XPost: hk.politics, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.indian
XPost: soc.culture.usa, talk.politics.tibet

China pushes its Panchen Lama on reluctant Tibet
In the contest for Tibetan hearts and minds, a 26-year-old Buddhist monk is emerging into the spotlight.

LHASA, TIBET—In the contest for Tibetan hearts and minds, a 26-year-old Buddhist monk is emerging into the spotlight. He is the Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama, and he is being groomed by the Communist Party to fill an important political and religious role in Tibet.

Obedient to the party and loyal to the Chinese state, the “Chinese
Panchen” is being pushed forward as an alternative to the Dalai Lama, a
man widely loved by Tibetans as their supreme religious leader, but reviled
by the Chinese Communist Party as a “wolf in monk’s clothing” trying
to split Tibet from the motherland.

Experts are skeptical about whether ordinary Tibetans will accept this
young man’s credentials: his status as the true reincarnation of the
Panchen Lama—Tibetan Buddhism’s second most important living religious figure—itself the subject of bitter controversy.

Yet there is no doubt that, with the Dalai Lama, now 81, the contest for
Tibet is entering a new phase, and decades of Communist Party preparation
for the older monk’s eventual demise are gathering pace.

In July, the young, bespectacled Gyaltsen Norbu, dressed in Tibetan
religious finery, presided over an important and rare ritual inside
Tibet to a large audience of laypeople, monks and nuns. Since then,
he has been busy visiting monasteries, temples, schools and hospitals
across the high plateau.

“An increasingly active Panchen Lama is expected to mitigate the
Dalai’s influence,” announced the nationalist Global Times tabloid
last month, citing speculation that this process was being encouraged to “prepare for a post-Dalai Lama era.”

Chinese state media said 100,000 people had attended each day of the
four-day gathering, called a Kalachakra ceremony, braving rain and cold weather, and quoted monks praising this young man’s “attainments.”

But on a recent visit to Tibet, it was hard to find much enthusiasm for
the Chinese Panchen Lama, as many people know him.

Indeed, mention the Panchen Lama to many Tibetans and they start
talking about a 6-year-old boy, recognized by the Dalai Lama as the true reincarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995, who immediately disappeared
into Chinese custody and was referred to as the world’s youngest
political prisoner.

His name is Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, and he has not been seen since, but a
Tibetan official claimed last year he was living a normal life and did
not want to be disturbed.

In Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, a shop selling photographs of leading
Tibetan religious figures contained none of the Chinese Panchen, but
several of a predecessor, the 10th Panchen Lama, who was vilified and imprisoned during China’s Cultural Revolution.

There were also many images of the Karmapa Lama, another important
reincarnated lama, who was recognized by China before fleeing to join
the Dalai Lama in exile in India in 2000 at age 14—a decision that embarrassed Beijing but won him credibility among many Tibetans.

One shop worker said there simply wasn’t any demand for images of the
Chinese Panchen, while another man dismissed him as a “Chinese Buddhism official.”

Similarly, images of the ninth and 10th Panchen Lamas were easy to find at
the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibetan Buddhism’s holiest site, but images
of the Chinese Panchen Lama—the 11th—were not on obvious display.

The Tibetan government-in-exile, representing refugees and based in the
Indian hill town of Dharmsala, said Tibetans had been forced to attend
the Panchen Lama’s Kalachakra, with “severe penalties” for failing
to do so.

Sonam Dagpo, the exile administration’s international relations
secretary, called the Kalachakra a “political sham” and said it
was ironic that it had been organized by a “self-declared atheist government” during some of the worst repression of religious freedom
in Tibet.

But whatever Tibetans think of the Chinese Panchen, he will be thrust
into the limelight after the Dalai Lama dies.

The ninth Panchen Lama, for example, was instrumental in the search for
the boy who came to be recognized as the 14th and current incarnation of
the Dalai Lama in the 1930s. The Dalai Lama in turn played a key role in identifying the 10th Panchen Lama in the 1950s.

The Dalai Lama said he might decide not to reincarnate at all, but if he
does it would be in a baby born outside China. Beijing almost certainly
has other plans.

“Ultimately, China has made the necessary plans to find and choose a
Dalai Lama of its own once the present Dalai Lama passes away,” said
Elliot Sperling, a professor at Indiana University and an expert on
Tibet. “And certainly the Chinese Panchen Lama will play a big role in
that process.”

China’s enthronement of both the Karmapa Lama and the Panchen Lama can
be seen as dress rehearsals for the eventual nomination of a new Dalai
Lama, experts said.

“In the case of the Chinese Panchen Lama, the authorities have found
that they can indeed install a lama who is rejected by large segments
of the Tibetan population, and maintain him in his position by simple
coercion and state power,” Sperling said. “This is significant because
they will certainly find little support for a Dalai Lama chosen by the
Chinese state.”

Gyaltsen Norbu was born in Tibet in 1970 to parents who were Communist
Party members, and has lived in Beijing, reportedly under “protective” guard, since being enthroned as Panchen Lama.

He has always stressed his loyalty to the Chinese state, declaring
last year that “the lives of the masses are moving towards wealth and civilization,” and that “the Tibetan future is bright like the endless light of the golden sun.”

He has praised the party for liberating Tibet from feudal serfdom when its troops moved into Lhasa in 1951, but did cause a stir when he expressed
some concerns in a 2015 speech—complaining that official “quotas”
for the number of monks allowed in the Tibetan Autonomous Region were
too low, and there was “a danger of Buddhism existing in name only.”

The International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based advocacy group
for Tibetan democracy and human rights, said those comments may have
reflected concerns relayed to him by senior lamas during his visits to monasteries in Tibet.

Tsering Shakya, a Tibetan historian and scholar at the University of
British Columbia, said the fact that the Panchen Lama does not live in
his traditional seat in Tibet’s Tashi Lhunpo Monastery showed that
monks there still did not accept him.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/09/26/china-pushes-its-panchen-lama-on-reluctant-tibet.html

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