Tibet was never a particularly peaceable place. Its empire, at its summit in the 8th century, extended to northern India, western China and central Asia. The Arabs, making inroads into the neighborhood, were awestruck. And China, in the words of an inscription memorializing Tibet’s conquest of the Tang Chinese capital of Chang’an in 763, “shivered with fear” at their mention. But, peaking early, Tibet decayed over subsequent centuries into a reclusive hagiarchy. In 1950, when Mao’s Red Army marched in, Tibet possessed neither the vocabulary to parley with the communists, nor the capacity to resist them.

Tenzin Gyatso, identified in 1937 as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, was hastily confirmed as Tibet’s supreme ruler at the age of 15. His court, spurned by the outside world, watched helplessly as Mao’s “peaceful liberation” of Tibet unfolded in earnest. Monasteries were razed, monks executed, thousands of peaceful protesters massacred — with many more detained, starved, tortured, and carted away to communes to toil in conditions so brutal that some resorted to cannibalism. In 1959, the Dalai Lama, facing imminent capture, escaped to India with his entourage.

Since then, he has devoted himself to the preservation of Tibetan culture and the emancipation of Tibet from Chinese shackles through exclusively nonviolent means. Last week, in the lead-up to his 90th birthday yesterday, His Holiness resolved the critical question of his succession by stating explicitly that the next Dalai Lama will be identified by a trust founded by him. Exactly three decades ago, Beijing disappeared the Panchen Lama — second only to the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan pantheon — and replaced him with their puppet. China, officially atheist, is determined to appoint its own Dalai Lama once Tenzin Gyatso finally dies. By proclaiming his will to “reincarnate” in a body born in the “free world”, the Dalai Lama has given his institution a shot at survival. Yet as he enters his 90s, it is no insult to ask what his celebrity has done to secure the Tibetan people and their mutilated homeland.

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Tibet today has the distinction of being the world’s largest colony. In official Chinese documents, it is classified as “Water Tower Number One”— a source of prized minerals and hydropower. Since annexing Tibet, Beijing has relentlessly disfigured it. It has mined and carted away its mineral wealth, dammed and diverted waters from its bountiful rivers, herded innumerable Tibetans into communes, stamped out the expression of Tibetan identity, and annihilated whole ways of life.

An exhaustive report published some years ago by Human Rights Watch documented how Beijing has corralled millions of Tibetans into rows of identical-looking apartment blocks called “New Socialist Villages”. A more recent study, by the Tibet Action Institute, details the coercion of children as young as four into boarding schools to be intensively Sinicised. When they come home, they lack the language to communicate with their Tibetan-speaking parents. To Tibetans, this is only the newest phase in a long campaign to purge their identity. The sinisterness of Beijing’s conduct is exceeded only by the crassness of its propaganda. A captive Tibet is proclaimed as being free, the suppression of its language is justified as a necessary condition of its integration, and the destruction of its culture is trumpeted as evidence of its progress.

Hundreds of Tibetans — monks and lay people alike — have sought to draw attention to the plight of their land by immolating their own bodies. Consider Tsulrim Gyatso, a highly respected scholar at the Amchok monastery in Gansu, driven to despair by all he saw around him. “Tears drop from my eyes when I dwell on this state of sufferings,” he wrote in the winter of 2013. Later the same day, Gyatso walked to a busy intersection, doused himself with petrol, and lit his body on fire. As the flames consumed his flesh, Gyatso folded his palms in a gesture of respect: the tender final act of a Tibetan Buddhist who believed, like so many before and after him, that his calvary would stir the world beyond into some form of action. I have often wondered how the world may have reacted to Gyatso and his brethren had they chosen to blow themselves up among crowds of civilians in Shanghai. Might they have incited debates on the “root causes” of Tibetan “militancy”, and ignited protests in solidarity with their cause?

Despite preventing his people from adopting violent methods of resistance, the Dalai Lama has been branded a “terrorist” by China. A message from him in 2008, when an uprising against Chinese rule erupted in Tibet, would have paralysed Chinese administration in the region. His choice, instead, to calm the protesters, by invoking Buddhist precepts of nonviolence, resulted in no gratitude or offer of negotiation from his people’s tormentors. As he writes in his most recent book, Voice for the Voiceless, “Chinese Communist leaders have only a mouth to speak but no ear to listen”.

