By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, Dec. 20: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat paid a courtesy call to the Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Monday. The hour-long meeting held at the residence of Dalai Lama in Dharamshala was requested by RSS senior leader Indresh Kumar who accompanied Bhagwat.
The RSS officials also met with CTA head Penpa Tsering, Speaker Khenpo Sonam Tenphel, and the three cabinet ministers later. “It’s very natural that when Shri Mohan Bhagwat is in Dharamshala, he should meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And from the part of His Holiness, it is also natural that he meets a prominent leader representing a large number of the Indian population,” Sikyong Penpa Tsering told the press after his meeting with the RSS delegation.
“We had a long discussion on world peace during our conversation. His Holiness Dalai Lama said that the best model of religious harmony is India and that our utmost duty is to practice it. The world should know about India . . . [Mohan Bhagwat] said that Tibet is our brother nation, so we will always be together in sadness and delight,” Indresh Kumar told the press. During his five-day visit to Kangra and Dharamshala, the RSS chief attended a seminar in Kangra on Sunday, where about 60 intellectuals were invited including Speaker Sonam Tenphel.
Even though the office of the Dalai Lama has not officially announced the resumption of in-person audiences, the CTA President confirmed that the octogenarian leader will resume granting audience to in the future. “Gradually, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will start granting audiences to one or two members of the public, although it would still not be possible for the large majority of the people,” Penpa Tsering said following his meeting with the Dalai Lama last week. Since January 2020, the Nobel Laureate self-isolated for almost two years due to Covid-19 pandemic, and only left his residence to get the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine in March.
It is heartening that the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat has called upon HH The Dalai Lama. As an activist I know that the RSS has always been strong supporters of Tibet. In the bad old days when India played the ostrich on Tibet in order to cozy up to communist China, it was the RSS members and Akhyil Bharat Vidya Parishad which is the Student Wing of the RSS, who would turn up to speak at our protest meetings. India’s stand on Tibet until the Galwan incident in 2020 was just like the Pakistani stand today on the genocide of Ughurs in East Turkistan!!! It was a truly shameful act of total acquiescence!
So, no surprise that the RSS leader paid a visit to HHThe Dalai Lama. The people of India has tremendous support for Tibet. I know this through my own experience but the Indian Government is a cowardly Government. It hasn’t got the guts to stand up for anything. Look at its close neighbour Burma where a military junta topples the Elected Government, yet India doesn’t say one word about the imprisonment of Angsung Sukyi and her colleagues. China is committing genocide in Tibet but there is nothing but deafening silence from the Indian Government.
The CTA seems to be creating a conducive environment for the Dalai Lama to visit the Wutaishan mountains in China. It may be well meaning but it must also make sure it doesn’t lose sight of the security of the Dalai Lama. Just because the Dalai Lama is an international figure is no guarantee that he is immune to be captured by the CCP thugs and kept hostage just like Chinese Tennis Star Peng Shuai. The CCP is forcing her to perform the drama to assuage international concerns about her safety and the rape that was committed by one of the ex- seven politburo member Zhang Gaoli. The latest surprise is that she is discrediting herself by denying that she was ever raped!!! This is from a woman who voluntarily wrote on Weibo that her exposure of rape by Zhang Gaoli may seem like a futile exercise of throwing an egg against a rock or a moth jumping into the fire but she was determined to expose him no matter what!!!
Today, the CCP mafia has threatened her and her whole family of total elimination if she doesn’t retract her statement on Weibo and so she comes out to speak to a Singaporean Chinese language paper denying rape and creating confusion by throwing words like “misunderstanding” and that the Weibo statement was a “private” statement! All these obfuscations are to discredit her in order to avoid blemish of the CCP and its image. The world can only watch and can do nothing to save Peng Shuai.
If the Dalai Lama happens to visit China ostensibly to see Wutanshai mountains, what is happening to Peng Shuai today may well be replayed in the same manner with the Dalai Lama held as a hostage and fed words in his mouth to feed the incredulity of the international community. No one will be able to save the Dalai Lama then just as Peng Shuai except a few protests but China would have the Dalai Lama in their hands at last to use him to tell the world that his “reincarnation will be born in China” and that the “Central Government has the full authority to recognise” his reincarnation!!! It seems to me that neither the Dalai Lama nor the CTA leadership has truly grasped the mendacity of the CCP criminal Syndicate. They seem to be quite prepared to walk into the lion’s den!!!