Author: A Collection
Publisher: Roli Books
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 64
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8174361901
Description
The institution of the Dalai Lamas is the last of its kind. It has practiced rule by reincarnation in a world that mostly practices democracy. This pictorial album with text dwells on this institution.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama is, of course, changing all that: he has set up a more or less democratic structure of governance in Dharamsala in India, where his countrymen live in exile and in hope. He has even announced that he would relinquish all temporal authority once Tibetans are ready for democracy.
But it is interesting to note that the institution of the Dalai Lamas has grown and gained strength (spiritual and political) in a country threatened for the best part of the last six hundred years by oligarchies-whether dynastic or communist – that have ruled China. The latter’s role vis-à-vis Tibet has been one of an aggrandizing border country, frequently playing the trespasser, and in this century, claiming and forcefully establishing overlordship.