When Mao Zedong was told that Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama had escaped to India in 1959, the Great Helmsman is reported to have made a loaded remark to an aide: “In that case, we have lost the battle.”

Mao was an out and out atheist and had no love for Tibetan Buddhism or any religion. But the earthy man was aware of the clout the Dalai Lama wielded.

Mao passed away in 1976 at age 82, a full 27 years after he led the Communists to victory in Beijing and quickly ordered a sweeping takeover of Tibet. He may not have reckoned then what the then young Dalai Lama would or could do.

One-man army

Since his escape from Tibet and in the decades after Mao’s demise, the Dalai Lama has stood against China like a one-man army, his spiritual and temporal authority nullifying Beijing’s legitimacy over the Tibetan nation.

All the trash heaped on the Dalai Lama – “counter-revolutionary”, “splittist” and “imperialist agent” – has only added to the weight the Dalai Lama commands in an imperfect world where sympathy runs deep for Tibet, but country after country is forced to deal with China.

This is the reason why the Communist Party of China (CPC), otherwise wedded to atheism and which has destroyed any number of monasteries in Tibet, is adamant on choosing the next Dalai Lama. A hand-picked Dalai Lama – like the Beijing’s Panchen Lama – will do China’s bidding to give a cloak of political and spiritual sanctity to its rule over Tibet.

Chinese officials claim that since the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and other grand Living Buddhas had to follow the procedure of drawing lots from a golden urn. The selected candidate would be subject to approval by the central government of China.

If this analogy were to be extended to India, then the government in New Delhi should be picking the successors at the Shankara mutts at Puri, Dwarka, Badri and Shringeri besides Kancheepuram!

Dalai Lama's selection

Born on July 6, 1935, as Lhamo Thondup, the present Dalai Lama – the 14th in succession – was barely three years old when a search party of the Tibetan government reached Kumbum monastery in Tibet, led by mystical signs.

The head of the embalmed body of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thupten Gyatso, who died in 1933, was found to have turned from facing south to northeast. Also, a Regent, a senior lama, noticed the Tibetan letters Ah, Ka and Ma float in the waters of the sacred lake, Lhamoi Lhatso, in southern Tibet.

In his autobiography, the Dalai Lama says that the Tibetan letters were followed by the image of a three-story monastery with a turquoise and gold roof and a path running from it to a hill. The Regent also saw a small house with a strangely shaped guttering.

He was confident that the letter Ah referred to the northeastern province of Amdo. So the search party went there. Ka, they surmised, must stand for Kumbum – which was three-storied and turquoise-roofed.

Eventually, the party landed at the Dalai Lama’s house but did not identify themselves. They spent the night there. The head of the party, Kewtsang Rinpoche, pretended to be a servant and spent most of the evening playing with the youngest child – the present Dalai Lama.

According to the autobiography, the child recognized Rinpoche and called out “Sera lama, Sera lama"! Sera was Rinpoche’s monastery. The next time the same delegation came, it was a formal visit. They brought items that had belonged to the deceased Dalai Lama, and things that did not fall in that category. When the child correctly identified the objects belonging to the 13th Dalai Lama, the party was convinced. The boy was finally acknowledged as the new Dalai Lama.

Astrologers picked November 17, 1950, as the date for the present Dalai Lama’s enthronement – after more than a decade of intense studies and religious training. Mao, who had seized power only a year earlier, found in the young Dalai Lama an easy target, more so because the Tibetan forces posed no major danger to the just victorious People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Just before the Dalai Lama’s investiture, his eldest brother, an abbot of Kumbum monastery, arrived with gory details of what the Chinese were doing to the Tibetans, particularly monks, in Amdo province, where the Dalai Lama was born. After keeping him a virtual prisoner, they let the brother go on the condition that he should persuade the to-be Dalai Lama to accept Communist rule. If the latter resisted, he was to be killed. The brother begged the Dalai Lama to leave Tibet and not to fall into Chinese hands at any cost.

Dalai Lama's successor

Although young in age and experience, the new Dalai Lama was made of sterner stuff. After Chinese troops entered Lhasa in October 1951, he witnessed personally the suffering of the ordinary Tibetans as well as the clergy. “For the first time, I understood the true meaning of the word ‘bully’,” he would recall later. It is only when discussions with the Chinese leaders including Mao, made no material change in the situation in Tibet that the Dalai Lama escaped to India.

According to the Dalai Lama, almost one and a quarter million Tibetans have lost their lives from starvation, execution, torture and suicide and thousands have languished in prisons. China, which has majorly developed the once backward Tibet, has resisted repeated calls to negotiate with the Tibetan leader, who is convinced that a day will come when the suffering of the Tibetans will end in China. But he won’t acknowledge Tibet as “an inalienable part of China”.

No wonder, China wants to see the back of the incumbent Dalai Lama, the earlier the better. If and when he passes away, Beijing is sure to pick a new successor of its own and refuse to recognize anyone chosen by the Tibetan exiles. 

But one thing is clear: a Dalai Lama picked by atheist China will lack legitimacy in the eyes of the world. And if two Dalai Lamas emerge, it will be a test for India: who will it recognize as the temporal head of nearly seven million Tibetan Buddhists?

(The author is a veteran journalist who writes on diplomacy and politics. The views are personal. He can be reached at  ranjini17@hotmail.com)