Beijing’s refusal to deal with him has eroded some of his authority within the Tibetan community in exile. Certainly, the Dalai Lama continues to be revered as a spiritual leader by almost all Tibetans, and their veneration only intensifies as age reveals his mortality. But many also see in China’s unyielding push to eradicate their identity a confirmation of the futility of nonviolence — a central pillar of the Dalai Lama’s teachings. As far back as 1988, he downgraded his demand for full independence from China to limited autonomy within its boundaries. Nearly four decades on, his homeland of six million people remains, alongside Xinjiang, the most intensely policed territory under Chinese rule. A young, restless generation of Tibetans is turning inwards, casting doubt on the movement that has so far failed to deliver anything for them.

And it is difficult to fault them. Over the decades, the Dalai Lama has travelled from capital to capital, picking up major accolades — including the Nobel Peace Prize — and interacting with well-meaning film stars, activists, and politicians. But what does he have to show for it? He admires Lincoln, but Lincoln was consequential only because his words, as Julia Ward Howe put it, were “writ in burnished rows of steel”. He admires Mahatma Gandhi — but Gandhi, as even Tibet’s most famous dissident writer Shokdun concedes, fought a system that had “some degree of moral conscience”. The CCP is not the British Raj. To say that His Holiness has kept his homeland’s cause alive while not being able to halt the slow erasure of Tibet itself is not to impugn him: it is to recognise that our world, which kowtows to votaries of violence while treating pacifists as comical curios, is what it is.

Even at the height of his fame in America, the Dalai Lama was seldom regarded as anything more than an exotic spectacle, the Oriental Pope expected to dispense morsels of easily digestible Eastern spirituality. He became anything “we would like him to be”, the late British-Indian historian Patrick French once observed. Barring notable exceptions, his supposed champions barely knew him. Larry King once introduced him to his audiences as a Muslim. Sharon Stone opened another event by calling him “Mr Please, Please, Please let me back into China”. Western Publishers minted fortunes selling books with his name on the cover, then sent 1% of the profits to his office.

For its part, the West, rapidly secularising and becoming more and more dependent on China, has grown less and less enamoured of him. The earliest omen of this denouement was Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Desperate to gratify his hosts, the US president abruptly terminated the CIA’s covert assistance to Tibetan resistance. This did not in itself make a great difference: the purpose of the programme, which cost Washington about $2 million, had always been to use Tibetans to gather intelligence on China, not to help them regain their homeland. What did make a ruinous difference to Tibet, however, was the international acceptability Nixon’s summit conferred on Mao.

The Mao who received Nixon, and whom Nixon exalted in self-clowning tones as a visionary statesman, was by then responsible for more bloodshed than any other leader of the 20th century. After all the death and devastation he had supervised in Tibet, Xinjiang, and China proper, Mao entertained himself by being vulgar, vile, and vicious even to the people who served him. When told by his physician that the procession of young women brought to his bed were being hospitalized with infections because of his appalling hygiene — Mao refused to rinse his body or brush his teeth — the Great Helmsman replied: “I wash my prick in their cunts.” The powers that fraternized with Mao were sooner or later going to teach themselves to overlook the victims of the regime he erected. The Financial Times garlanded Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, as its “Person of the Year” two years after he presided over the massacre of 10,000 pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.

By then, a self-serving consensus for closer relations with China had crystallized in the West, which, it was claimed, was more likely to influence China by partnering with it — by creating a prominent position for it inside global institutions. Especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US locked itself into a self-destructive trade relationship with the People’s Republic. Advanced economies, underwriting Beijing’s rise by incinerating the jobs that supported their own working classes, scattered the seeds of explosive discontent at home to export material prosperity to a regime that converted it into hard power: to wield against its own benefactors.

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This rationale has come back to haunt the West. Far from molding the Chinese state’s behavior, it is the West that has incrementally relinquished its own professed values to propitiate Beijing. It is Western authors who self-censor for the tawdry privilege of being published in China. It is Hollywood that modifies its films to placate the Chinese censors. International agencies that performatively hector others lose their voice when dealing with Beijing. And governments that never tire of puffing their chests at the Middle East’s tinpot tyrannies in the name of human rights flee from the Dalai Lama for fear of offending China.

Even India, home to the largest community of exiled Tibetans, is terrified of crossing China by appearing too supportive of their spiritual leader. Narendra Modi’s government, for all its bellicose nationalism, has not endorsed the Dalai Lama’s right to decide his succession. Even before Modi appeared on the scene, it was a tradition in New Delhi to invoke penal codes dating back to the British Raj to lock up anyone of Tibetan appearance during a senior Chinese dignitary’s visit to India. Still, the profoundly worshipful attitude of Indians to the Dalai Lama — the global face of a faith that originated in India — has deterred successive governments from stamping on his acolytes. It is chilling to contemplate their fate when the Dalai Lama is gone.

