A post-Dalai Lama blueprint for Tibet

By Sushil Seth

The Dalai Lama recently announced that he would be relinquishing his political role as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala.

The Dalai Lama is the spiritual and political head of the Tibetan people. While he will still continue to be the spiritual leader, a new elected prime minister will soon take over the political role.

Obviously, the Dalai Lama is conscious of his mortality and is taking steps to split the two roles to ensure that the struggle for Tibetan identity doesn’t live and die with him.

This move will upset China, even though Beijing might ignore it on surface.

The next step probably will be the anointment of a new Dalai Lama, who will take over as his successor.

The formality of finding one after his death in the traditional way might have to be dispensed with because Tibet is under Chinese rule

Indeed, Beijing is waiting for the Dalai Lama to die, enabling them to find a new one to fit into their mould.

The Dalai Lama is acutely aware of this, which explains why he would be keen to make arrangements for his political and spiritual succession.

This is important because his successors, both in their political and spiritual roles, will carry his enormous moral authority.

China obviously hopes that with the passing away of the Dalai Lama in the not-too-distant future, the Tibetan issue will fade away and eventually disappear.

They believe that as China continues to grow in power, the Tibetan cause will have fewer and fewer supporters among the comity of nations for fear of offending China.

And it will help when the Dalai Lama is no longer on the scene.

His charisma, charm and sincerity have kept the Tibetan issue alive and kicking.

China, therefore, believes that Tibet will lose whatever appeal it might still have with people all over the world when the Dalai Lama is not around.

Which is shortsighted. Indeed the Dalai Lama has sought, over the years, to resolve the issue of Tibet’s status peacefully by seeking autonomy, not independence.

Through many hours of fitful talks over the years between his representatives and China, his demand has been for internal autonomy with Beijing in control of its foreign and defense affairs.

With internal autonomy, Tibetans should be able to maintain their ethnic and cultural identity.

Which is not too much to ask, and Beijing shouldn’t have problem with it.

But it does.

First: they don’t trust the Dalai Lama as he seeks some political and cultural space for his people without challenging China’s sovereignty.

Beijing simply wants submission with the right to define and regulate how the Tibetans should and would live within their own territory. This is precisely what they are doing now.

Because the Dalai Lama seeks better terms for his people, he is denounced as a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.

Therefore, China has never been serious about talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives to resolve the Tibetan issue.

Indeed, a solution on the basis of genuine autonomy will be a lasting one with the imprimatur of the Dalai Lama’s moral authority and acceptable to the Tibetan people.

But China is not concerned with the moral and popular dimensions of the Tibetan cause. They have been busy all these years to cut at the roots of such considerations.

For instance, they have sliced and spliced Tibet, with parts of it joined to the neighboring Han-dominated provinces. Thus, Tibet proper is now a shrunken area.

Its population of 6 million is now scattered around, to reduce the Tibetan potential to create ‘trouble’.

What is left of Tibet is now mixed up with the Han Chinese, settled there in large numbers with incentives.

In this way, the Tibetans will soon become a minority in their own geographical space, if it hasn’t already happened.

As it is, there are severe restrictions on their cultural space to limit the learning of their language, practicing their religion and observance of their traditions.

It is hoped that, over time, they will cease to be a distinct entity except for ceremonial purposes when the state wants to exhibit them as part of China’s “harmonious” society.

The character of Tibet’s economy has changed so drastically that, short of assimilation, they will remain marginalized to live a miserable existence.

They are now subject to so much surveillance, both electronic and through the massive presence of security forces, that they live in fear.

China’s leadership tends to resort to over-kill, both figuratively and metaphorically, when they fear rupture of their so-called “harmonious” society.

And they have an aversion to peaceful dialogue to sort out national issues.

They fear that such an approach will open a Pandora’s box of unresolved issues with their people.

Which explains their paranoia of the people’s revolution in the Middle East overtaking China, if people were exposed to the news from that part of the world.

Tibet has been at the receiving end of this paranoia for many years.

China’s oligarchs believe that if they decide that a problem doesn’t and shouldn’t exist, it bloody well will be swept away by the brute use of power.

But with Tibet, the unrest continues to erupt in big or small ways despite all the repression in that region. It keeps coming back to haunt China.

As Pico Iyer has quoted the Dalai Lama in his article for the New York Review of Books: “Manpower, military power, monetary power, that is already there in China.”

What is lacking, though, “is moral power, moral authority”.

And without that, at a deeper level there is a big vacuum. And that is where the old Tibetan Buddhist traditions could help.

But try telling this to the Chinese leadership, especially associating it with the Dalai Lama.

China’s leaders are drunk with power. They have no time for morality and tranquility.

Tibet for them is just a sideshow.

But they don’t realize that sideshows too can occupy centre stage when the central authority is weakened, as happened so often in Chinese history.

The replacement of the Dalai Lama’s political power by a secular democratic government will become a legitimate organ of channeling Tibetan identity both among the exiled Tibetans and those at home.

And once, he has also designated his spiritual successor, the struggle for Tibetan autonomy will be set for the post-Dalai Lama period.

On surface, China might prefer to ignore it.

But arrangements for institutional succession are important for Tibet, especially when they carry the Dalai Lama’s imprimatur.