The spiritual leader of the Tibetans, the 14th Dalai Lama, has a way of igniting global public opinion. He proved this during a public conversation with an Indian boy in recent weeks, during which he asked the boy to... suck his tongue.

The shocking situation occurred in February 2023 in Dharamsala. The controversial event was part of a charity event organised by an Indian corporation, according to CNN. A video of the meeting made its way onto the internet, and it was only recently that the shocking event became widely published.

Dharamsala is a city in the north of India that is the seat of the Dalai Lama. He has been in exile there since Tibet came under the occupation of Communist China in 1959.

In 1989, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His image as a sage advocating openness and tolerance has earned him enormous respect around the world. In particular, he became a favourite of progressive intellectuals who set the tone for public debate in Western countries. In such circles, the fascination with Tibetan Buddhism approaches snobbery. Apart from that, not everything the Dalai Lama says falls within the standards of political correctness.

This was the case, for example, at the 2018 Malmö Conference. The Dalai Lama commented on the effects of the migration crisis. He declared that “Europe belongs to Europeans” and that “refugees should return to their homelands to rebuild them.”

Let us admit, however, that such statements are nothing compared to the moral scandal that erupted following the release of the Dharamsala video. Social media networks went into an uproar. The voices of people involved in the fight against paedophilia were heard in the media. And it was probably the harsh reactions to the Dalai Lama's behaviour that caused his representatives to apologise for the incident in an official message on Twitter on Monday, 10 April.

The trouble is that the message also included a sentence that could be interpreted as an attempt to justify what the Tibetan cleric had done. The words in question are as follows: “His holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent playful way even in public and before cameras.”

Namdol Lhagyari, a member of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile, went a step further. She even considered the criticism of the Dalai Lama an unacceptable vilification.

    SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE 
  She tweeted that, at present, the expression of emotions and customs has become Westernised all around the world. She added that interpreting Tibetan customs using narratives of gender and sexuality in non-Tibetan cultural and social settings is shameful. Finally, she announced that she was concerned about the use of the Dharamsala incident as a political weapon (implicitly, by the Chinese Communists). And in conclusion, she declared that she saw no need for the Dalai Lama to apologise for his playful attitude, which generally elicits applause from the world.

This political activist was supported by a fellow Tibetan who, in a YouTube video, stated that the Nobel laureate speaks poor English and therefore what he said in English to the boy was misunderstood by many people in the world.

From the video, one can learn that in Tibetan culture, physical proximity is important: extending the tongue – which is what the Dalai Lama did by bringing his face close to the child's face – is a friendly gesture devoid of references to sexuality. Other accepted practices include touching each other's foreheads or noses or simply hugging.

The Dalai Lama has also found defenders in Poland. Among them is Adam Koziel of the Tibet Programme of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. In an interview with Newsweek Poland, he stated: “If someone suspects the Dalai Lama of molesting a child in front of the cameras, he himself has a problem, and his suspicions speak volumes about himself.”

So who is right in this dispute?

It seems that the arguments of the Dalai Lama's defenders sound convincing. Cultural differences do, in fact, distort the picture. We also cannot ignore the political context of what happened. The Dalai Lama is an enemy of the Chinese Communists. They are therefore interested in throwing him into disrepute. Perhaps the convolution around what can be seen in the footage from Dharamsala is an agential spin by the secret services of the People's Republic of China. And it is significant that the Dalai Lama has rather not been attacked with accusations of paedophilia, because there was no basis for this. After all, the comrades in Beijing would not fail to brand the monk a child abuser.

We also need to keep in mind that the reasons for the Dalai Lama's behaviour may be quite mundane. The spiritual leader of the Tibetans is an elderly man. He will turn 88 in a few months. Perhaps in his case, old age and the effects related to that are making themselves felt. And if so, that's why he saw nothing remotely offensive in what has caused outrage in the four corners of the globe.

The problem, however, is that the Dharamsala video is not a hoax. There is no lie here. Even if the Dalai Lama's intentions were (let's assume) pure, his behaviour shown in the video is at one point disgusting. How it has been received around the world is confirmation of this. Of course, it is easy to accuse Westerners of showing a colonial sense of superiority towards Tibetans and being intolerant of cultural differences. The only problem is that if something is obnoxious to someone, then we are dealing with an irrefutable fact that affirming 'noble savages' will not invalidate it. And guilt tripping and shaming because of normal, natural reflexes is already ideologically motivated psychological violence. Incidentally, I should note that this is practised in the West by the LGBT movement as part of its fight against “homophobia”.

– Filip Memches

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

– Translated by Roberto Galea