancing the India-US comprehensive global strategic partnership”.
Why the old monk was taken to USA, days later last June, the real purpose, was revealed by pro-West, anti-China expert, Brahma Chellaney , who wrote:
“ President Joe Biden should take the opportunity presented by the Dalai Lama’s knee treatment..More broadly, the US should work with India to devise a multilateral strategy to counter Xi’s plan to capture the more than 600-year-old institution of the Dalai Lama. This must include efforts to persuade the Dalai Lama to spell out, once and for all, the rules that must be followed to identify his successor.” (project-syndicate.org, Jun 21, 2024).
Indeed that happened: In the weeks he was in USA, he was met by many American officials and he was roped in by USA in its nefarious games. He was told Biden signed the Bill, and some budget was allocated for meddling in Tibet.
“The five-fifty is a win-win strategy as it calls for renewed efforts to seek genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people in the next five years while strategizing to strengthen and sustain the Tibetan movement over the next fifty years,” CTA chief Lobsang Sangay had said recently. Obviously, the USA would not allow a solution, and would prolong the struggle, as the Lama is getting too old. The CTA (the illegal Govt-in-exile) would continue the tasks assigned.
On a previous occasion, the Lama had declared he might not re-incarnate at all, or would so in India. Many Buddhist cults do not agree with the very idea of reincarnation, which they say has little to do with genuine Buddhism.
Soon after he returned to India, he released a book with a provocative title, Voice for the Voiceless, and that harped on his “reincarnation in free world,” to carry on his struggle.
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“Tibet’s struggle for autonomy in China is ‘one of the front lines’ in America’s battle with the Chinese Communist Party”
“Dalai Lama on 2024 Aug 21 had met Biden administration officials in New York City as the India-based Tibetan spiritual leader continues with his effort for Tibetan self-rule,” wion news.com reported August 22. The US officials told the Lama that President Biden signed the Resolve Tibet Act.
Those were words spoken by Albert Gombis, a senior US State Department official, on March 4, at a function in USA, marking Tibetan New Year. A notorious CIA media outlet, Radio Free Asia (RFA), on March 7 revealed:
Gombis was frank: “US national security was “inextricably bound to the battle of ideas and influence” with Beijing, which he alleged, annexed Tibet in the early 1950s, a pet theme in the pack of ‘white’ lies. Gombis was “calling for a renewed American focus on Tibet”. Never forgotten: “It was the annual US State Dept gathering, the 11th (since 2015) such event organised by the dept, and the first held since Trump 2.0 arrived and continued Biden’s policy. It has been bipartisan: Gombis said, “Tibet should not be forgotten as America “tries to counter Chinese, such as its expansionist claims on the South China Sea and Taiwan”. (We shall see some developments in the section on ‘Tokyo Declaration’)
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- Z–category security for Dalai Lama! Announced on the day Modi met Trump!
Just before the March meet by Gombis, there was another development: the Lama was taken to Karnataka’s Bylakuppe, the largest Tibetan settlement outside China, ostensibly for rest and rehabilitation. That is the birth-place of Penpa Tsering, “elected” in May 2021 as Sikyong (President) of “CTA”. He and his predecessor too, were trained by and in USA. Americans and other foreigners had visited Bylakuppe.
There he was now visited, on 14 February 2025, by Bandi Sanjay, India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs, and Home Minister Dr. G. Parameshwara of Karnataka. It was the day on which PM Modi met President Trump. The Lama would get Z-category security, all over India, it was announced. Where was the need for such huge security, 24×7 and all over India, with 300 armed security-men? And that for a Buddhist monk sheltered safely in Dharamshala for the last 65 years without a single incident that endangered his life?
Discussions took place there in Bylakuppe, and elsewhere, about the future of CTA, of Dalai Lama. And about his “re-incarnation” in which USA and India would play a crucial role, and China should have no role, they insist!
