The exile government that was built by the Dalai Lama to preserve Tibetans’ cultural identity will be put to the test by his eventual succession.
Lhakar Gorshey, a Tibetan circle dance performed on Wednesdays, which are considered a special day of cultural significance, near Tsuglagkhang, also known as Dalai Lama’s Temple complex, this past week in Dharamsala, India.
Just before the Dalai Lama turned 90, he announced that his successor would be selected through the traditional process of reincarnation. Mujib Mashal, The New York Times’s South Asia bureau chief, explains why this process could increase tensions with China.
The Dalai Lama has hinted that he might buck established succession 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.
The aging spiritual leader is looking to prevent Beijing from taking advantage of a power vacuum. But there is pressure to preserve a core element of Tibetan Buddhism.
Tibetan Buddhist monks gathered in Dharamsala, a Himalayan hill town in India, to discuss the future of the Dalai Lama’s spiritual office, as China tries to control who will succeed him.
The crash of an Air India flight shows how the country’s ambitions of rapid growth are often superimposed on urban infrastructures already pushed to the limit.
A plane waiting to take off at the Ahmedabad airport which is surrounded by the cityscape of Ahmedabad, India, in June.
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