Beijing, March 10 – A top Chinese Communist Party (CPC) official in Tibet on Monday accused the exiled Dalai Lama of “blasphemy” over his comments that he may be the last to hold his position as the Tibetans’ spiritual leader.
“What he said is blasphemy against Tibetan Buddhism,” the CPC-appointed governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Padma Choling who is an ethnic Tibetan, told reporters, speaking on the sidelines of the on-going 10-day session of the National People’s Congress, or Chinese Parliament, in Beijing.
“It’s not up to the Dalai Lama,” Choling was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency, which added that the Dalai Lama’s statement was “against the Tibetan Buddhism tradition as the soul of a senior lama is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death”.
His comments underline an unusual situation where the officially atheist CPC is demanding that a centuries-old system of reincarnation continue. The Dalai Lama has said he is against a continuation of the system merely “for political ends”, suggesting that his title could end with him.
He has also alternatively suggested that his successor may be born outside of China, in an overseas Tibetan community, perhaps in India. The Dalai Lama has said he will make a formal statement on the issue when he turns 90, a decade from now.
China holds that the Dalai Lama position has historically been appointed in conjunction with rulers in Beijing. “The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama should follow strict historical conventions and required religious rituals of the Tibetan Buddhism and should also be approved by the central government,” Choling said.
Talks between the CPC and the Dalai Lama’s representatives have stalled since 2010, when the last round was held. In 2012, the Dalai Lama’s representatives, Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, quit from their positions, expressing “their utter frustration over the lack of positive response from the Chinese side.”
The Dalai Lama’s representatives presented a memorandum to China in 2008 and a note clarifying points on the memorandum two years later. The memorandum reiterated the Dalai Lama’s call for “genuine autonomy” and not outright independence, and protection of Tibetans’ rights under the framework of the Chinese constitution.
China rejected the memorandum as “disguised independence” for its call for a central administration to guarantee religious, cultural and other rights for Tibetans not just in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) but in Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan where around half of the 6 million Tibetans in China reside.
Over the past few years, Tibetan areas in China have seen a string of self-immolation protests, with more than 100 Tibetans setting themselves on fire and calling for the return of the Dalai Lama. China has accused exiled Tibetan monks in Dharamsala of organising the protests.
The Dalai Lama’s envoys in their resignation letter suggested that China was hardening its stand of late, saying that “one of the key Chinese interlocutors in the dialogue process even advocated abrogation of minority status as stipulated in the Chinese constitution thereby seeming to remove the basis of autonomy”. “At this particular time,” they said, “it is difficult to have substantive dialogue”.
-INDIA TODAY
