The Dalai under the Bamboo Hedge

The links within the following translation weren’t part of the Chinese original – JR.

Huanqiu Shibao‘s reporter Tan Liya (谭利娅) reviews the Indian press, more specifically the India Times:

According to the India Times on February 11, the Dalai Lama, in a speech held in an Indian city, went as far as saying that India has more reason to claim sovereignty over Tibet than has China” (达赖喇嘛10日在印度一个城市发表演讲时竟声称，”印度比中国更有理由声称对西藏拥有主权”). Some Chinese experts say that this isn’t the first time that the Dalai ingratiates himself with India, but don’t rule out that this speech marks the next step to “add momentum” to “Tibetan independence” activities.

The Dalai, on February 10, reportedly spoke to a few Tibetan associations  gathered (聚集的一些藏人社团) in the city of Jodhpur in western India. He said that the origins of Buddhism were in India, and that Buddhism was still practised along India’s border to China, from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh (which is our southern Tibet). Discussing the “closeness” of Tibetans and Indians, he said that “India has more reason than China to claim sovereignty over Tibet”.

In his speech, he also said, “India has always stood by Tibet, never disappointed us, therefore we owe India a lot of human kindness”.  He didn’t forget to attack the Chinese government’s human rights system, saying that although China’s economy developed rapidly, but India did “better than China”  in protecting human rights and freedom. The Dalai, in his speech, also incited his listeners by saying that everyone should continue efforts to “uphold their own culture, tradition, and values to enable [their culture, tradition and values – JR] to survive”. (达赖在发言中还鼓动听众称，大家应继续努力“坚决维护自己的文化、传统和价值，让它们得以生存。”)

The Dalai had previously claimed that he were a “son of India”, which was refuted by experts who pointed out that this was intended to stirr trouble in Sino-Indian relations, and to pull India into his vortex of splitticism and anti-China.  China Tibetology Research Center’s Lian Xiangmin (廉湘民), director of scientific research, told a Huanqiu Shibao reporter in an interview on February 11 that this wasn’t the first time that the Dalai ingratiated himself with India. Director Lian believes that on the one hand, the Dalai, currently “living under another’s house” (寄人篱下, jìrén lí xià), needs to say such things to “ingratiate himself” with India. On the other hand, this also showed that the Dalai clique (达赖集团) hadn’t changed their attitude in seeking “Tibetan independence”, and also, the time he had chosen, shortly before the sensitive time before March, was possibly intended to “add momentum” to the next step of “Tibetan independence”.

The India Times article can be found here. No comments there yet, but 101 on Huanqiu, less than four hours after publication.

In January 2010, when the Dalai Lama referred to himself as a son of India, Saibal Dasgupta, in an India Times article, remarked that in their reactions, an official organ (the China Tibet Information Centre) had referred to Tibet’s spiritual leader as a Chinese citizen, which had rarely happened before. It was also the first time that Chinese officials had openly elaborated on its worries that the Tibetan leader might actually change his citizenship.

Chinese leaders were worried that the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama could take place outside China and far from its control, Dasgupta wrote.

____________

Vocabulary
寄人 (jìrén) – people one depends upon
篱 (lí) – a bamboo hedge, or bamboo fence