South Asia and Beyond

China May Have Occupied Tibet But Can Never Control Our Minds: Dalai Lama

Nitin A. Gokhale
June 14, 2020
1 minute read

BODH GAYA: The Chinese display of aggression along the LAC in the Ladakh region is ironically channelled through the occupied territory of Tibet! Following the brutal suppression of the Tibetan uprising by China in 1959, Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been in India, a constant source of irritation for China that has even sought to determine his successor! The Tibetans will never accept that, he told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale in an exclusive interview recorded in Bodh Gaya in January this year. He also spoke about the future of Tibet, the tussle over reincarnation and what happened when he met Mao Zedong in the 1950s (he almost became a Communist!). Republishing the interview.

Nitin A. Gokhale

Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters. At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009. Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties. An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences. Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau. He tweets at @nitingokhale