China pushes its Panchen Lama on
reluctant Tibet
SIMON DENYER The
Washington Post Sept. 26, 2016
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.