Dalai Lama marks 90th birthday amid rising tensions over succession
World leaders and prominent figures from across the globe offered their support to the Buddhist leader, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, regarded as one of the world's most influential religious leaders.
A packed crowd of his devotees and supporters, including Hollywood personalities, political figures, and hundreds of red-robed monks and nuns, gathered to celebrate the Dalai Lama's birthday on Sunday in Dharamshala.
His supporters were undeterred by heavy monsoon rain and thick fog in the Himalayan town of Dharamshala, where the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has been living in exile since fleeing Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959.
However, the outpouring of support for the exiled Tibetan leader has set the stage for a political and geopolitical struggle over his succession, between the Tibetan Buddhist community in exile in India and China 's Communist Party, which claims sole authority to approve the next Buddhist leader.
In his message to the world on his 90th birthday, the 14th Dalai Lama called himself a 'simple Buddhist monk' and shared a message of 'compassion, warm-heartedness, and altruism'.
'While it is important to work for material development, it is vital to focus on achieving peace of mind through cultivating a good heart and by being compassionate, not just toward near and dear ones, but toward everyone. Through this, you will contribute to making the world a better place,' the 90-year-old said.
He said he will continue to promote religious harmony, human values, and 'draw attention to the ancient Indian wisdom that explains the workings of the mind and emotions, as well as Tibetan culture and heritage'.
Wearing his traditional robe and a flowing yellow wrap on his special day, the Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso, was escorted to the temple courtyard by a group of monks.
Tibetan artists beat drums and played bagpipes to welcome him while senior lamas struck cymbals in his honour.
The head of the democratically elected Tibetan government-in-exile, Penpa Tsering, raised the Tibetan flag as the musicians played the Tibetan anthem.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, led the congratulatory message for the Tibetan spiritual leader, saying: 'I join 1.4 billion Indians in extending our warmest wishes to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his 90th birthday.'
'He has been an enduring symbol of love, compassion, patience and moral discipline,' he added.
Mr Modi's support for the Dalai Lama was notable, as China, a tense rival on India 's border, warned New Delhi to choose its words carefully, raising the spectre of renewed friction between two rivals who had been on a path to mending ties.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also sent a message, which was read during the celebrations in India, urging that the Dalai Lama continue to inspire people by embodying a message of 'unity, peace, and compassion'.
'We support efforts to preserve Tibetans' distinct linguistic, cultural and religious heritage, including their ability to freely choose and venerate religious leaders without interference,' the statement added.
Taiwan 's president, Lai Ching Te, who has been one of the most vocal leaders to oppose China 's territorial claims, said the Dalai Lama has set an example in the world that 'resonates with all who cherish freedom, democracy and respect for human rights'.
Video messages from three former US presidents, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama, were played during the celebrations, conveying birthday wishes.
'At a time when we see the forces of division tearing at the fabric of our common humanity … I'm grateful for your enduring efforts to build a better, kinder, more compassionate world,' Mr Clinton said.
Richard Gere, Hollywood actor and long-time follower of Tibetan Buddhism, attended the celebrations and praised the Dalai Lama, calling him 'the most extraordinary man to ever walk on this planet'. He was notably present at the Tsuglagkhang temple events.
Several Indian politicians and Buddhist leaders also took part in the celebrations in the Himalayan town.
Indian Minister Kiren Rijiju, a practising Buddhist, attended the celebrations and participated in the Tibetan and Indian national anthem ceremonies.
He called him India 's 'most honoured guest' and said he remains committed to supporting the Tibetan cause, adding that devotees will follow the Dalai Lama's guidance.
Earlier this week, he irked China after backing the Tibetan leader's stance on his succession, contradicting China. He later clarified it was a personal opinion after Beijing warned India against interfering.
The Dalai Lama has declared that he will be reincarnated after his death and confirmed that only his office has 'sole authority' to recognise his future reincarnation, a process for choosing the next leader after his death.
