Slandering Karmapa

[militaryforpeace]

Karmapa’s office may be guilty of financial mishandling, but to accuse him of being China’s agent is unethical.

What intrigues me about the controversy over the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, is whether home ministry officials suspect him of being a Chinese agent or of financial improprieties. It would be dishonest and dangerous if they are using the latter to imply the former so that he can be replaced by their favourite who is a rival candidate for the title. That trivialises national security to serve a private purpose.

Nar Bahadur Bhandari, Sikkim’s former chief minister and present head of the pradesh Congress committee, who is neither Tibetan nor Buddhist but has had considerable experience of smear tactics, strong-arm methods and judicial persecution, says he can ‘sniff a conspiracy.’ He is not the only one.

There is a contradiction between what officials are supposed to be investigating in Sidhbari where the Karmapa lives and their attempts through anonymously leaked comments to demonise him as China’s ‘strategic asset’ in ‘constant touch with the Chinese authorities.’ In deploring the resultant ‘fiction masquerading as journalism,’ the Karmapa’s office refrains from saying that journalistic slander follows official thinking.
First, the background. Dorje was a Tibetan child of eight when he was recognised as the incarnation of the 16th Karmapa who had died in 1981. The Chinese authorities accepted his status, and he was crowned at Tsurphu monastery near Lhasa, seat of the Karma Kagyu school of Buddhism.

By the time he was 14, Dorje was disillusioned with the Chinese and fled to India in a dramatic escape that captured the world’s imagination. The reasons he gave included pressure to attack the Dalai Lama and cozy up to Beijing’s anointed Panchen Lama, regain Rumtek monastery in Sikkim where his predecessor had established a second seat, receive the teachings of gurus who had received them orally from the 16th Karmapa, receive the Dalai Lama’s blessings, and spread the Karma Kagyu message abroad like his predecessor.

He could not do that from Tibet. “India, in contrast to communist China, is a free country, a democratic country that is based on the rule of law” he told his followers last week, advising patience because “the truth will become clear in time... There is no need to worry.”

The controversy arose when a crore of rupees was found in the possession of two agents of a landlord from whom the Karmapa’s office was buying a plot of land for a monastery and residence. The seller wanted cash payment which is legal, and all government departments cleared the purchase. Nevertheless, the discovery prompted several searches of the Sidhbari monastery where the equivalent of about Rs 8 crore was found in some 20 different currencies, including Chinese yuan.

Red-tape

The explanation is that all unsolicited cash donations would have been paid into the Karmapa’s Saraswati Charitable Trust if permission to do so had not been withdrawn after the first $1,00,000. His Holiness then registered the Karma Garchen Trust but the application to receive foreign donations under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act has been pending since 2002.

Forced to retain donations as they come, the monastery ensures that every penny, cent or yuan (under 10 per cent of the total despite the hullabaloo over Chinese currency) is ‘diligently recorded.’ It would have been wiser to refuse donations until receiving FCRA sanction but that would have meant waiting forever while the Sidhbari community starved.

It would have made bureaucratic sense if the authorities had invoked the law and prosecuted the Karmapa and his office for this offence. Instead, our shadowy officials embarked on a campaign of slander claiming without a shred of evidence that Chinese SIM cards had been seized and that the Enforcement Directorate held records of conversations between His Holiness and Chinese officials. The media was fed with tales of Beijing financing the Karmapa to buy up land in the sensitive border region to set up a string of ‘China study centres’ to influence public opinion in favour of China.

Indian Intelligence claims to have always known of this devious long-term stratagem. They also claim to have played along, expecting reciprocal concessions. Instead, China hardened its stand on Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh, provoking an intelligence officer’s outburst, “We have kept quiet for too long!”

India should decide whether it is accusing the Karmapa of financial violations or of being ‘a security threat.’ The former is a household offence. Atal Behari Vajpayee’s famous comment about every parliamentarian starting his legislative career with the lie of a false election return can be repeated every time someone buys or sells a flat or consults a lawyer or even doctor, since both demand cash and neither usually issues receipts.

His office — not the Karmapa himself for he has nothing to do with business matters — may be guilty in that sense but to use that evidence to accuse him of being China’s agent is exploiting security concerns for some other purpose.

Judging from media clues, that purpose is to replace him with a rival candidate with an influential and persuasive sponsor. If so, it wastes public money, belittles the national interest and persecutes an innocent youth to serve a private lobby.

 

[ajtr]

The Karmapa fits Beijing’s post-Dalai Lama plan​

Anirban Bhaumik

Ugyen Trinley Dorje may find a way to explain the huge amount of Chinese yuan and other foreign currencies the Himachal Pradesh police found at his transit home in Gyuto tantric monastery in Dharamshala.

