India invoking Buddha to counter China
Why Modi should meet Dalai Lama and get Karmapa back
Since New
Delhi cannot militarily reverse the border situation, it is now demonstrating
Buddhism as a native religion to India, even though there are more followers in
China.
Jyoti
Malhotra
26 April, 2023
At the Global Buddhist Summit in New Delhi
last week, the 87-year-old Dalai Lama exhorted his audience of monks from all
over the world as well as the lay audience to focus on the heart of Buddha’s
teachings “a combination of compassion and wisdom”, and invoked great Indian
Buddhist scholars like Chandrakirti, Kamalashila and Shantideva to point to the
enormous storehouse of philosophy and logic that still makes Buddhism one of
the most attractive religions in the world.
Only a few noticed that the Buddhist summit was held in the same cruel month of April—with due credit to T S Eliot—which marks the third anniversary of the standoff between Indian and Chinese troops on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. So just as the first Covid wave was taking over the country and Indian doctors were trying to deal with it, Chinese troops were climbing the plateau that ends in the LAC.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama addressing the congregation at the Global Buddhist Summit 2023 at the Ashok Hotel in New Delhi, India on April 21, 2023. Photo by Tenzin Choejor
We know all this by now. We also know that
the Chinese have been building major infrastructure, including a hot-mix plant
that mixes up various materials to build roads, including an 11 kilometre-road
on the its own side of the Depsang Plains. But it seems the Chinese are now
unwilling to make any more concessions, which is why Indian troops can no
longer patrol beyond the “bottleneck” in Depsang, which they used to do at
least until 2014.
This is also probably why the 18th India-China corps commander-level talks that took place this Sunday on the Chinese side of the Chushul-Moldo meeting point have yielded no results.
1959
Claim Line
All eyes are now on the defence
minister-level meeting under the aegis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
on 27 April, where defence minister Rajnath Singh is expected to hold bilateral
talks with Chinese defence minister Gen Li Shangfu. Officials say Singh is
expected to forcibly raise the issue of the restoration of peace and stability
on the Depsang Plains.
Nothing much is expected to come from that
conversation too. According to ThePrint columnist, Gen H S Panag, former
army commander of the 14 Corps which is stationed in Ladakh, by disallowing
Indian patrols in Depsang and insisting on buffer zones on the Indian side of
the LAC, the Chinese have reached the “1959 claim line” that Chinese premier
Chou-en Lai had then offered Jawaharlal Nehru as part of the border compromise.
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| The 16th Karmapa and Dalai Lama |
Nehru’s outright refusal gave way to the
1962 border conflict. Now, 60 years later, the Chinese seem to have achieved
their aims on the ground, without bothering too much about the LAC and its
various perceptions. Not that they are occupying “Indian territory,” or at
least India’s perception of its territory—the Chinese are much too smart to do
that. They have established control and they will rest for the time being. The
buffer zones that have been established are intended to save face for India.
The 1959 Claim Line was always intended to protect Aksai Chin and other areas
that the Chinese forcefully took in 1962 and have kept ever since.
Since it will be difficult for India to
militarily reverse this situation, it has now decided to shift course and take
a leaf out of Buddha’s teachings and marry them with ‘ahimsa‘ (active
non-violence). Some would say that India has no alternative but to do this,
which is true. It may not even amount to very much, unless Delhi takes other
measures—such as taking the Dalai Lama into confidence andplan a few next moves. So last
week’s Summit demonstrated that Buddhism is a native religion to India, even
though there are more followers inside China. And as Prime Minister Narendra
Modi pointed out during his remarks at the Global Buddhist Summit, the policy
of ahimsa is a far better bet than the powerful moves made by the Communist
Party of China globally.
It’s not a bad strategy. Instead of allowing
the Chinese to rudely underline its military manoeuvres, including in Ladakh,
India is trying to shift global perceptions in favour of its traditional
strengths – not just democracy, but also the democracy of religions.
For two days at the Ashoka hotel last week,
the jury was out in favour of the New Delhi-based International Buddhist
Confederation. Monks in saffron and maroon and burgundy robes from all over the
Buddhist world – from Mongolia to South Korea to Russia (about one million
Buddhists are in Buryatia province) to the South-East Asian nations to Mexico,
the US, Canada and Elsewhere – nodded and smiled and exchanged compassionate
greetings. Only the Chinese, predictably, didn’t show up.
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| The Dalai Lama and the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinlay Dorji |
Over lunch on the second day, where the
Dalai Lama sat at the centre of the long table, all the global orders exchanged
notes with each other. Clearly, the Dalai Lama is a star—even though he is
ageing, everyone wants a piece of him. Perhaps, it’s because he’s the only man
the Chinese don’t really know what to make of. They can come right up to their
1959 Claim Line in Depsang and tie up the loose ends of History after nearly 60
years, but they cannot understand why this laughing monk commands so much
influence not just inside India, but all over the world.
Certainly, when the Dalai Lama passes on,
the Chinese will produce their own man. That’s what they have done with the
Gelugpa order’s second-most important monk, the Panchen Lama – which is a bit
odd, considering the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t even acknowledge the idea
of religion, let alone its place in the universe.
PM Modi made sure that he and the Dalai Lama didn’t attend the meeting on the same day, and definitely not at the same time – perhaps Modi didn’t want to poke the Chinese too directly in the eye. The PM and the Dalai Lama have, indeed, met once, in 2015, and by all accounts the meeting didn’t go so well. Eight years later, though, as the third anniversary of the standoff in Ladakh is marked this April, it might not be a bad idea if Modi drops in on this very special Buddhist monk in Dharamsala – and ask him to lead the way towards world peace.
Missing
Karma Kagyu link
There was one big hole at the Buddhist summit
last week – the absence of the Karmapa Lama, Ogyen Trinley Dorji, who left
India in a huff some years ago and now lives in Germany or the US or both. It
is high time that he is persuaded to return, and all the controversies related
to him over the last few years should be settled amicably. If India is to
become the leading light of Buddhist nations worldwide, the head of the Karma
Kagyu sect cannot be missing.
So, what’s it to be? Om mani padme hum, or Om bhur bhuva swaha– the Buddhist invocation or the Sanskrit one? Modi’s presence at the Buddhist summit demonstrated that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has come to terms with the egalitarian nature of Buddhism. And since “unity in diversity” is India’s motto, both these prayers – and indeed, others – should not just be par for the course, but also on the same menu.
(Jyoti
Malhotra is a senior consulting editor at ThePrint. She tweets @jomalhotra.
Views are personal.)