By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Dalai Lama 2025

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, the Dalai Lama, turned 90 on July 6 after a week of celebrations by followers during which he riled China again and spoke about his hope to live beyond 130 and reincarnate after dying.

The Nobel laureate is regarded as one of the world’s most influential religious leaders, with a following that extends well beyond Buddhism, but not by Beijing, which calls him a separatist and has sought to bring the faith under its control.

Fleeing his native Tibet in 1959 in the wake of a failed uprising against Chinese rule, the 14th Dalai Lama, along with hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, took shelter in India and has since advocated for a peaceful “Middle Way” to seek autonomy and religious freedom for the Tibetan people.

Dressed in his traditional yellow and burgundy robe, the Dalai Lama arrived at a temple to smiles and claps from thousands of monks and followers who had gathered on a rainy morning in the small Indian hill town of Dharamshala, where he lives.

He waved and greeted them as he walked slowly to the stage with support from monks.

“As far as I am concerned, I have a human life and as humans it is quite natural for us to love and help one another,” the Dalai Lama said, speaking after a Tibetan cultural performance that included songs for his long life.

“I live my life in the service of other sentient beings,” he said, flanked on the stage with long-time supporters including western diplomats, Indian federal ministers, Hollywood star Richard Gere, and a monk who is expected to lead the search for his successor.

In a sign of solidarity, Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te, leaders of Indian states bordering Tibet, and three former US presidents,  Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and  Bill Clinton, sent greetings to the Dalai Lama, with their video messages played during the event.

In the preceding week of celebrations, the Dalai Lama had said he would reincarnate as the leader of the faith upon his death and that his non-profit institution, the Gaden Phodrang Trust, had the sole authority to recognise his successor.

China has said that the succession will have to be approved by its leaders, and the US has called on Beijing to cease what it describes as interference in the succession of the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist Lamas.

What is often left out of the discussion is the Climate Crisis in Tibet.

China’s territorial aggression in the Himalayas, including in the Tibetan Plateau, has been growing. China’s strategy has focused mainly on using the continental version of the well-known “salami tactics” on neighbors like India and Bhutan. Notably, Tibet is a major source of insecurity for the Chinese ruling regime.

Ever since the first reports of Chinese transgressions into Ladakh emerged in early May 2020, experts warned India was staring at a formidable security threat.

China’s new road cuts travel time to the Karakoram Pass, raising red flags. China watcher Andrew Chubb responded with, "If Xi Jinping were to conclude that Indian nationalist sentiments are so strong as to make escalation inevitable, then he might be inclined to strike first, as Mao did in 1962."

Thousands of Chinese and Indian troops have been in a standoff in the Ladakh region, high in the Himalayas. After reaching an agreement to de-escalate on 6 June, the mutual withdrawal of troops from the Galwan Valley went dramatically wrong on June 15, with Indian army officials reporting clashes that resulted in twenty deaths. China’s government and media have not provided casualty figures for Chinese troops, but unconfirmed Indian media reports indicated that more than forty died.

Both countries’ troops have patrolled this region for decades, as the contested 2,200-mile border is a long-standing subject of competing claims and tensions.

The Ladakh region is especially complex, with particularly unusual features. First, there is Aksai Chin, a territory that India has long claimed, but China occupies. China began building a road through the area in 1956, linking Tibet to Xinjiang, and has occupied it since 1962. There is also a territory that Pakistan ceded to China in 1963. Surveying and mapping the region’s terrain historically, as we have seen, proved immensely challenging.

Due to two books that were published in 2020, a closer look has been taken at what moved the final decision for China to attack India. 

About The North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), as one of the political divisions in British India and later the Republic of India, until 20 January 1972, when it became the Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh and some parts of Assam.

Bertil Lintner in China's India War: Collision Course on the Roof of the World (2020) clarified why the nature of the dispute over the NEFA is very different and distinct from that of the Ladakh sector. Even when New Delhi extended its polit­ical and administrative hold on this region as early as 1950, Peking did not contest these steps, other than questioning the validity of accepting the McMahon Line. Since Peking had never stepped into this territory beyond the Himalayas before 1962, except for a short span of time in 1910-1911, Chinese arguments regarding the NEFA were null and void. It seems that, in the early years, China was particularly concerned only with dismantling the colonial tag of the Simla Agreement (the McMahon Line of 1914) and was not interested in staking any claim to the terri­tory beyond the south of the Himalayas. And that China had not proposed any arguments until the Tibet issue became strong.

Ismail Vengasseri, in his book 1962 Border War: Sino-Indian Territorial Disputes and Beyond (2020), similarly points to the Tibet issue.

In his 2020 book, China's India War: Collision Course on the Roof of the World, Bertil Lintner describes how the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 dramatically altered the geopolitics of the entire region. Until then, Tibet had closer ties to India than China and was no longer a de facto independent country. One of the few in the Indian government who understood the profound significance of this change was the home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, who, only a month before his death in December 1950, wrote to Nehru,

We have to consider that what we face is a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we know it, and the expansion of China up to our gates. Throughout history, we have seldom been worried about our north-east frontier. The Himalayas have been regarded as an impenetrable barrier against threats from the north. We had a friendly Tibet, which gave us no trouble. The Chinese were divided. They had their domestic problems and never bothered us about our frontiers.

