Photo: www.smh.com.au
The Dalai Lama is revered as "a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness".
Does he help in the real evolution of the Tibet nationhood?
Brendan O'Neill who doesn't kowtow to the China government thinks differently,
Far from "helping Tibet", the slavish western worshippers of the Dalai Lama are helping to stifle the development of a real, lively movement for liberty and democracy in the Tibetan regions. One author on the Tibetan independence movement argues that "the Dalai Lama's role as ultimate spiritual authority is holding back the political process of democratisation", since "the assumption that he occupies the correct moral ground from a spiritual perspective means that any challenge to his political authority may be interpreted as anti-religious".
At least one reason why the Dalai Lama can pose as "the ultimate spiritual authority" and all-round supreme leader of Tibetans and their future is because influential elements in the west have empowered him to play that role. In doing so, they have been complicit in the infantilisation of the Tibetan people. Tibetans now suffer the double horror of being ruled by undemocratic Chinese officials on one hand, and demeaned by the Dalai Lama and his western supporters on the other.
The full story from the Guardian Newspaper, UK
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