In many ways, these debates can seem pointless. China has 1.3 billion people and the world’s largest army. The Tibetans number perhaps 6 million and are led by a devout pacifist who hasn’t been home since fleeing amid a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
But the discussions are taken deadly seriously in Dharamsala, where movement leaders hope for a time when changes in China will lead to meaningful change in Tibet.
Certainly, this is a time of turmoil in the Tibetan exile movement. Bloody anti-government riots in March in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, were brutally put down. Shaken by reports of anti-Chinese attacks, the Dalai Lama threatened to resign unless his followers stopped their violence.
That was followed by the Beijing Olympics, which many Tibetan activists had hoped would offer the best stage in years for demonstrations. Instead, protests in Europe during the Olympic torch run faded into near-silence after China was hammered by an earthquake.
The lack of protests, in turn, helped reinforce divisions between Tibetan exiles who back the Dalai Lama’s relentless pacifism and a far angrier young generation, many born in exile, increasingly desperate for action.
Most importantly, though, there is the Dalai Lama, 73. While people close to him insist he remains in good health for his age, he has been hospitalized twice since August and his travel schedule has been curtailed.
In a movement that often sways between centuries, it can be hard to differentiate between the Tibetan struggle at large and the Dalai Lama himself.
On one side there is a modern protest movement, with Web sites and hip T-shirts and Richard Gere speeches. On the other is a leader who came to power because Buddhist mystics proclaimed him the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama. He is a holy man who became a master at public relations, and who remains a god to his followers.
“I have heard of this middle way, but I don’t know much about it,” said a former businessman, his hair combed into a pompadour, waiting recently in a Dharamsala refugee center.
Days earlier, he had fled Tibet, fearing the police because he’d joined the March protests. He asked that his name not be used out of concern for his family.
As for the conference, he wasn’t worrying about it: “I will do what His Holiness wants, no matter what.”
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