Requests to let Karmapa stay on arouse suspicion

Requests to let Karmapa stay on arouse suspicion
JYOTI MALHOTRA

NEW DELHI, JAN 12: India IS SAID TO BE VIEWING WITH ``SUSPICION'' REQUESTS by foreign governments to allow the young Karmapa Lama, Orgyen Trinley Dorji, to stay on in India.

While diplomatic sources said the requests had been made with the view of letting the Lama live and study in India, where Buddhism was born, some analysts here felt the pressure on New Delhi to accommodate Dorji could be because these nations didn't want him in their country.

According to these analysts, powerful pro-Tibetan lobbies in the United States, Scandinavia and parts of western Europe would openly welcome the young Karmapa in their countries but the very step could endanger the relationship of these nations with China.

``China wouldn't like these nations to give political asylum to the Lama and they may not like to openly challenge Beijing on such an issue,'' analysts felt.

According to one view in the government, if Dorji doesn't want to accept ordinary refugee status in India, given the sensitivities with the Rumtek monastery in Sikkim, he would be welcome to go abroad.

Interestingly, the US finally broke its silence on the Karmapa Lama on Wednesday, a whole week after his presence was discovered in Dharamsala, citing a ``repression of religious activity'' by China that had forced his flight to India.

Significantly in 1959, when then Prime Minister Nehru addressed Parliament on April 3, confirming that the Dalai Lama had escaped to India, US State Department spokesman Lincoln White had taken the trouble to react the same day.

He expressed Washington's satisfaction at the news that the Dalai Lama had escaped from Tibet, according to newspapers of the day, but described as ``premature'' reports that the US planned to ask for UN action on the Tibetan revolt.

In Washington on Wednesday, spokesman James Rubin said the US was ``concerned about reports that the Tsurphu monastery, from which the Karmapa Lama fled has been raided and that two monks have been arrested. We will be trying to confirm this report. We have long been deeply disturbed about the human rights situation in Tibet and particularly the tight restrictions on Tibetan Buddhism.

``We call upon China to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama and to preserve Tibet's unique religious, cultural and ethnic heritage,'' he added.But Washington's representative US special coordinator for Tibetan affairs Julia Taft, who returned from Dharamsala on Wednesday and is leaving for Bhutan on Thursday only stated that she had not met the Karmapa during her trip there.

New `Living Buddha'
BEIJING: China's atheist rulers plan to ordain the reincarnation of a Tibetan ``Living Buddha'' this month, government officials have said, a week after one of the Himalayan region's top Lamas fled to India. The Cabinet's State Ethnic Affairs Commission had on Tuesday approved the selection of a two-year-old boy as the reincarnation of the Sixth Rezhen, who died in February 1997, an official of the Lhasa city government told Reuters.