The Dalai Lama praised Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Saturday for being “more realistic” and principled than his predecessors, a day after Xi’s three-day visit to India ended.
The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader has lived in exile for decades in Dharamsala, India, after fleeing China following a failed 1959 uprising.
The arrangement has irritated Beijing, which has long accused the Dalai Lama of fomenting unrest and encouraging Buddhist monks to self-immolate demanding more autonomy for Tibet.
Photo: AFP
However, Beijing’s attitude appears to be shifting, the Dalai Lama said, noting that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders, who officially are atheist, are now “mentioning the importance of spiritualism.”
“There are a lot of changes,” the Dalai Lama told reporters.
He said that since becoming president in March last year, Xi has demonstrated “through his handling of problems, he is comparatively more realistic and with more principles” than his predecessors.
The remarks brought no immediate comment from the Chinese government or media. However, Beijing has previously denounced the Dalai Lama as a separatist traitor and warned that any of his moderate comments are deceptive. China says Tibet has been part of Chinese territory for centuries, while Tibetans say it was virtually independent until China occupied it in 1950.
India is home to a large Tibetan community as well as the Tibetan government-in-exile. During Xi’s visit to New Delhi last week, dozens of Tibetan protesters shouting “Hands off Tibet!” staged a noisy demonstration outside the building where he was meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Dalai Lama also said on Saturday on the sidelines of an interfaith meeting in New Delhi that India and China should put aside any animosities they harbor over a long-festering border dispute and “remain peaceful on the basis of mutual trust,” according to the Press Trust of India.
The border dispute, over which the two nations fought a bloody month-long war in 1962, has complicated relations for decades, with the two militaries in a tense standoff even last week while Xi was in New Delhi. Both Xi and Modi vowed special efforts to resolve the dispute as they work to boost economic cooperation.
The Dalai Lama also praised India for proving that communities can live peacefully together, and said India must show its example of religious harmony to the rest of the world.
“India is the only country where all major world religions live together, not only in modern time but over one thousand years,” he said while opening the two-day interfaith meeting he had organized for leaders from nine religious communities to mull some of India’s most pressing problems.
India has been soul-searching somewhat, since national elections stirred up questions about the nation’s identity and ambitions for the future as it pushes for rapid economic growth and 21st century technologies even as three-quarters of its 1.2 billion population still live on less than US$1.25 a day.
The landslide victory by Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) left some worried that his association with Hindu hardliners could encourage violence between Muslims and Hindus.
The Dalai Lama urged the religious leaders to more actively promote tolerance, saying there was no justification for violence carried out in the name of religion or extremist ideology.
“Some people [are] killing in the name of religion,” he said. “For economic reasons or political power, of course it is very sad, but understandable. But killing in the name of faith, for different religious faith, [is] unthinkable.”
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