(see Dalai Lama playing politics explicitly, is given Z-category security cover all over India, even as USA intensifies its interference with ‘Resolve Tibet Act’ ( countercurrents.org, 27/02/2025)
So something was cooking there: Two Chinese (Xinhua) journalists, who visited Bylakuppe a few years ago, were denied extension of visa and were asked to leave India. As a result, there are few direct, own, reporters in China and India, the biggest neighbors, with massive development.
Indian people are forced to rely on Anglo-saxon media regarding China, we wrote (24/06/2023): “ The diplomatic relations between India and China have been further downgraded with the expulsion of the last remaining Indian journalist reporting from Beijing. According to a report in Bloomberg, KJM Varma, a reporter with the Press Trust of India, has been asked to leave the mainland by the end of the month (June, 2023)…
China explained why:
“The Indian government’s brutal treatment has put enormous psychological pressure on Chinese journalists in India,” Hu Xiaoming wrote, saying visa applications from Chinese journalists have not been approved since 2020.
Anurag Viswanath, an indepndent Sinologist based in Singapore, wrote: “ India has not approved visas since 2020, leading to a drop from 14 journalists to one.”
So Bylakuppe is a place of intrigue. And there he was taken and told of the z-category security,24×7. It was clear the Lama never retired from politricking.
( See Modi 3.0 reveals India’s subservience to the global hegemonic strategy of USA and lines up against China : Dalai Lama is a pawn in the game . CC 24/06/2024)
But everyone can see India hosting for decades a Tibetan “government-in-exile,” and its renewed political activity, now very brazen. It goes against all cannons of international law, against UN Charter, even as India backs USA harping on a “rules-based world order,” an euphemism for a hegemonism of USA. But India protests if anyone even comments on Kashmir.
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China rejects ‘Tokyo Declaration’ by a ‘World Convention on Tibet’
‘Tibetan lawmakers’ have unanimously adopted a ‘Tokyo Declaration’ urging China to re-engage in substantive dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama, or democratically elected Tibetan leaders without preconditions, to resolve the Tibet-China conflict through the Middle Way Policy, reported Hindustan Times (June7,2025) .
A so-called 9th World Parliamentarians’ Convention on Tibet (WPCT) was held in Tokyo, June 2-4. 142 participants from 29 countries reportedly attended the meet organized by the CTA, which claims It as the 17th Tibetan Parliament in Exile. USA last year allocated a Budget, specially for propaganda on Tibet. And the QUAD ally Japan provided venue in its parliament House. East Asia was already hot, with Trump pumping in more arms to Taiwan, in violation of the One China Policy.
Dalai Lama in a message sent to the Tokyo meet said: “there seems to be no end in sight to the use of violence in settling problems and disputes between nations.” He called for resumption of dialog with China: “We Tibetans are committed to seeking a mutually acceptable solution with a peaceful, non-violent path to achieve freedom and dignity for the Tibetan people,” a CTA report quoted him.
Japanese media highlighted an interview with members of the CTA, who criticized China’s policies in its Xizang Autonomous Region (TAR) and claimed that the successor of the 14th Dalai Lama would reincarnate in the “free world,” and called on other countries to pressure China.
The Chinese embassy spokesperson in Japan said that the 14th Dalai Lama and the “Tibetan government-in-exile” have no right whatsoever to represent the people in the Xizang region or to determine the future of the region. (Global Times, June 3). Similar things were included in the Tokyo Declaration. (Xizang is Chinese name of Tibet region.)
After all, 95 % of Tibetans reside in China, and are happily progressing with high GDP and HDI. Only a few elite Tibetans – former slave-owners and their retinues – are in exile; they are meant, like Cuban exiles, to foment trouble, it is well-known.
Zhu Weiqun, former Head of the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of China said : “such attempts are increasingly ineffective as the influence of the Dalai clique has been declining, which is an inevitable historical trend. “The attempts of the US and India are a self-consoling elegy,” (Global Times, June 8).
