[By visiting Tawang, a Tibetan Buddhist
stronghold that was the birthplace of a previous Dalai Lama, he is expertly
needling Beijing, which maintains that this area should be part of China. He is
also consolidating his sect’s deep roots among the population, potentially
laying the groundwork for a reincarnation there.]
By Ellen Barry
 |
|
The
Dalai Lama greeted followers Thursday at a monastery in Dirang,
in
the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Credit
Anuwar Hazarika/Reuters
|
NEW
DELHI — It has been a hard
journey for the 81-year-old Dalai Lama, perhaps his last over the mountain
passes at the edge of China, to a town that has played a fateful role in his
life, and in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.
Violent rains buffeted the small plane he
flew into the valley. His party was forced to continue overland, traveling
seven or eight hours a day over steep serpentine roads, lined with villagers
hoping to glimpse him.
Each day, as he came closer to the holy site
of Tawang, China pressed India more forcefully to stop his progress, its
warnings growing increasingly ominous.
By Thursday, a day before the Dalai Lama was
expected to reach Tawang, the official China Daily wrote that Beijing “would
not hesitate to answer blows with blows” if the Indian authorities allowed the
Dalai Lama to continue.
At stake on this journey, scholars said, is
the monumental question of who will emerge as the Dalai Lama’s successor — and
whether that successor, typically a baby identified as the next reincarnation
of the Dalai Lama, will live inside or outside China’s zone of influence.
By visiting Tawang, a Tibetan Buddhist
stronghold that was the birthplace of a previous Dalai Lama, he is expertly
needling Beijing, which maintains that this area should be part of China. He is
also consolidating his sect’s deep roots among the population, potentially
laying the groundwork for a reincarnation there.
“He is a wise Lama, and he is thinking far
ahead, as he always has,” said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst at New Delhi’s
Center for Policy Research. “He is not given to sentimental reasoning. There is
nothing about his trip to Arunachal Pradesh that is sentimental in its nature.”
Tawang is home to the Monpa people, who
practice Tibetan Buddhism and once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa, 316 miles
to the north. Though the town’s population is about 11,000, officials said they
were expecting as many as 60,000 to gather for the Dalai Lama’s appearances at
Tawang’s monastery this weekend.
“We have been preparing for the last two
months,” said Lobsang Khum, secretary of the monastery. “Everybody wants to see
him, get his blessings, touch his feet. For us, the Dalai Lama is more
important than our lives.”
The most treasured lore among the Monpa
surrounds Tsangyang Gyatso, who in 1682 became the sixth Dalai Lama. People
here make pilgrimages to his childhood home, where a stone is displayed with a
faint footprint said to be his, and speak longingly of the possibility that it
could happen again.
“That is the dream of many people here, that
the next Dalai Lama should be born in Tawang,” said Sang Phuntsok, Tawang’s
deputy commissioner. Tsering Tashi, a local legislator, said that, as a layman,
he had no business commenting, but in the end he could not restrain himself. “I
wish that the reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama happens in Tawang,” he said.
“That’s all I can say.”
The Dalai Lama has been enigmatic about how
his successor will be chosen.
In the past, monks have turned to visions and
oracles to lead them to a child conceived just as the previous Dalai Lama died.
Having identified a child, they administer tests seeking to confirm that he is
the reincarnated lama, such as asking him to pick out objects belonging to his
predecessor.
But that method would leave Tibetan Buddhism
without a leader for at least a year, allowing China to identify and promote
its own candidate. The Dalai Lama has hinted that he may instead opt for a
nontraditional selection process, selecting a child or an adult to succeed him
while he is still alive.
Aging Tibetan Buddhist lamas have, in some
cases, visited places where they would later be reincarnated as babies, and the
Dalai Lama’s visits to Tawang and Mongolia seemed to fall into that pattern,
said Robert J. Barnett, a historian of modern Tibet at Columbia University.
“This is a way of getting under the skin of
the Chinese, of probing them, and reminding them that they have no control over
where the next reincarnation occurs,” he said.
As the Dalai Lama’s arrival in Tawang grew
closer this week, Chinese statements grew increasingly bellicose, a tactic that
has succeeded in pressuring officials of many countries to snub the Tibetan
leader.
On Wednesday, a foreign ministry spokeswoman
said India had “obstinately arranged” the Dalai Lama’s visit, causing “serious
damage” to bilateral ties. On Thursday, The Global Times, a state-run tabloid,
suggested that China could retaliate by supporting the anti-Indian militancy in
Kashmir.
“Can India afford the consequence?” it asked
sarcastically. “With a G.D.P. several times higher than that of India, military
capabilities that can reach the Indian Ocean and having good relations with
India’s peripheral nations, coupled with the fact that India’s turbulent
northern state borders China, will Beijing lose to New Delhi?”
Though India is typically wary of provoking
China, several officials have been unusually pugnacious in their responses.
Pema Khandu, the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, took the unusual step
this week of stating that an independent Tibet, not China, is India’s true
northern neighbor.
“Let me get this straight,” Mr. Khandu told journalists.
“China has no business telling us what to do and what not to do because it is
not our next-door neighbor.”
The Dalai Lama, for his part, has been
characteristically jovial to the crowd of journalists trailing after him,
expounding cheerily on subjects from quantum physics to global warming. He
hardly needs to do more, Mr. Barnett said.
“He doesn’t have to do anything except exist
and be his usual beaming self to embarrass the Chinese,” he said. “He will be
right on the border, he will be a complete free person, he will be only meters
away from Chinese territory, but they cannot do anything about it.”
The Dalai Lama also revisited his escape from
Tibet in 1959, when he fled a Chinese military crackdown in Lhasa. Disguised,
and with a small group of aides, he crossed the mountain passes to safety in
Tawang.
He was reunited this week with Naren Chandra
Das, 76, an Indian soldier who escorted him on the last three days. The two
embraced before the cameras: the former soldier painfully thin, his eyes
clouded by cataracts; the monk apple-cheeked and jovial.
“I became old, but he stays the same,” Mr.
Das said. “He is a big man, the king of Tibet.”
Follow Ellen Barry on Twitter @EllenBarryNYT.
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.