(TibetanReview.net, Apr23’19) – A Chinese government scholar has expressed confidence that India will side with China, not USA or Tibetan Buddhists, on the issue of the Dalai Lama reincarnation question. Beijing has already made it clear that the religious belief system on which the reincarnation system is fundamentally based is entirely subservient to its authoritarian assumption of legal right of final decision over the matter.
“With regard to the core issues, that are central to national interests on China, the Indian government has a very clear policy. It knows that Tibet belongs to China; so on those central core issues concerning China, India has a very clear position,” thehindu.com Apr 21 quoted Mr Wang Xiaobing, research fellow at the China Tibetology Research Centre, as saying.
The Indian newspaper said Wang’s remarks came in response to a question it asked during a media event earlier this month on China’s expectation from India on the issue.
Wang has claimed, very questionably, that China and India had codified their position on Tibet in a string of legal documents in the fifties, and these remained the touchstone for addressing subsequent controversies on this issue.
He has cited the controversial 1954 Sino-India treaty on trade and transportation on the border between Tibet and India, to begin with. This so-called Panchsheel, or the five principles of peaceful coexistence, agreement was stated to have formalised the recognition of Tibet as part of China.
“That shows that these Asian nations — China and India — actually have a very good legacy from history for friendly negotiations and mutual trust and mutual respect,” Wang has said.
That agreement was valid for a period of eight years. And it lapsed with neither side taking up the provision for renewing it in the face of souring bilateral relations. And after the Sino-Indian War of 1962, bilateral ties remained in a deep freeze for nearly two decades.
The report said that during his interaction with foreign media organised by the All China Journalists Association, Mr Wang fielded a string of questions on the Dalai Lama’s interview with the Reuters, in which the Tibetan leader had said his successor could be born in India, that “nobody will trust, nobody will respect” a Dalai Lama chosen by China.
Atheist China claims the right to recognize the next Dalai Lama on the basis of a law it passed in 2007, but reincarnation is believed to take place in accordance with the purposive intentions and wishes of the person who is seen to have the power to choose when and where he would take his rebirth.
A US Congressional leader recently made it clear that his government’s recognition of the Dalai Lama reincarnation will be based only on the wishes of the Tibetan leader himself. “Let me be very clear – The United States Congress will never recognise a Dalai Lama that is selected by the Chinese,” said Senator Cory Gardner chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy said during a hearing on Apr 9.
