China on Friday rebuked Union Minister Kiren Rijiju’s support for the 14th Dalai Lama’s choice to be the sole selector of his successor, saying that India needed to tread carefully on Tibet-related issues to avoid a dampening of relations with Beijing.
When asked about Rijiju’s comments at a press conference in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning explained that the 14th Dalai Lama was an anti-China separatist figure, and demanded that India stay clear of any commitments towards the Tibetan spiritual leader, a PTI report said.
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She added that even the present (14th) Dalai Lama had been selected through this procedure, and was approved by the then-central government.
Rijiju’s reaction to China’s insistence on the Dalai Lama being approved by its ‘Golden Urn’ method—and then subject to further approval from officials at Beijing—is the first reaction from a senior Indian government functionary on the topic of the Tibetan spiritual leader, who currently resides in exile at Dharamshala, India.
“This is not about politics—it’s about religious belief,” the Union Minister, a practicing Buddhist, had said, “No one has the right to interfere or decide who the successor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be.”
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“His followers believe that deeply. It’s important for disciples across the world that he decides his succession,” he added.
Both Kiren Rijiju and Rajiv Ranjan Singh, a fellow Union minister, will be representing the Government of India at the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday celebrations in Dharamshala on July 6. The ministers have said that the birthday event was a religious function, and had nothing to do with politics.
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Mao’s comments come amid a slow resumption of India-China ties after a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit at Kazan in Russia last year, followed by a series of other high-level meetings, the PTI report added.
The Kailash and Mansarovar Yatra for Indian pilgrims, which were recently resumed again, is said to be the first step initiated by the two countries to normalise ties in that regard.
Dalai Lama succession: China rejects Kiren Rijiju remark, warns India against interfering in Tibetan matters
