As the Dalai Lama Turns 90, His Exiled Nation Faces a Moment of Truth
The Tibetan spiritual leader has vowed to reveal a succession plan when his birthday is celebrated on July 6. He may get creative to thwart Chinese interference.
By Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar
Photographs by Atul Loke
Reporting from Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan administration in exile have been based for over half a century
Over the nearly seven decades since the Dalai Lama led his flock of tens of thousands out of Tibet to escape Chinese persecution, he put himself to the grueling work of sustaining a nation in exile.
As both the spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhists, he established a little democracy in the Indian Himalayas, complete with a parliament and all its routine bickering and beauty. He entrenched a bureaucracy that encouraged a culture of service among a scattered people. In refugee settlements across India, the Tibetan administration runs schools, clinics, monasteries, agricultural cooperatives and even old-age homes.
But as the Dalai Lama turns 90 next month, Tibetans in exile are anxious about the fate of their stateless nation.
The man who has been Tibetans’ binding force and most recognizable face is growing increasingly frail. His goal of returning his people to their homeland remains distant, with China working to finish the task of crushing the Tibetan movement for autonomy. And as Tibetans confront a future of continued exile, the United States and other global powers have become more unreliable in their support.
“We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst,” said Tsering Yangchen, a member of Tibet’s parliament in exile, invoking a refrain from the Dalai Lama himself.
When his birthday is celebrated on July 6, the Dalai Lama has promised, he will reveal a plan for deciding on his successor that factors in the complexities of the moment. The most pressing is dealing with China’s efforts to hijack the process.
Under Tibetan tradition, the search for a Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, who becomes his successor, begins only upon the incumbent’s death. After the next Dalai Lama is identified as a baby, there can be a gap of nearly two decades until he is groomed and takes the reins.
The Dalai Lama has hinted that he might buck these established practices as part of an apparent strategy to throw off the Chinese and avoid a vacuum that Beijing can exploit as it seeks to control Tibetan Buddhism.
He has said that his successor will be born in a free country, indicating that the next Dalai Lama could come from among Tibetan exiles, who number about 140,000, half of them in India. He has also said that his successor could be an adult, and not necessarily a man.
China already has a blueprint for inserting itself in Tibetan successions. After the 10th Panchen Lama, as Tibet’s second highest spiritual figure is known, died in 1989, the boy whom the Dalai Lama recognized as the successor went missing in Tibet when he was 6. He has not been seen since.
In his stead, China selected and promoted its own Panchen Lama. Earlier this month, that lama met with the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, and reaffirmed his allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party.
But interfering in the succession of the Dalai Lama runs the risk of provoking unrest among the roughly six million people in Tibet.
“The Dalai Lama has been out of his house and country for 65 years, and that has already created a great sense of pain, anger, frustration and disappointment among the Tibetans inside Tibet,” said Tenzin Tsundue, a Tibetan activist and poet. “This will, you know, burst into volcano.”
The succession question has become more urgent as the Dalai Lama has become more frail, with his public engagements increasingly restricted.
Before he conducted one of his limited teaching sessions last fall, he traveled the short distance from his residence to the temple in a golf cart. He was helped to his seat by two monks.
When the Dalai Lama sneezed, many in the crowd looked up with worry. A monk stepped up to wipe the corner of his mouth. Among the questions that the Dalai Lama took during the 30-minute session: How to be a Tibetan Buddhist in the 21st century?
“Logic and reason,” he answered, “not just blind faith in the teachings of Buddha.”
More than eight decades ago, the Dalai Lama’s ascension was accompanied by another perilous period that instilled a fear of discontinuity that has shaped his lifetime of work.
After his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama, died in 1933 at age 57, a search committee set out to identify a child who could grow into Tibet’s new spiritual leader.
The boy was discovered after two years of effort. The committee arrived at the family’s door during a harsh Tibetan winter, as they were clearing four feet of snow, the future Dalai Lama’s mother wrote in her memoir.
Moving the boy to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, required paying ransoms to local warlords. His education, as well as his assumption of political leadership, was fast-tracked because the Chinese government was using the vacuum to tighten its noose around the autonomous region.
If a similar gap were to happen after the current Dalai Lama’s death — with the added challenge of a nation now in exile — it would be “a disaster,” said Lobsang Tenzin, a Tibetan educator who is better known as the Samdhong Rinpoche.
He served as prime minister in the Tibetan refugee administration and has known the Dalai Lama for more than 60 years. From the start, the Samdhong Rinpoche said, the Dalai Lama wanted to put in institutions and a culture that could hold a traumatized people together in exile after he was gone.
“In the first meeting, he told me that now the monks cannot remain just as monks would — just meditating and studying,” the Samdhong Rinpoche said about the early months of their exile, when he was still a teenager. “That we should learn from the Christian monks and nuns. They always work as nurses or teachers or doctors.”
In the decades that followed, the Samdhong Rinpoche had a front-row seat to the Dalai Lama’s efforts to put some distance between himself and the institutions he was building on lands he had managed to acquire from the Indian government.
He wanted his political powers to be devolved to a self-reliant democracy while he remained the spiritual head of the Tibetan people.
“His Holiness was adamant that sooner or later His Holiness should be irrelevant,” the Samdhong Rinpoche said.
That was easier said than done, given the Dalai Lama’s singular role as the leader of his people and as an international celebrity with a vast fund-raising network.
But his political position was devolved partly in 2001 and entirely in 2011, when Tibetans elected a sikyong, the equivalent of a president, through a vote held across refugee settlements in India and in other Tibetan communities around the world.
“He’s my boss,” the Dalai Lama said at an event in 2012 when he introduced the leader elected by the people. “Although when it comes to spiritual affairs, I’m still his boss!”
The current sikyong is Penpa Tsering, 62. Like his predecessor, he was born in a refugee camp in India and has never been to Tibet.
Mr. Tsering’s administration runs on a modest annual budget of around $35 million. About one-tenth of that comes from small contributions from exiles, akin to membership dues. The rest comes from countries like the United States, India and European nations.
But the Trump administration has cut aid, including millions of dollars meant to help build the capacity of Tibetan institutions. Questions now also hover over India’s strong support of Tibetans, as New Delhi has remained silent over the succession question while navigating fraught relations with Beijing.
Twice a year, the 45-member Tibetan Parliament meets in Dharamsala, India, to approve the budget and review the government’s performance. Most of its members have other jobs, like teaching or running restaurants.
They make heavy use of social media to weave together a nation now in its third generation of exile. The sikyong, during an interview last fall, joked that his role was that of a digital “tour guide” helping Tibetan people connect.
Much of his time is spent on the road, trying to fill the Dalai Lama’s huge shoes in his advocacy efforts.
“Earlier, we didn’t have to work that hard because His Holiness was there,” Mr. Tsering said.
“We don’t command that kind of respect,” he added. “I’m a very ordinary Tibetan from a farmers’ background.”
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Hari Kumar covers India, based out of New Delhi. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.