In comments that sparked outrage from China, the Dalai Lama said his successor would be born in the 'free world' — outside China. Many exiled Tibetans fear that China will name its own successor to bolster control over Tibet, a territory it invaded in 1950 and has ruled ever since.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Emergency: The Indian cartoonist who fought the censors with a smile
"It's unfair to lift censorship suddenly," growls a grizzled newspaper editor into the phone, a copy of The Daily Pulp sprawled across his desk. "We should be given time to prepare our minds."The cartoon capturing this moment - piercing and satirical - is the work of Abu Abraham, one of India's finest political cartoonists. His pen skewered power with elegance and edge, especially during the 1975 Emergency, a 21-month stretch of suspended civil liberties and muzzled media under Indira Gandhi's press was silenced overnight on 25 June. Delhi's newspaper presses lost power, and by morning censorship was law. The government demanded the press bend to its will - and, as opposition leader LK Advani later famously remarked, many "chose to crawl". Another famous cartoon - he signed them Abu, after his pen name - from that time shows a man asking another: "What do you think of editors who are more loyal than the censor?"In many ways, half a century later, Abu's cartoons still ring true. India currently ranks 151st in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders. This reflects growing concerns about media independence under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Critics allege increasing pressure and attacks on journalists, acquiescent media and a shrinking space for dissenting voices. The government dismisses these claims, insisting that the media remain free and vibrant. After nearly 15 years drawing cartoons in London for The Observer and The Guardian, Abu had returned to India in the late 1960s. He joined the Indian Express newspaper as a political cartoonist at a time when the country was grappling with intense political later wrote that pre-censorship - which required newspapers and magazines to submit their news reports, editorials and even ads to government censors before publication - began two days after the Emergency was declared, was lifted after a few weeks, then reimposed a year later for a shorter period."For the rest of the time I had no official interference. I have not bothered to investigate why I was allowed to carry on freely. And I am not interested in finding out."Indira Gandhi's Emergency: When India's democracy was put on pauseMany of Abu's Emergency-era cartoons are iconic. One shows then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signing the proclamation from his bathtub, capturing the haste and casualness with which it was issued (Ahmed signed the Emergency declaration that Gandhi had issued shortly before midnight on 25 June).Among Abu's striking works are several cartoons boldly stamped with "Not passed by censors", a stark mark of official one, a man holds a placard that reads "Smile!" - a sly jab at the government's forced-positivity campaigns during the Emergency. His companion deadpans, "Don't you think we have a lovely censor of humour?" - a line that cuts to the heart of state-enforced seemingly innocuous cartoon shows a man at his desk sighing, "My train of thought has derailed." Another features a protester carrying a sign that reads "SaveD democracy" - the "D" awkwardly added on top, as if democracy itself were an afterthought. Abu also took aim at Sanjay Gandhi, the unelected son of Indira Gandhi, who many believed ran a shadow government during the Emergency, wielding unchecked power behind the scenes. Sanjay's influence was both controversial and feared. He died in a plane crash in 1980 - four years before his mother, Indira, was assassinated by her work was intensely political. "I have come to the conclusion that there's nothing non-political in the world. Politics is simply anything that is controversial and everything in the world is controversial," he wrote in Seminar magazine in also bemoaned the state of humour - strained and manufactured - when the press was gagged."If cheap humour could be manufactured in a factory, the public would rush to queue up in our ration shops all day. As our newspapers become progressively duller, the reader, drowning in boredom, clutches at every joke. AIR [India's state-run radio station] news bulletins nowadays sound like a company chairman's annual address. Profits are carefully and elaborately enumerated, losses are either omitted or played down. Shareholders are reassured," Abu a tongue-in-cheek column for the Sunday Standard in 1977, Abu poked fun at the culture of political flattery with a fictional account of a meeting of the "All India Sycophantic Society".The spoof featured the society's imaginary president declaring: "True sycophancy is non-political." The satirical monologue continued with mock proclamations: "Sycophancy has a long and historic tradition in our country… 'Servility before self' is our motto." Abu's parody culminated in the society's guiding vision: "Touching all available feet and promoting a broad-based programme of flattery."Born as Attupurathu Mathew Abraham in the southern state of Kerala in 1924, Abu began his career as a reporter at the nationalist Bombay Chronicle, driven less by ideology than a fascination with the power of the printed word. His reporting years coincided with India's dramatic journey to independence, witnessing firsthand the euphoria that gripped Bombay (now Mumbai). Reflecting on the press, he later noted, "The press has pretensions of being a crusader but is more often a preserver of the status quo."After two years with Shankar's Weekly, a well-known satire magazine, Abu set his sights on Europe. A chance encounter with British cartoonist Fred Joss in 1953 propelled him to London, where he quickly made a debut cartoon was accepted by Punch within a week of arrival, earning praise from editor Malcolm Muggeridge as "charming".Freelancing for two years in London's competitive scene, Abu's political cartoons began appearing in Tribune and soon attracted the attention of The Observer's editor David Astor. Astor offered him a staff position with the paper."You are not cruel like other cartoonists, and your work is the kind I was looking for," he told 1956, at Astor's suggestion, Abraham adopted the pen name "Abu", writing later: "He explained that any Abraham in Europe would be taken as a Jew and my cartoons would take on slant for no reason, and I wasn't even Jewish."Astor also assured him of creative freedom: "You will never be asked to draw a political cartoon expressing ideas which you do not yourself personally sympathise."Abu worked at The Observer for 10 years, followed by three years at The Guardian, before returning to India in the late 1960s. He later wrote he was "bored" of