“The initiative of finding the successor of Dalai Lama is firmly held by the Chinese central government,” Zhu said, emphasizing that the finding work will definitely be in accordance with relevant policies, laws, past conventions, and the sincere wishes of religious believers in Xizang, and ‘will never be based on the fantasies of the separatist Dalai clique.’
“ The so-called Tibetan government-in-exile is a thoroughly separatist political organization that violates China’s Constitution and laws and is an illegal entity. No country in the world recognizes it,” a spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy in Japan said in a statement on June 2. Why CTA, even Tibet is not recognized as an independent country by any country.
“The unity and economic development of China’s Xizang Autonomous Region are there for all to see, and the living standards of local Tibetan people are improving, which are the facts that the Dalai clique and some Western countries cannot change, Zhu said, noting that their attempts to play “the Dalai card” are futile.
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Dalai lama’s fraud and farce on violence and “reincarnation”
Dalai Lama is glorified only by US and indian media, but not elsewhere.
“Noisy Protest: Wherever the Dalai Lama travels these days, devotees of the Dorje Shugden sect accuse him of being a religious bigot. On July 9, 2015 protesters gathered outside the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center where the Dalai Lama was speaking.” – REUTERS/Paul Mooney: There were scores of such protests across Europe and Australia too. The Lama is accused of corruption, lies and nepotism too. His own brother and sister were made CTA officials for long years; they are no more. There were child conscripts of Dalai Lama forces.
He is a laughing stock, a subject for cartoons, like this one by a Brazilian cartoonist:
After decades of channeling funds to the Dalai Lama, a moment of a buyer’s remorse for the US? (By Carlos Latuff, a Brazilian carttonist).
The cartoon refers to “misuse” of his “tongue” which led to apologies twice by the Lama, who is a laughing stock among many people outside India and USA.
The Lama in Dharamshala had kissed an Indian boy on his lips, and asked him to suck his tongue, BBC reported ( 2023 April 10). When it led to a furore, the Lama had apologised, his office stated. But there was another ‘misuse’ of his tongue earlier.
In 2019 he had apologized also for his remarks on women made to BBC , on his successor: “ If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive”(BBC 2019 July2).
As to his pontifications on violence, Dalai Lama never condemned, either Israel or USA for killing millions over the decades. In contrast, Pope Francis had “again” (2024 Dec 21) “condemned” violence by Israel in Gaza, and called upon to determine if they constituted “genocide.” Earlier in 2021 the Pope had said “ the attacks on Gaza civilians are terrorism” (2023 Dec Vatican News)
Here is a fake Buddhist Lama indulging in politics at the behests of USA. He never condemned wars of aggression, including those in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan; nor the genocide by Israel. In fact, he supported wars by them, with his anti-communist, anti-China politics.
The Lama had faced public protests in several countries by Tibetans for his wrong policies, nepotism, corruption and religious intolerance and discrimination…as seen in the illustration above.
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Reincarnation in a “free world” : Inglorious past of Dalai Lama
His reincarnation has been under discussion for the last few years, in various fora and by experts, dealing with “global strategy”: Foreign Policy, Carnegie India, ORF, Manohar Parrikar Institute, IDSA, apart from RSS think-tanks have been engaged in related discussions.
He had said in 2011 he retired from politics. But his latest book is Voice for the Voiceless (Harper Collins, 2025) contradicts his claim, as seen in its sub-title: Over Seven Decades of Struggle with China for My Land and My People. The struggle is on! In this book, he discussed, and said he wants re-incarnation, not in China but in “free world”, presumably in India! He had indicated India as a likely place. Would it be in Bylakuppe? Or Dharmashala? There was a previous case worth recalling:
There was a criminal case in relation to Dalai Lama, and there was censure by Justice Subhashan Reddy, when a young girl child aged 6, Sambhavi, was converted in 2009 into a Buddhist goddess and exploited. (Orders of Andhra Pradesh Human Rights Commission, dated 14 June 2010 (on Petition No. 7777 of 2009 filed by several Human Rights Organisations and Intellectuals).Human Rights activists of India and Nepal exposed and detested an “elaborate reincarnation fraud, ” Babu Gogineni wrote, “enacted with connivance and encouragement from the Nobel Peace Laureate Dalai Lama…A joint ritual and discourse was planned and announced for 22 December 2009 for the 75 year old Dalai Lama and the 6-yr child”.
