In the Turmoil of Tibet, He’s the Lama Who Stayed Behind

On the night of March 17, 1959, as a hopelessly outgunned anti-Chinese revolt broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual and temporal leader, fled to exile in India.

Three weeks later, Tibet’s titular No. 2 religious leader, the Panchen Lama, walked on stage at a Lhasa meeting hall to the thunderous applause of pro-Beijing Tibetan and Chinese cadres.

The young man had cast his lot with China.

“At that time, I upheld patriotism and did not flee the country,” the Panchen Lama, now 50, declared proudly at a news conference last spring in Beijing.

Longtime Voice

The Panchen Lama long has been a voice opposing Tibetan independence, supporting secular development and promoting the survival of some Tibetan religious traditions. He is now involved in delicate contacts between China and the still-exiled Dalai Lama, 53.

Successful negotiations could bring the return of the Dalai Lama to China and an easing of tension in Tibet, the scene of two anti-Chinese riots, suppressed with bloodshed, since October of last year.

The Panchen Lama’s religious status brings him the respect of many Tibetans, though not the adoration given the Dalai Lama. Others despise him as a collaborator who has helped China maintain its control over the region.

Tibet has sometimes been part of the Chinese empire and sometimes independent. It had de facto independence from 1911, when the Qing Dynasty collapsed, until 1951, when the Communists reimposed Chinese control.

The fundamental issue that divides the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama--and continues to rock Tibet--is whether a Tibetan owes loyalty to all of China or only to Tibet.

It is an issue with roots deep in history. Shortly after his assumption of power in 1642, the fifth Dalai Lama declared that his teacher, the abbot of Tashilhunpo Monastery, was an incarnation of the Amitabha Buddha, and that this abbot and his successors should carry the title of Panchen Lama.

This declaration created a second power base. The Qing Dynasty, which conquered Tibet in 1720, exploited the division by decreeing that the Panchen Lama should rule western Tibet. This marked the beginning of Chinese intrigues playing off the Panchen Lama against the Dalai Lama.

In 1922, the 13th Dalai Lama, predecessor of today’s Dalai Lama, sought to reassert control over Tashilhunpo Monastery. The 9th Panchen Lama fled to China. He died in 1937 without ever returning to the main part of Tibet.

Locating a New Leader

By tradition, reincarnations of both the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama are discovered by religious elders searching among boys born after the previous leader’s death.

The current Panchen Lama was born in February, 1938, in a small village near the northeastern edge of the Tibetan-Qinghai plateau, and was selected in 1941 as one of several boys believed to be the possible reincarnation.

He was sent for training at a monastery, and in 1949 he was installed as the 10th Panchen Lama. This was done with the backing of China’s central government, then controlled by the Nationalist Party.

At his spring press conference, the Panchen Lama said that after the crushing of the 1959 rebellion, he supported the imposition of radical change in Tibet.

“It was I who asked the central government to carry out democratic reforms,” he said.

These “reforms,” which broke the secular power of the monasteries, were sometimes violently enforced.

The Panchen Lama said he objected to excessively “leftist” policies, and that in the early 1960s “some of the wrongdoings were gradually corrected.”

Mao ‘Wasn’t Very Happy’

“In 1962,” he went on, “I found that . . . many problems had popped up during the course of democratic reforms, and I wrote a very, very long report concerning these problems to the central government. I gave some very severe criticisms . . . which probably were too irritating to people like Chairman Mao (Tse-tung). He wasn’t very happy.”

The Panchen Lama said he became a target of “internal criticism” in 1962, was publicly attacked in 1964 and then, shortly after Mao launched the decade-long Cultural Revolution in 1966, he was imprisoned. He spent almost 10 years in confinement, and for much of this period the outside world assumed that he was dead.

The Panchen Lama, after his release, was gradually restored to a number of largely honorary positions, including a vice chairmanship of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

He lives in Beijing, visits Tibet only occasionally, and remains an enigmatic figure. According to foreign press reports and rumors that circulate in Tibet and Beijing, he is married--in violation of celibacy rules--and has a daughter.

As a National People’s Congress leader, he has assumed growing visibility as a spokesman for China’s policy in Tibet, which seeks to combine a limited revival of religious freedom with an absolute ban on pro-independence activities.

Winning the acquiescence of the Dalai Lama in this policy would help China achieve stability in Tibet.

Meet With Dalai Lama

China offered in September to have a high-ranking official meet with the Dalai Lama at “any place he wishes,” so long as the Dalai Lama “drops the idea of an independent Tibet,” according to a report in the official New China News Agency.

The Dalai Lama had proposed in June that Tibet become a self-governing political entity associated with China.

China’s September offer rejected this proposal as a basis for talks, on grounds that it “did not at all relinquish the concept of ‘the independence of Tibet,’ ” the New China News Agency said.

A spokesman for the Dalai Lama announced in New Delhi late in October that Tibetan exile representatives will go to Geneva in January for talks with Chinese officials. Nothing was said about any renunciation of Tibetan independence.

Chinese officials have said they are studying the Dalai Lama’s offer on the talks.

‘Considered Positive’

“The proposal is, of course, considered positive,” said Zhang Xuejin, a spokesman for China’s Nationalities Affairs Commission. “But I can’t say what response we’re going to make because we haven’t worked it out yet.”

The Panchen Lama, in a September interview with the official China Daily, portrayed himself as an important go-between for contacts between Beijing and the Dalai Lama.

He described his relations with the Dalai Lama as those between “brothers of the same faith,” and said that when the Dalai Lama was in London in April of this year, they had “frank talks” by telephone.

The Dalai Lama, who was in Finland when the Panchen Lama’s interview was published, confirmed that he had contacts with the Panchen Lama but denied that any were so recent.

“I have not spoken to the Panchen Lama for at least a year,” he said, according to an Associated Press report.

It was through the Panchen Lama that China has issued its strongest invitation to the Dalai Lama to return to China.

“There is only one condition,” the Panchen Lama said at his spring press conference. “That is, he gives up the idea of Tibetan independence and refrains from engaging in any activity in splitting the motherland, and joins all other fraternal nationalities in building a socialist China and a socialist Tibet.”

Beijing or Lhasa

In what appeared to be a new concession by China, the Panchen Lama implied that if the Dalai Lama returns, he will be free to choose whether to live in Beijing or Lhasa.

But China has not made it clear whether this is an officially approved and sincere offer. The Panchen Lama expressed the offer by stating, in response to a question, that “according to the Chinese constitution, Chinese citizens enjoy the freedom of choosing their own residence, whether Tibet or Beijing.” Often, such freedom is not granted in practice.

With the Dalai Lama in exile, beyond China’s influence or control, Beijing has also sought over the past decade to enhance the Panchen Lama’s stature as a Buddhist leader.

In his September interview, the Panchen Lama said China is setting up a national guiding commission on Tibetan Buddhism, headquartered in Beijing, with himself as its head.

“Panchen described the establishment of the commission as a ‘major step’ toward calm and stability in Tibet and other areas where Tibetan Buddhism has a strong following,” the newspaper said. “He also saw it as helping to develop Buddhism and promote unity with the Han (ethnic Chinese) and other nationalities in China.”