This is one reason why the Dalai Lama spent the past two decades modernizing the Tibetan resistance movement and equipping the exiled community with the means to continue without him. He has weakened his own office, fostered political institutions distinct from the spiritual branch he oversees, and subordinated himself and devolved his powers to them. Tibet now has a government-in-exile that is democratically elected by a highly organized diaspora. Now, by pronouncing emphatically on his succession, His Holiness has ring-fenced an institution that has sustained Tibetan identity for centuries. Is this sufficient to guarantee its survival, and will the United States and India forever refuse to endorse a successor handpicked by Beijing? Their past behavior does not encourage optimism.

This is a truly grim moment for Tibetans. The figure who has held their nation together is fading away, while the tenets upon which his struggle was premised have so far produced no results. His long-suffering people are now torn between the precepts of their faith and a longing for home, which, 75 years after its seizure by China, looks more unrecognizable, and out of reach, than ever.

Tibet and China go back a long way together, and theirs has rarely been a happy history. At the height of its power in the eighth century, the Tibetan kingdom’s armies fought their way into the great capital of Tang China, Chang’an, and occupied it. The Tibetan Empire would later fragment after the last king of Tibet was murdered in 842, and Buddhist teachers known as lamas would eventually come to rule in his place. They helped the Mongols to govern Tibet in the 13th century. Then, in 1279, Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongol-led dynasty of China, and Tibet became nominally part of his empire.

The degree of authority over Tibetan affairs exercised by Chinese emperors of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties fluctuated a great deal over time, but in general they preferred indirect influence to outright control. Crucial to these arrangements was the maintaining of good relations with Tibet’s Buddhist leaders and in particular its tulkus. These were lineages of men and sometimes women who were regarded as manifestations of a particular bodhisattva: an enlightened being who puts off their entry into paradise in order to help others. By controlling the intermediate realm between death and rebirth, they were able to choose specific human incarnations, again and again, in order to continue their lineage and fulfil their salvific purpose in the world. Among the best-known Tibetan lineages are the Karmapas and the Panchen and Dalai Lamas.

The lineage of the Dalai Lama goes back to the turn of the 15th century, peaking with the “Great 5th” Dalai Lama who united Tibet under his rule in 1642. Subsequent Dalai Lamas enjoyed both spiritual and political authority but found themselves embroiled in struggles for power between neighbouring Mongols and Chinese. In 1720, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty won a decisive victory over a Mongol rival and managed to install his favoured candidate as the 7th Dalai Lama. From then on, China’s Qing dynasty regarded Tibet as a protectorate of sorts and the question of a Dalai Lama’s reincarnation as very much their business.

Yet the mysteries of reincarnation were often hard to control. Traditionally, an elderly Dalai Lama might leave written information about where he intended to be reincarnated or drop hints during the last weeks of his life. The direction in which the smoke drifted at his cremation might be watched for clues. Senior lamas would weigh these things alongside dreams or intuitions of their own before paying a visit to the homes of children who appeared to be likely candidates. There they might lay in front of the child some of the predecessor’s possessions, alongside unrelated objects, to see whether the child recognised the correct items as his own.

Concerned about the political quarrels and corruption that sometimes accompanied this process, and worried more broadly about Tibetans dabbling in divination when this was supposed to be the prerogative of the imperial court, the Qianlong Emperor sought to exert some control over Tibetan reincarnations. In a move that may well have important repercussions next year, the Emperor decided in 1792 to intervene in the process of identifying reincarnations within tulku lineages. Personally doubting the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation but resigned to managing the people of Tibet on their own terms, the Emperor had a golden urn made and sent to Lhasa. When it came time to identify a reincarnation, candidates identified in the usual way would have their names placed inside the urn. After prayers were said, a single name would be drawn by a Qing official.

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This wasn’t about luck or having China’s preferred candidate fortuitously selected, though it did rather usefully allow for the latter. The Golden Urn method was based on a form of divination already used in branches of China’s imperial administration and was intended as a means of avoiding human corruption and allowing fate to take its course. Qing efforts to make the method acceptable to Tibet’s elites were helped by the fact that the chosen children frequently came from wealthy and influential families. The Golden Urn method ended up being used, over the decades that followed, to finalise a number of reincarnations. Precisely how many is debated, but they may have included the 10th, 11th and 12th Dalai Lamas.