British politics. Beyond cartooning, Abu served as a nominated member of India's upper house of Parliament from 1972 to 1978. In 1981, he launched Salt and Pepper, a comic strip that ran for nearly two decades, blending gentle satire with everyday observations. He returned to Kerala in 1988 and continued to draw and write until his death in Abu's legacy was never just about the punchline - it was about the deeper truths his humour revealed. As he once remarked, "If anyone has noticed a decline in laughter, the reason may not be the fear of laughing at authority but the feeling that reality and fancy, tragedy and comedy have all, somehow got mixed up."That blurring of absurdity and truth often gave his work its edge. "The prize for the joke of the year," he wrote during the Emergency, "should go to the Indian news agency reporter in London who approvingly quoted a British newspaper comment on India under the Emergency, that 'trains are running on time' - not realising this used to be the standard English joke about Mussolini's Italy. When we have such innocents abroad, we don't really need humorists."Abu's cartoons and photograph, courtesy Ayisha and Janaki Abraham
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Dozens missing after flash floods and landslides in Himachal Pradesh
India's mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh has been left reeling after it was hit by rainstorms, flash floods and landslides, with dozens of people reported missing. Hundreds of homes, bridges, roads and electricity pylons in the north Indian state were washed away after 23 flash floods and 16 landslides caused by unusually heavy rainfall over the weekend. There were also 19 cloudbursts, in which an enormous amount of rain falls in a sudden deluge, according to a report by the Himachal Pradesh state government. Several districts remained on high alert for further landslides, with warnings of more rainfall this week. Himachal Pradesh, a state that spans the mountainous terrain of the Himalayas, has suffered repeatedly in recent years as the climate emergency has led to the monsoon rains becoming erratic and falling in more intense, unmanageable bursts. In 2023, large swathes of essential infrastructure in Himachal Pradesh was destroyed and more than 300 people lost their lives after destructive flooding across north India, caused by heavy rains. Many of the state's biggest towns and cities are built on steep slopes, resulting in hundreds of homes – often built on insecure terrain – collapsing or being engulfed in mud due to landslides and flooding. The state disaster management authority said the death toll from monsoon-related disasters had reached 78 so far this year, which included deaths from flash floods, electrocution and road accidents. Rescue efforts were ongoing on Monday to find dozens of people still missing after the landslides, but officials said efforts had been hampered by the region's treacherous terrain and the destruction of vital roads. Many areas across the state were left isolated, without access to clean water and power. One of the worst-affected urban areas was the town of Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. The town's MP, Bollywood star turned politician Kangana Ranaut – known for her often provocative statements – caused outrage after she said she did 'not have any funds for disaster relief or hold any cabinet post'. Experts have repeatedly said the climate crisis is intensifying the risk of flooding in India to dangerous levels, due to increased rainfall, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather events, particularly during the monsoon period between June and September, when about 80% of the country's rain falls. Serious flooding in June had already led to dozens of deaths in the north-eastern Indian states of Assam and Mizoram where the monsoon rains arrive earlier. The early arrival of heavy monsoon rains in Mumbai left large areas of the city under water, bringing the metropolitan area, home to about 24 million people, to a standstill.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Dozens missing after flash floods and landslides in Himachal Pradesh
India's mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh has been left reeling after it was hit by rainstorms, flash floods and landslides, with dozens of people reported missing. Hundreds of homes, bridges, roads and electricity pylons in the north Indian state were washed away after 23 flash floods and 16 landslides caused by unusually heavy rainfall over the weekend. There were also 19 cloudbursts, in which an enormous amount of rain falls in a sudden deluge, according to a report by the Himachal Pradesh state government. Several districts remained on high alert for further landslides, with warnings of more rainfall this week. Himachal Pradesh, a state that spans the mountainous terrain of the Himalayas, has suffered repeatedly in recent years as the climate emergency has led to the monsoon rains becoming erratic and falling in more intense, unmanageable bursts. In 2023, large swathes of essential infrastructure in Himachal Pradesh was destroyed and more than 300 people lost their lives after destructive flooding across north India, caused by heavy rains. Many of the state's biggest towns and cities are built on steep slopes, resulting in hundreds of homes – often built on insecure terrain – collapsing or being engulfed in mud due to landslides and flooding. The state disaster management authority said the death toll from monsoon-related disasters had reached 78 so far this year, which included deaths from flash floods, electrocution and road accidents. Rescue efforts were ongoing on Monday to find dozens of people still missing after the landslides, but officials said efforts had been hampered by the region's treacherous terrain and the destruction of vital roads. Many areas across the state were left isolated, without access to clean water and power. One of the worst-affected urban areas was the town of Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. The town's MP, Bollywood star turned politician Kangana Ranaut – known for her often provocative statements – caused outrage after she said she did 'not have any funds for disaster relief or hold any cabinet post'. Experts have repeatedly said the climate crisis is intensifying the risk of flooding in India to dangerous levels, due to increased rainfall, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather events, particularly during the monsoon period between June and September, when about 80% of the country's rain falls. Serious flooding in June had already led to dozens of deaths in the north-eastern Indian states of Assam and Mizoram where the monsoon rains arrive earlier. The early arrival of heavy monsoon rains in Mumbai left large areas of the city under water, bringing the metropolitan area, home to about 24 million people, to a standstill.
