Carl Gershman: The Dalai Lama's Principled Pursuit of Democracy
[The writer is president of the National Endowment for Democracy, which will present its Democracy Service Medal to the Dalai Lama on Friday.]
Now that the White House has announced that President Obama will receive the Dalai Lama, it is important that he be welcomed not only as a moral and religious leader respected throughout the world but also as a fellow democrat who shares America's deepest values.
This is not an aspect of the Dalai Lama that is well understood, especially by those who see him as the spiritual leader of a traditional people. Yet he is a devoted democrat who has defended the universality of the democratic idea against the "Asian values" argument of various autocrats and who has tried, even before he fled Tibet in 1959, to modernize Tibet's system of government.
He did so partly to mobilize the Tibetan people against the Chinese attempt to uproot traditional Tibetan society through forced collectivization, a program that was already well underway in the early 1950s under the Orwellian rubric of democratic reform; and because he realized, as he later said, that the old system "was outdated and ill-equipped to face the challenges of the contemporary world."
For reasons beyond his control, the Dalai Lama was unable to implement his reform program in Tibet, but once in exile he proceeded almost immediately to introduce a democratic system for Tibetans living in India. The first elections among Tibetan refugees were held in the summer of 1960, only months after the Dalai Lama arrived in Dharamsala. A democratic constitution was promulgated in 1963 on the fourth anniversary of the Lhasa uprising....
President Obama should use the occasion of the Dalai Lama's visit to express America's strong support for him and what he represents: genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people and reconciliation with China, moral courage in the pursuit of justice, and the values of democracy and human liberty. It is not just for the Dalai Lama's sake that he should be welcomed in this manner but also for our own.
Read entire article at WaPo
Now that the White House has announced that President Obama will receive the Dalai Lama, it is important that he be welcomed not only as a moral and religious leader respected throughout the world but also as a fellow democrat who shares America's deepest values.
This is not an aspect of the Dalai Lama that is well understood, especially by those who see him as the spiritual leader of a traditional people. Yet he is a devoted democrat who has defended the universality of the democratic idea against the "Asian values" argument of various autocrats and who has tried, even before he fled Tibet in 1959, to modernize Tibet's system of government.
He did so partly to mobilize the Tibetan people against the Chinese attempt to uproot traditional Tibetan society through forced collectivization, a program that was already well underway in the early 1950s under the Orwellian rubric of democratic reform; and because he realized, as he later said, that the old system "was outdated and ill-equipped to face the challenges of the contemporary world."
For reasons beyond his control, the Dalai Lama was unable to implement his reform program in Tibet, but once in exile he proceeded almost immediately to introduce a democratic system for Tibetans living in India. The first elections among Tibetan refugees were held in the summer of 1960, only months after the Dalai Lama arrived in Dharamsala. A democratic constitution was promulgated in 1963 on the fourth anniversary of the Lhasa uprising....
President Obama should use the occasion of the Dalai Lama's visit to express America's strong support for him and what he represents: genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people and reconciliation with China, moral courage in the pursuit of justice, and the values of democracy and human liberty. It is not just for the Dalai Lama's sake that he should be welcomed in this manner but also for our own.