Firm stance

The Dalai Lama's announcement last week that a successor to his role will be chosen after his death has clarified the future of the institution that he represents and set the stage for a complex, geopolitical tussle wrapped in religion and tradition.

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His comments, amid celebrations of his 90th birthday, immediately set off reactions from China, then India, with the United States of America no doubt also watching closely. China views the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists who fled Tibet for India in 1959 as a dangerous separatist. It has insisted that the next Dalai Lama would have to be chosen in Tibet through a Qing-era practice of drawing lots from a golden vessel. The Dalai Lama, however, has made it clear that his successor cannot be from Tibet or any Chinese territory and, so, must be from the Tibetan diaspora. All this is because of what happened 30 years ago. In 1995, when the Dalai Lama chose the Panchen Lama, the second-most important position in Tibetan Buddhism, China