As Dalai fever hits Europe with the fourteenth Dalai Lama on another world tour, Tibet has never been more topical. The recent brutal crackdown in Lhasa and elsewhere was a timely reminder of the realities of life in Tibet under Chinese rule. The possibilities for dialogue look relatively bleak with Tensin Gyatso, the fourteenth reincarnated incumbent, regularly vilified as a monkish splittist who seeks to dismember the Chinese Motherland.
Another aspect of the Tibetan tragedy is clear: the party leadership in Beijing is undoubtedly playing the long game: wait out Tensin Gyatso’s death (he is now 72) and control the succession. This is a strategy already implemented with the Panchen Lama whose current incarnation remains under house arrest somewhere in China. But this would be an immense mistake as the current Dalai Lama has persistently preached a peaceful reconciliation between China and the Tibetans, whose huge and culturally distinctive ethnic region is the size of Western Europe. In this his patience is impressive, reflecting perhaps both a Buddhist attachment to non-violence and a pragmatic grasp of the size of the Chinese military presence on the Tibetan Plateau. The recent eruption of frustration in Tibet in defying the 500,000 troops is a measure of the level of frustration among young Tibetans at what they see as the dilution of their culture. In preventing serious unrest, dialogue with the Dalai Lama, currently the only figure able to unite the Tibetans, seems a rational course of action.
As this brisk and efficient run-through of the history of the institution shows, Tensin Gyatso is deserving of his Nobel Laureateship not least in comparison to his predecessors. It’s a proficient overview of the Dalai Lamas that avoids much of the persistent sentimentality of writing about Tibet. As Norman suggests, Tensin Gyatso is at the very least (and his humility is well documented) ‘an exemplary achievement of traditional Tibetan culture, someone who strives every moment to conform his life to the pattern of Chen’rezig, Boddhissatva of Compassion’.
