Religious Policy and State Control in Tibet (Scottish Parliament Briefing Paper, 2010)

Executive Summary

“We must enhance the knowledge of the monks and nuns about patriotism and law. Tibetan Buddhism must self-reform ... they must adapt themselves to suit the development and stabilisation of Tibet ... Religious tenets and practices which do not comply with a socialist society should be changed.”

(A Golden Bridge Leading to a New Era, TAR Party document, 1996, p. 39)

Since 1950, the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China has sought to control the majority Buddhist religion and its leadership in Tibet as a means to ensure the integration and security of Tibetan regions within China. The age of the present Dalai

Lama and the question of a possible future re-incarnation brings these issues to the fore. It is likely that the Chinese government and Tibetan government-in-exile will declare separate candidates for the Dalai Lama's re-incarnation. Such a dispute may precipitate large-scale violent unrest across the Tibetan cultural area with potentially grave human rights implications for those involved.

Tibetan Buddhism not only asserts the doctrine of re-incarnation, but recognises a central place for ‘incarnate lamas’ – Buddhist teachers who inherit property and status from one re-incarnation to the next - both in its religious leadership and in its traditional systems of state government. The most important of these have traditionally been the Dalai, Panchen and Karmapa Lamas, although there still exist hundreds of such ‘lineages’ of recognised reincarnations. While PRC policy regarding Tibetan religious leadership followed communist atheist doctrine during the Cultural Revolution period, modern policies have revived the imperial precedent of using the institution of incarnate lamas as a means for pragmatic political control in Tibet and Mongolia. This control is manifest through post-1990 Patriotic Education campaigns in Tibetan areas and, more recently, the 2007 'Management Measures for the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism', which state that all incarnates must be recognised by the Chinese Communist Party’s state apparatus.

Chinese state control of religious leadership was demonstrated in 1995 following the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s recognition of the young Tibetan boy Gendun Choekyi Nyima as the reincarnation of the recently deceased Panchen Lama. PRC authorities placed the boy, his family and many of those involved in detention and announced their own candidate, Gyalcen Norbu. Neither Gendun Choekyi Nyima nor his family have been seen since.

Today, the primary importance of these issues lies in the age of the present Dalai Lama, and the recognition of a future reincarnation.

While the present Dalai Lama has said that he will not be reborn in an “Tibet under Chinese control”, contestation between Beijing and Dharamsala over a future re-incarnation is highly likely. Such a dispute could have repercussions far beyond the religious sphere, sparking large-scale violent unrest across the Tibetan cultural area. Under such a situation, unrest would most likely dissolve into several different factions, and chronic low-level insurgency in Tibet. This problem is exacerbated by a traditionalist focus on the Dalai Lama by the PRC, the international community and Tibetans themselves, to the effective exclusion of other Tibetan political figures, whether religiously or democratically chosen.

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