ABSTRACT
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama shares Mahatma Gandhi’s conviction that religion and politics are inextricably linked; indeed, Tibet’s entire political process is based on such a belief. The Dalai Lama has also made it clear that he is a great admirer of Gandhi’s stance on non-violence; he believes that Tibet can be liberated from the Chinese as India was from the British:
I made a pilgrimage to Rajghat . . . where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated. . . . I felt very grateful to be there, the guest of a people who, like mine, had endured foreign domination; grateful also to be in a country that had adopted ahimsa, the Mahatma’s doctrine of non-violence. . . . To me, [Gandhi] was – and is – the consummate politician, a man who put his belief in altruism above any personal considerations. I was convinced too that his devotion to the cause of non-violence was the only way to conduct politics.
