Dalai Lama gets more support, rallies held in Buddhist towns of Ladakh

KULLU: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who was trolled last week after a video of him making a boy uncomfortable in a public setting went viral, is now getting a huge wave of support both at home and abroad, with massive rallies for him in Buddhist-majority towns of Ladakh. Some international celebrities have also vouched for him and alleged a Chinese plot.

The rallyists in Ladakh and neighbouring Lahaul-Spiti region on Monday joined the celebrities in calling the projected incident “a conspiracy to defame the spiritual master.” Several thousand locals, including women, children, and Buddhist monks, marched out in Leh, calling for an end to the “smear campaign”. Raising slogans such as “long live the Dalai Lama” and “We want justice”, they imposed a shutdown on the town. In the Spiti valley, the locals and monks of Kaza took out an equally big march to the Sakya Tangyud monastery, holding Buddhist flags, placards, banners, besides the photographs of the Dalai Lama. They condemned the media houses for “misinterpreting the incident by running an edited clip of the incident”. The locals said the entire Spiti had felt hurt by “an attempt to tarnish the image of His Holiness” under “a red propaganda of China’s communist government”. After the march, the monks from the five monasteries of Spiti also prayed for the long life of the Dalai Lama. The Tibetans of Dharamshala and Kangra organised solidarity marches. Celebrities such as American Buddhist author Robert Thurman (father of Hollywood actress Uma Thurman), education reformer Sonam Wangchuk, and Magsaysay award winner and Sikkim assembly speaker Arun Upreti, and Hindi film actor Aftab Shivdasani also supported the spiritual leader. In a Facebook video, Thurman blamed the Chinese government for the “campaign against the Dalai Lama”. The author said: “It’s an act of revenge. The Chinese government was angry with the Dalai Lama for naming an eight-year-old Mongolian boy recently as the reincarnation of the third most important spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism.”