Whereby Lintner proceeds with: China’s wars have always been ideologically motivated, meant to show its superior strength vis-a-vis adversaries and to demonstrate socialist solidarity with its ‘comrades-in-arms Describing China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), as an ideologically motivated ‘people’s army.

Different from Lintner, Ismail Vengasseri, in his book 1962 Border War: Sino-Indian Territorial Disputes and Beyond (2020), argues that the fundamental reasons that prompted Mao’s China to adopt a belligerent attitude in its relations with India in the late 1950s stem from three aspects. First, the USA's active intervention in the dispute with an extended arm of the CIA providing military training to the Tibetan rebels, in addition to arms, ammunition, and other logistical support, had no doubt aggravated the border situation. The US factor is still a persisting issue as far as China is concerned. Sino- Indian relations since 1949 have always been intricately intertwined with the USA's active presence in between. The covert or oven operations of the CIA along the border regions, colluding with agen­cies like the anti-PRC Taiwan cliques, had been active on Indian soil. Hence, discussions on armed Sino-Indian conflicts would be incom­plete without reference to the USA. the interventions of the USA had turned the border dispute into a military conflict.

Second, overwhelming interest in the Tibet issue prevailed in India, beyond international refugee norms' standards. The Indian stance on the Tibetan issue and the passion and enthusiasm it had shown in accommodating the Tibetan rebels on the grounds of human rights played a role in worsening bilateral relations. When the Dalai Lama became a favorite in Western and Indian media and was accorded reverence on Indian soil with state honors at the cost of portraying China as a belligerent undemocratic country, the friend­ship that India and China shared gave way to mutual distrust. Nehru’s efforts to attain Asian unity, by extending support to new Communist China in the face of a hostile Western world, had gone in vain. The Chinese government accused India, stating that Tibetan rebels were working at the behest of India’s instigation. They propagated the idea that the expansionist policy of certain neighbors caused tension in the Tibetan region. In this effort, China unsuccessfully tried to win over the allegiance of various tribes inhabiting the border areas, which, no doubt, encouraged disruptive elements in the north-eastern states and other border regions. After several decades, when the Tibetan community assimilated into the Indian society and was accommodated even in the Indian military and government, Peking continued to allege that New Delhi was taking political advantage of China's internal affairs.

Third, Indian ‘reactionaries’ efforts in colluding with the Western imperialists for anti-China propaganda, which was an active component of Indian politics, played an auxiliary role in this Sino- Indian issue. All of Nehru’s detractors, among various parties, rallied in the name of Tibetan sympathy for active anti-Peking rhetoric, which got strengthened in India with US backing. The covert relations of Indian bureaucrats, press, and political leaders with the USA and other external forces strengthened the anti-China debate not only at the frontiers since 1961. But it is also illogical to assume that a militarily superior nation would not dare to strike at any time to score points in national or international politics. But those who appraised the political authority about an unreal situation on the border were responsible for the debacle. Contemporary China’s recurring military muscle-flexing and belligerent attitude in the border region is also a concern in this context. What was surprising was that Peking had raised objections on several occasions when Indian official dignitaries had visited the NEFA. The infrastructural development activities of the Border Roads Organization had also been objected to by Peking. At the same time, China was suspected of encouraging subversive activities in the region.

The United States, which is seeking to counter the rise of China, has called on Beijing to cease what it describes as interference in the succession of the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist lamas.

After about two hours, the Dalai Lama left the venue abruptly after eating a piece of his birthday cake. A source earlier said he had not been feeling too well.

 

Show of solidarity

Guests gathered at the ceremony took turns to speak, including Indian Parliamentary and Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, a practising Buddhist, who had earlier made a rare statement contradicting China by backing the Dalai Lama’s position on his successor.

He later clarified that the statement was made in his capacity as China warned New Delhi against interfering in its domestic affairs at the expense of bilateral relations. In 1954, China’s paramount leader, Mao Zedong, met Tenzin Gyatso, then a 19-year-old who was the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet. “Religion,” Mao acerbically observed to the young Dalai Lama, “is poison.” Five years later, Chinese forces would roll into Tibet and take over the country, driving the Dalai Lama and many other Tibetans into exile. The communists, who espoused atheism and derided religions, sought to yoke Tibet to China by squashing its local culture and historical institutions; destroying Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, nunneries, and cultural artifacts; and suppressing the practice of the Tibetan Buddhist faith.

On July 6, Rijiju said the Dalai Lama was India’s “most honored guest... We feel blessed for his presence here in our country”.

He said he has always held the view that there was a need to contribute significantly towards the cause of the Tibetan people, and added that, as a devotee, “We will follow the directions and the guidelines to be issued from the institution of the Dalai Lama.”

Cultural performances were held throughout the morning, including from Bollywood playback singers, while messages from global leaders were read out.

I join 1.4 billion Indians in extending our warmest wishes to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his 90th birthday. He has been an enduring symbol of love, compassion, patience, and moral discipline,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also sent a message that said the Dalai Lama continued to inspire people by embodying a message of “unity, peace, and compassion.”

“The United States remains firmly committed to promoting respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Tibetans.

“We support efforts to preserve Tibetans’ distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage, including their ability to freely choose and venerate religious leaders without interference,” he said, according to a State Department readout.

 

 

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