Bharat Bhushan- Waiting for Karmapa: Delhi in fix over Tibet
After having alienated
the Dalai Lama, India also seems to have marginalised another tall Buddhist
leader, the Karmapa. He had gone to the United States for three months last
year and has now refused to return. With the 14th Dalai Lama turning 83 earlier
this month, India feels the need to cultivate influential monks to ensure
Tibetan unity and support for its position on the Tibetan leader’s succession. A disputed succession
would divide Tibetans politically and determine the direction of their
struggle. It is not clear whether the heads of the various Tibetan Buddhist
sects would defer to a child Dalai Lama, whether he reincarnates in India or
China.
It also remains unclear whether the Tibetan monks can be used by India
on the Tibet issue. For this, India needs
the support of the Karmapa - head of the largest Tibetan Buddhist sect, the
Kagyu. New Delhi, however, may have already lost influence over him. The 17th Karmapa’s
position is disputed. While the Dalai Lama and China recognise Ogyen Trinley
Dorje as the Karmapa, India recognises a rival, Thaye Trinley Dorje. The former
has been treated shabbily by India because it believes that his escape from
Tibet to India in 2000 was facilitated by China.
However, in the
post-Dalai Lama scenario, the rival contender supported by India, Thaye Trinley
Dorje, may not be of much help. He not only publicly challenges the Dalai
Lama’s authority but, like China, he also does not accept the Dalai Lama as the
supreme Tibetan leader. New Delhi seems
desperate to invite Ogyen Trinley Dorje back. Yet its intelligence agencies
promote stories about him seeking asylum in the US, trying to buy land to
settle down there or even returning to China. It is not surprising
therefore that he has fobbed off Indian requests to return. Last year, he
promised to return by June 2018, but that deadline is already over.
The question is
whether it is possible for New Delhi to appease Ogyen Trinley Dorje, while
simultaneously trying to marginalise him and the monks close to him. Senior
monks associated with him facing restrictions within and outside India include
the Tai Situ Rinpoche, Mingyur Rinpoche, Thrangu Rinpoche and the Jamgon
Kongtrul Rinpoche. These are all reincarnate lamas of the Kagyu sect. The Tai Situ Rinpoche,
who represents a 1,000-year old lineage, is suspect in Indian eyes because as
one of the four regents of the Kyagu sect he played a crucial role in searching,
identifying and helping get Ogyen Trinley Dorje to be recognised as the
reincarnation of the 16th Karmapa both by the Dalai Lama and China. In India,
he has faced charges of misuse of foreign funds (which could not be proven in
court) and travel restrictions, including a bar on entry into Sikkim, Ladakh
and the northeastern states.
The Mingyur Rinpoche
is of Nepali origin and head of the Tergar Monastery of the Kagyu sect in
Kathmandu and Bodhgaya. He faces severe harassment at immigration whenever he travels
to India. Then there is Thrangu Rinpoche, whom both Ogyen Trinley Dorje and the
Tai Situ Rinpoche are forbidden to meet. The most interesting
case is that of a child monk who came of age in India — the 4th Jamgon Kongtrul
Rinpoche. He has suffered terribly because of his association with the Karmapa. He was born in Tibet
on November 26, 1995. When he was nine months old, he was recognised as the
fourth reincarnation of the Jamgon Kontrul Rinpoche lineage. His birth was
prophesised and recognised by the Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje.
When he was two years
old, he left Tibet for India to stay at the monastery of his lineage at Lava in
Kalimpong. His attendants placed the toddler under the care of a Ms Kunzang
Chungyalpa, an Indian national and a retired UN official from Sikkim. She
adopted him legally and registered the adoption.
In 2000, a passport
was issued to the young monk to visit the main monastery of his sect at
Pullahari, Kathmandu. This coincided with the arrival in India of the 17th Karmapa
Ogyen Trinley Dorje. As he was suspected of being a Chinese agent, the Indian
government cracked down on all those who were associated with him, including
the Jamgon Kontrul Rinpoche. The young boy was told to surrender his passport,
which it was claimed had been acquired through “fraudulent” means.
In 2007 when he was
12, a deportation notice was served on him as he was seen as “a security
threat”. The Delhi high court stayed the deportation order when it was
challenged by his adoptee mother. Both the passport case and the deportation
order are sub-judice for the past 11 years. So frustrated was the
young Rinpoche that on August 1, 2016, he renounced monastic life through a
Facebook post. “I am not a monk any more. I just want to study and fulfil my
wish... With a difficult heart, I have chosen a different lifestyle and will study
and pursue my dreams of becoming a doctor,” he wrote. At the time of giving
up his robes, he was 21 and without any formal education. He was unable to
pursue medicine. He has now joined a group which collects leftover food from
Delhi’s five-star hotels and distributes it among the destitute people.
The government has
also cancelled his monastery’s permission under the Foreign Contributions
Regulation Act to receive funds from devotees abroad. As a result an eye
hospital, an old age home, an orphanage and a school run by Rinpoche’s
monastery in Kalimpong are on the verge of closure.
In preparation for the
post-Dalai Lama scenario, India has decided to canvass all important and
influential Tibetan monks. After the institutional hostility towards the Karmapa
and monks associated with his sect, it will not be easy for India to seek their
cooperation. The Karmapa probably thinks that he is unlikely to get a fair deal
in India and may choose to stay on in the United States. To then hope that the
Karmapa and his monks will still do India’s bidding seems a distant pipedream.