After the Qing dynasty fell and a Republic of China was proclaimed in 1912, the 13th Dalai Lama sought independence for Tibet. But both the Republic and then, after 1949, the People’s Republic continued to regard Tibet as belonging to China. After the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in 1959, China moved steadily to consolidate its control over Tibetan affairs. This included the use in 1995 of the Golden Urn to identify the 11th Panchen Lama. It was an important moment: the Dalai Lama’s favoured candidate was rejected and both the candidate and his family were disappeared into “protective” custody. The People’s Republic has since gone further still, creating a register of all those who are permitted to reincarnate after death. The state can revoke that permission at any time. It also claims authority over when the search for a new reincarnation may begin.

Much of this appears to be designed to ensure that the 15th Dalai Lama will be a person with whom the Chinese Communist Party can do business. The current Dalai Lama, alongside Tibet’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, rejects the idea of using the Golden Urn to identify the next Dalai Lama and insists that no candidate who is effectively chosen by the People’s Republic will be acceptable. It is highly likely as a result that within a few years we will have two people both claiming to be the 15th Dalai Lama: one in China selected using the Golden Urn, and another elsewhere chosen in the traditional way. Assuming that both are children — likely, but not inevitable — they will probably have regents speaking and acting on their behalf.

Why would the CCP go to all this trouble? More than a decade ago, the current Dalai Lama relinquished his political authority in favour of a prime minister, or sikyong, elected by Tibetans in exile. But although the Dalai Lama no longer holds political power, over the course of a long life he has become synonymous with Tibet’s spirit and its hopes of independence — the question of who succeeds him is therefore enormously important. The United States made clear its position in 2015: Chinese government interference in the Tibetan reincarnation process would go against the internationally recognised right to religious freedom. The Tibetan government has been working hard, of late, to persuade European countries to follow suit, but much will depend on how willing those countries are to risk antagonising China. Standing up to China over Tibet in the Sixties was a relatively cost-free exercise for Westerners. That is no longer true in 2024.

India, meanwhile, will face a particularly difficult decision. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently warmed to the Dalai Lama, sending him birthday greetings and attending a Global Buddhist Summit alongside him in 2023. It is all part of an effort to deploy Buddhism as part of India’s soft power, especially with countries such as Japan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and South Korea, in whose cultures Buddhism runs deep. Modi has spoken of India’s “Buddhist cousin nations” around the world and of his desire to develop Bodh Gaya — the place where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment — as the “spiritual capital” of Buddhism. In April 2023, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting produced “Lessons from Lord Buddha”: a compendium of speeches by Modi that emphasise his spiritual debt to Buddhism. India’s Prime Minister is, the introduction assures readers, “a huge admirer and follower of Lord Buddha”.

India cannot, however, afford to ignore its relationship with China. India recognises China’s sovereignty in Tibet and has to tread carefully when it comes to disputed border areas in the Himalayas — many of which are home to significant Buddhist populations. China’s leadership has already shown its displeasure, on a number of occasions, with Modi’s wooing of the “anti-China” Dalai Lama. It also hopes that a “Buddhism with Chinese characteristics” will be capable of enhancing relations with its neighbours. Both Modi and Xi Jinping, it seems, regard Buddhism as key to their attempts to win friends and influence people in Asia.

Modi may also need to worry about how the search for the next Dalai Lama could cause divisions within Tibet’s exile community in India. Without the current Dalai Lama there to act as a unifying figure, older rivalries may once again come to the fore. Meanwhile, it is no longer sensible to assume that Beijing’s candidate for the 15th Dalai Lama will be uniformly rejected or ignored by Tibetan Buddhist leaders living in Tibet and China. Some of these have made converts among Han Chinese who find the drama of Tibet’s landscape and esoteric religious traditions a refreshing — perhaps even a countercultural — alternative to urban Chinese life. For Tibetan monks and lamas ministering to these Han Chinese Buddhists, the backing — or at least the tacit permission — of the Chinese state is essential in going about their work.

The countdown, then, is on. A Hindu leader in India, an atheist one in China and their Christian and secular counterparts around the world must soon decide how to respond to what a nonagenarian Tibetan Buddhist will say about his forthcoming reincarnation. Perhaps this strange moment will be the last of its kind. The next Dalai Lama may well lack their predecessor’s charisma, gift for communication and international status. The lineage may fall into semi-obscurity as geopolitics moves on. China’s leaders may well be hoping for just such a turn of events. For Tibetans in exile, it would be a disaster: their greatest spiritual and diplomatic asset gone, with no-one to take his place. Lacking a homeland and having lost a powerfully symbolic leader, the challenge will be daunting of retaining — perhaps remaking — Tibetan identity.