But what he may find really difficult is to allay suspicions about his links with Beijing and get a clear endorsement from the Indian government to his claim to be the Karmapa — the spiritual leader of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Not that the neatly packed bundles of Chinese yuan found in the monastery have suddenly triggered suspicion about his collusion with Beijing. Ugyen can indeed claim he received the foreign currencies as offerings from his devotes, who come not only from the Tibetan refugee settlements in India and other countries, but also from Chinese-occupied Tibet. There are, however, other reasons for which New Delhi has not been comfortable with Ugyen. And the doubts date back to January 2000, when he arrived in Dharamshala after a dramatic ‘escape’ from Tolung Tsurphu monastery in central Tibet.

Many in New Delhi’s security establishment were not ready to buy Ugyen’s thriller-like story of escape to India — purportedly evading the security rings of the People’s Liberation Army and China’s intelligence agencies. They felt it would not have been possible for the 14-year-old boy monk and his entourage to hoodwink the Chinese security agencies, unless of course Beijing deliberately looked the other way and let him escape to India.

In 1992 the Dalai Lama had confirmed Ugyen as the reincarnation of the 16th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje. The Chinese government too accepted him as the 17th Karmapa — perhaps the last such instance in which Beijing concurred with Dalai Lama. Three years later, the Chinese government propped up Gyaltsen Norbu as the reincarnation of 10th Panchen Lama, against Dalai Lama’s choice Gedhun Choekyi Nyima.

Despite doubts that his ‘great escape’ might be stage-managed, New Delhi did open its door for Ugyen, as was advised by Dalai Lama himself. Having recognised him as the Karmapa, Dalai Lama in fact could not have risked an outrage from the Kagyupas by advising New Delhi to slam the door on their highly-revered leader. That was the time when Dalai Lama was spearheading the process to further democratise the Tibetan government-in-exile and the next year — 2001 — was to see the refugee community around the world for the first time directly electing a Kalon Tripa or prime minister. So he needed unstinted support from the Kagyupas. Besides, it was believed that even if Ugyen was working for Beijing, he could do less harm to the struggle against Chinese rule over Tibet, if he was allowed to come to India.

Though Ugyen finally got refugee status in 2001, New Delhi never publicly recognised him as the Karmapa. Significantly, neither did it ever reject Ugyen’s challenger Trinley Thaye Dorje’s claim to the title.

Under constant watch

Over the past 11 years, Ugyen has been living in Dharamshala, under New Delhi’s constant watch. Though he travelled around the country, the Indian government never allowed him to visit Sikkim’s Rumtek monastery. The monastery, built by the 9th Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje in the 16th century, was the principal seat of the Karmapas in India. The dispute over the 17th Karmapa triggered legal battles as well as violent clashes among the monks in the monastery. Its treasure trove included the traditional black crown of the Karmapa. No wonder, Ugyen is keen to go there and don the crown to consolidate his claim. But New Delhi is unlikely to let him do that anytime soon.

New Delhi has also been reluctant to let him travel abroad. He was allowed to go to the US only once in 2008. His request for permission to travel to the US and Europe again in early 2010 was turned down.

With the probe into the source of the foreign currencies found in the Gyuto tantric monastery still on, it may be too early to call Ugyen ‘a Chinese spy’. However, that Beijing had a plan to use him to lessen Dalai Lama’s influence in Tibet was admitted by Ugyen himself in an interview to ‘Time’ in 2001.

Ugyen, as the Karmapa, indeed fits well into Beijing’s plan to fizzle out the Tibetans’ struggle by taking advantage of the chaotic situation, which is likely to prevail after the demise of the current and 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. There may be many claims and counter-claims over the next incarnation of Dalai Lama, who has so far been the global face of the Tibetans’ struggle for genuine autonomy for Tibet. In the absence of any consensus on the next Dalai Lama, Beijing may indeed try to project Karmapa as the new leader of Tibet, as there is a dispute over Panchen Lama’s incarnation too.

The Chinese government may also have plans to use the Karmapa to dig out and breathe fresh life into the long-buried enmity between Kagyupas led by him and the Gelug sect that the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama belong to.

Tibet is the most important strategic card India holds to manage its complex relation with an increasingly assertive China and it has to be kept relevant beyond the lifetime of the reigning 14th Dalai Lama. It must pre-empt the Chinese attempts to fizzle out the struggle of the Tibetans by taking advantage of disputes over incarnations and pitting one sect against another. The best way is to support Dalai Lama’s ongoing efforts to democratise the exiled Tibetans so that the democratically elected people can rightfully inherit the political leadership of their struggle after the 75-year-old monk breathes his last.

