The selection of a successor to the Dalai Lama, the non secular head of Tibetan Buddhists, is a matter of riveting curiosity not just for followers of his faith, but in addition China, India, and the United States, for strategic causes. The Nobel peace laureate, who turns 90 on Sunday (July 6, 2025), is considered one in all the world’s most influential figures, with a following extending effectively past Buddhism.
HOW WAS HE CHOSEN?
Tibetan custom holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated after his dying.
The 14th Dalai Lama, born as Lhamo Dhondup on July 6, 1935, to a farming household in northeastern Tibet, was recognized as such a reincarnation when he was simply two years previous. A search get together despatched by the Tibetan authorities made the resolution on the foundation of a number of indicators, akin to a imaginative and prescient revealed to a senior monk, the Dalai Lama’s web site says. The searchers had been satisfied when the toddler recognized belongings of the thirteenth Dalai Lama with the phrase, “It’s mine, it’s mine”.
In the winter of 1940, Lhamo Thondup was taken to the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the capital of immediately’s Tibet Autonomous Region, and formally put in as the non secular chief of Tibetans.
HOW WILL HIS SUCCESSOR BE CHOSEN?
In his e book “Voice for the Voiceless“, launched in March 2025, the Dalai Lama stated his successor would be born exterior China.
The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in northern India since 1959, after fleeing a failed rebellion towards the rule of Mao Zedong’s Communists. He wrote that he would launch particulars about his succession round the time of his ninetieth birthday.
The Tibetan parliament-in-exile, based mostly in the Himalayan city of Dharamshala, like the Dalai Lama, says a system has been established for the exiled authorities to proceed its work whereas officers of the Gaden Phodrang Foundation will be charged with discovering and recognising his successor. The present Dalai Lama arrange the basis in 2015 to “maintain and support the tradition and institution of the Dalai Lama” with regard to his spiritual and non secular duties, it says on its web site. Its senior officers embrace a number of of his aides.
WHAT DOES CHINA SAY?
China says its leaders have the proper to approve the Dalai Lama’s successor, as a legacy from imperial instances. A variety ritual, by which the names of doable reincarnations are drawn from a golden urn, dates to 1793, throughout the Qing dynasty.
Chinese officers have repeatedly stated the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama ought to be determined by following nationwide legal guidelines that decree use of the golden urn and the beginning of reincarnations inside China’s borders.
But many Tibetans suspect any Chinese position in the choice as being a ploy to exert affect on the neighborhood.
It is inappropriate for Chinese Communists, who reject faith, “to meddle in the system of reincarnation of lamas, let alone that of the Dalai Lama,” the Buddhist chief has stated.
In his e book, he requested Tibetans to not settle for “a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China,” referring to the nation by its official identify.
Beijing manufacturers the Dalai Lama, who gained the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for retaining alive the Tibetan trigger, as a “separatist” and prohibits shows of his image or any public present of devotion in direction of him.
In March 2025, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson stated the Dalai Lama was a political exile with “no right to represent the Tibetan people at all”.
China denies suppressing the rights of the Tibetan individuals, and says its rule ended serfdom in, and introduced prosperity to, a backward area.
WHAT ROLE COULD INDIA AND THE U.S. PLAY?
Apart from the Dalai Lama, India is estimated to be house to greater than 100,000 Tibetan Buddhists who’re free to review and work there.
Many Indians revere him, and worldwide relations specialists say his presence in India offers New Delhi some sort of leverage with rival China.
The United States, which faces rising competitors from China for world dominance, has repeatedly stated it’s dedicated to advancing the human rights of Tibetans.
U.S. lawmakers have beforehand stated they’d not permit China to affect the selection of the Dalai Lama’s successor.
In 2024, then U.S. President Joe Biden signed a regulation that presses Beijing to resolve a dispute over Tibet’s calls for for better autonomy.
