In April 2011 the Dalai Lama announced his full retirement from office as leader of the Tibetan government in exile. Henceforth it would be...
In April 2011 the Dalai Lama announced his full retirement from office as leader of the Tibetan government in exile. Henceforth it would be headed by a democratically elected first minister. In thus handing over political power, the Precious Protector brought to an end three and a half centuries of theocratic rule – albeit that power had for long periods been vested in regents acting in the name of the Dalai Lama.
It was a reform not universally applauded by Tibetans, but it had clearly been among the Precious Protector’s plans from the moment he decided in favour of democracy on first coming into exile.
The Dalai Lama effected extraordinary change with this move. When Altan Khan, the Mongol strongman of sixteenth-century Central Asia, pro- claimed Sonam Gyatso, abbot of Drepung, to be Taleh (the Mongolian term for ocean, from which the word “Dalai” is derived) Lama, the Tibetan was head of a monastery comprising several thousand monks. But although this conferred immense prestige and great wealth, the direct political power attaching to him personally was limited to the sway he held over the Gelug establishment in general and over Drepung and its sister monasteries and their estates in particular.
It was not...