 

[ajtr]

Sceptre and altar: the Karmapa case​

The intrigue surrounding one of Tibetan Buddhism’s highest figures has compelling political implications
Brahma Chellaney

The police seizure of large sums of Chinese currency from the Indian monastery of the China-anointed but now India-based Karmapa Lama—one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism—has revived old suspicions about his continuing links with China, and forced him to deny that he is an “agent of Beijing”.

The Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama and the Karmapa Lama are the three highest figures in Tibetan Buddhism, representing parallel institutions that have intermittently been at odds with each other. China, seeking to tighten its grip on Tibet, has worked to control the traditional process of finding the reincarnation of any senior lama who passes away.

In 1992, Beijing helped select and install the seven-year-old Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the 17th Karmapa Lama. He became the first reincarnated “living Buddha” recognized and ratified by Communist China. But in 1999, Dorje made a stunning escape to India through Nepal. This attracted the world’s attention, but the apparent ease with which he and his entourage managed to flee also caused deep suspicion.

Earlier, in 1995, China had installed its own marionette as the Panchen Lama after its security agencies abducted the Tibetans’ six-year-old appointee. The official Panchen Lama simply disappeared. Now Beijing is waiting for the current Dalai Lama—who is over 75 and has had bouts of ill health—to pass away so that it can anoint his successor. The Dalai Lama, however, wants his successor to come from the “free world”. This has set the stage for the emergence of two rival Dalai Lamas—one chosen by Beijing, and the other by the Tibetan exile movement.

In fact, there are already two rival Karmapa Lamas—the Chinese-appointed one lives in the Dalai Lama’s shadow in Dharamsala, while the other has set up shop in New Delhi. The Indian government has sought to maintain peace by barring both contenders from the sacred Rumtek monastery in Sikkim.

In that light, the discovery of 1.1 million yuan and large sums of other foreign currency has ignited a fresh controversy over Dorje. While his supporters have staged protests against the police raid and questioning of their leader, Indian officials have expressed apprehension that China may be funding Dorje as part of a plan to influence the Karmapa’s Kagyu sect, which controls important monasteries along the Indo-Tibetan border.

Himalayan communities have historically been closely integrated. But with Tibet locked behind an iron curtain since the 1951 Chinese annexation, local Himalayan economies and cultures have weakened. Tibetan Buddhism, however, still serves as the common link, with the Karmapa’s Kagyu sect a powerful influence on the Indian side.

The cash haul has reopened a question that arose in 1999: Was Dorje’s flight to India stage-managed by Beijing, or was he a genuine defector who simply got fed up with living in a gilded Chinese cage?

China had several possible incentives to stage his “escape”. One reason could have been to strengthen his claim to the title at a time when the rival contender (backed by important interests in India, Bhutan and Taiwan) appeared to be gaining ground. A more potent reason was the fact that the Kagyu school’s holiest institution is the old Rumtek monastery, where the sect’s all-powerful “black hat” is located. The hat, believed to have been woven from the hairs of female deities, is the symbolic crown of the Karmapa. Had Dorje remained in Tibet, he could have lost out to his rival.

Beijing would also have drawn comfort from the fact that in the murky intra-Tibetan politics, its Karmapa, oddly, had the Dalai Lama’s backing. The latter belongs to the contending Gelug school and, according to Tibetan tradition, has no role in selecting or endorsing a Karmapa. Yet, driven by political calculations, the Dalai Lama gave his approval. Historically, the Dalai Lamas and Karmapa Lamas had vied with each other for influence until the Gelug school gained ascendancy over the Kagyu order.

The last Karmapa died in 1981, and the raging controversy over the successor also epitomizes a struggle for control of the $1.5 billion assets of the Kagyu order, the richest in Tibetan Buddhism. Indian security agencies were supposed to have kept Dorje under close surveillance, yet today they suspect him of receiving funds illicitly from China.

Unlike its increasingly vituperative attacks on the Dalai Lama, China, tellingly, has not denounced (or derecognized) its Karmapa, although his flight to India signalled its failure to retain the loyalty of a supposed puppet. The Mandarin-speaking Dorje has occasionally criticized the Chinese government —he accused it of wanting “to create this ethnic conflict” in Tibet. But Beijing has refrained from attacking him, making clear it wants him to eventually return. The cash haul, of course, has been greeted by the rival Karmapa as “exposing” his challenger. Control of the Rumtek monastery is now embroiled in rival lawsuits.

The Karmapa-centred puzzle, the shadowy politics and the intrigue are just a forerunner of what India can expect when two duelling Dalai Lamas emerge after the present incumbent passes from the scene. The Dalai Lama is India’s greatest asset vis-à-vis China. And India must have a plan to positively influence the succession to the post, rather than merely be at the receiving end as in the Karmapa affair.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in NewDelhi

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

They also accused the three Chinese tourists of being "Chinese spies".

But they were unable to find any evidence.

Tourists beware.