Babu is an eminent Rationalist and Founder of South Asian Humanist Association, who led a long struggle, and wrote in 2010 June: “Some big wigs bought land around the proposed ashram (in AP) because of the real estate gains to be made. A helipad was constructed, new roads were beginning to be laid.. “ Then the rationalists challenged it, demanded that the rights of the child were violated. He exposed the activities of his “global clique”:
“ French and Russian documentary makers entered the scene to record the life of this extraordinary genius and goddess who played in her previous life with the Dalai Lama and met with Acharya Nagarjuna (who died almost 2000 years ago). Sambhavi said that she was born for the cause of Tibet’s freedom, declared that Tibet would be free by 2012, that China would become democratic in 2016, that she prayed for the Dalai Lama’s health..”
It was “not an attack by rationalists against religion ..what we have uncovered was criminal activity, and that we never objected to Samhavi’s freedom of religion…It was in a terrible context where the elite media is reluctant to expose the Dalai Lama.. We will certainly write to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.”
“People who dislike China automatically like the cuddly Dalai Lama – here is a chance to rethink about him and his dangerous stupidities. If he is not stopped he will strike again and find another child victim..” (Babu is a critic of China, not a supporter.). We can visualize by what is meant by ‘China suppressing religion’.
For more on this sordid episode, visit http://www.sacw.net/article1470.html
Many Buddhist cults oppose the concept of “reincarnation,
.. which they say, goes against basic tenets of Buddhism. Gogineni explained:
“ As you know, Buddhism has three major divisions: Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. The tantra, magic and ritual-based Vajrayana has four further factions and the Dalai Lama is head of one of these four – the Gelugpa sect. The Dalai represents only one sect..
“The present Dalai Lama was identified as the reborn 13th Dalai Lama at the age of 2, and at a young age fled Tibet after a failed rebellion against China. Most Tibetans lived the lives of serfs whereas he lived in the 1000-room Potala Palace.. .
“ However, the Lama’s Vajrayana Buddhism also needs babies so that they could be identified as reincarnation of dead Buddhist Lamas. It is a terrible tradition, like that of sacrificing little children to monasteries, sending toddlers to Taliban run schools…Most such children end up being thouroughly damaged. Osel Torres, a baby from Spain was identified by the Dalai Lama many years ago – but Osel fled the confines of the monsatery to declare in 2009 that he was not a Lama and that his life was a lie!”
No wonder China and Tibetans in China reject him.
Many strategic affairs “experts” in India, echoing USA, suggested using the “Tibet card”. But Alka Acharya, a JNU Professor, former Director, Institute of Chinese Studies, had warned in March 2018: “For this one so-called ‘Tibet card’ that we appear to hold, the Chinese have six in their hand.” And that is all the more dangerous given the volatile and inflammable situation in North-east, aggravated by the divisive politics of the sangh pariwar. Like Biden, Trump is also keen on fanning it. They are all aware Tibet has been part of China for centuries, under various dynasties like the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), and America always recognised Tibet as part of China; so also almost the whole world.
“Self-determination” of Tibet
The USA, the West, many in India harp on “self-determination” of Tibet. Even as struggles for the same, going on for decades in India, are suppressed, they harp on it. Some have confusions, and some genuine interest too. We shall discuss “self-determination” in Tibet..how it was imperiled by the imperialists, and not by the CPC, in part-2 of this article, among other things.
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Ramakrishnan is a political commentator
(See for more on the subject: Dalai Lama turns 85 today and 60 years of that he served US imperialism, operating from Indian soil, playing havoc with India-China Relations (06/07/2020)
https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/dalai-lama-turns-85-today/
