A Tenacious Fighter’s Low-Key U.S. Quest : Exiled Dalai Lama Quietly Presses His 28-Year Campaign for Tibetan Liberty

For one of the world’s most tenacious fighters, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is disarmingly serene.

The manner is unprepossessing, almost self-effacing, as comfortable as the maroon monk’s robe and lace-up oxfords he wears. The voice, rich and resonant, is given to laughter and bursts of Tibetan when the proper word is elusive in English. The cheekbones are high and sculpted, the smile as broad as the Tsangpo River that irrigates his arid, otherworldly homeland of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of the world’s 6 million Tibetan Buddhists, is one of the world’s most famous refugees, forced into exile after the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1949 and suppressed a rebellion there in 1959. But although his adversary is the world’s most populous nation, he is nearly three decades into his fight for independence from Beijing and says he is far from alone.

World Opinion Is Helpful

“I feel, you see, I can serve much better from outside Tibet,” he said Monday, his gesturing hands accenting virtually every phrase. “In the meantime, world opinion is also very helpful.”

During a 10-day U.S. visit, he is meeting with congressional leaders to press the cause of Tibetan independence, conferring with former President Jimmy Carter, who visited the region in June, and giving teachings on Buddhism as well as participating in interfaith services.

From Washington, he will carry his message to Bloomington, Ind., Washington, N.J., and New York, where actor Richard Gere will announce plans for a proposed Tibetan cultural institution in the United States.

The Washington stopover coincides with Senate consideration of a House-passed resolution condemning Tibetan human-rights violations by China, including 1.2 million deaths--one-sixth of the population--imprisonment and torture of hundreds of thousands, and the destruction of more than 6,200 monasteries containing priceless art and literature.

If the massiveness of the ruination in Tibet seems dramatic, the details of the life of the Dalai Lama, whose given name is Tenzin Gyatso, are no less so.

In 1937, at the age of 2, he was recognized as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th manifestation of Chenrezig, the Buddha of compassion. Traveling from Lhasa, a delegation of lamas arrived in the remote village of Taktser in disguise after prophecies by Tibet’s three state oracles indicated that the 14th Dalai Lama would be found there.

Before the child Tenzin Gyatso, they placed several articles that had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama, along with fake duplicates. Asked to choose one object from each pair, the boy unhesitatingly picked all the genuine items. In addition, he bore the eight physical marks--ranging from large ears to stripes like a tiger’s on the back of his legs--that help distinguish the Dalai Lama from all other men.

The joyous lamas knew they had found the reincarnation.

While still a teen-ager, the Dalai Lama assumed full political power as head of state after the Chinese occupied Tibet. And, as relations with Peking deteriorated, he fled the massive 1,000-room Potala Palace, establishing the Tibetan government-in-exile in the hill town of Dharmsala, in northern India.

The question of whether the Dalai Lama--certainly the most worldly wise and political of his lineage--will ever be able to return to his homeland still looms large, although prospects are generally considered dimmer than they were even two years ago.

Representatives of the government-in-exile had been negotiating with Chinese officials about such a visit since the early 1980s, but the talks broke down after China insisted that the Dalai Lama renounce the cause of Tibetan independence and spend most of his stay in Peking. Now, many observers feel that the time for reconciliation may have passed.

But for the Dalai Lama, the question is far from settled. He said in an interview that he remains in direct contact with the Chinese government and has not ruled out a visit home.

And in an address to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on Monday, he urged “earnest negotiations” between the Chinese and his government and proposed a five-point peace plan as a “first step” toward resolving the future status of Tibet.

“We wish to approach this subject in a reasonable and realistic way, in a spirit of frankness and conciliation and with a view to finding a solution that is in the long-term interest of all--the Tibetans, the Chinese and all other peoples concerned,” he said.

Then, in a display of the fighter’s spirit underlying the mild exterior, he told the congressmen that today the Tibetan people “are, at best, second-class citizens in their own country, deprived of the most basic democratic rights and freedoms. All power is wielded by colonial officials of the Chinese Communist Party and army.”

Indeed, one of the Chinese policies that worries Tibetans most--and one the Dalai Lama addressed on Capitol Hill--is that of importing ethnic Han Chinese onto the high Himalayan plateau.

“Tibetans,” he declared, “will soon be no more than a tourist attraction and relic of a noble past.”

John F. Avedon, an author and expert on the region, reported in Senate testimony last week that this new Sinocization has been rapid--much of it since January, 1983. Excluding members of the People’s Liberation Army, 7.5 million Chinese now live in greater Tibet, compared to 6 million Tibetans, Avedon said.

The Chinese disclaim any attempt to erase Tibetan culture through the population transfer. But in an interview last spring with the British Broadcasting Corp., Dangzin, the deputy secretary of the regional Communist Party committee, said: “We must firmly establish the idea that Han nationality cannot be separated from minority nationalities and minority allowances cannot be separated from the Han nationality.”

And while the Dalai Lama worries about his people becoming a tourist attraction, he acknowledges that Tibet’s lure to increasing numbers of tourists, encouraged by China’s eagerness to collect foreign currency, ultimately may be desirable.

Economic Problems

Tibet has had chronic--and severe--economic problems, although conditions have improved since the beginning of the decade: The average per-capita income had soared 40% by 1985 to $110 a year. Nonetheless, it remains among China’s poorest regions.

Thus, the 30,000 Americans and other travelers who visited Tibet last year--up from a scant 1,500 only five years ago--inject desperately needed funds into an economy where they is virtually no industry.

China now intends to let 100,000 tourists a year glimpse Tibet by 1990, bringing some $83 million into the region, and in an effort to benefit from neighboring Nepal’s burgeoning tourist trade opened an air link between Lhasa and Kathmandu earlier this month.

The advent of large-scale tourism has posed a particularly perplexing dilemma for Tibetans, however. According to Avedon, many “are gratified that foreigners are being permitted in. They are confident we will see the reality of Tibet and take out the message of its inalienable difference from China.”

But one Tibetan critic of Peking’s policy recently wrote bluntly: “A holiday in Tibet is subsidizing the eventual extinction of the Tibetan race.”

Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama says, the growing interest in Tibet may “unconsciously impact on the Chinese mind.” He hopes that more travelers will be allowed outside the major cities of Lhasa and Xigaze, out into the countryside where, he says, they may find a “deeper reality.”

He adds, leaning forward in his chair and adjusting his steel-rimmed glasses, “On the surface, the Chinese may not welcome this. . . . But eventually this will happen, because the Chinese want to show the outside world their image. They want to show a reasonable or beautiful image to the outside.”

Even as that image is being carefully crafted, another crucial question awaits an answer: whether, as many predict, this will be “the last Dalai Lama,” or whether there will be a 15th.

In the book “In Exile From the Land of Snows,” Avedon’s best-selling account of Tibet since the Chinese invasion, the current titleholder himself has acknowledged: “Even if the institution of the Dalai Lama does remain, the method of choosing the new Dalai Lama may not be the old, traditional way.”

It is a venerable institution--one that came into being in the 17th Century when Tibet’s leader was granted the Mongol title dalai, or “ocean of wisdom.” But the current Dalai Lama has long considered retiring to become a “simple Buddhist monk,” breaking with the tradition of hundreds of years and choosing his own successor.

First, he says, it must be decided if the institution of Dalai Lama, based on reincarnation, is still useful--or whether, for example, a seniority system might be wiser.

“In that case,” he says, swaying with laughter, “I might get a sort of pension for retirement. That is good.

“Whether it is practical or not, in the foreseeable future, I don’t know. But if such things can materialize, I think, good--for me personally, very good. Very happy.”