Democracy is a Gift from the Dalai Lama

27 March 2009

Religious leadership and democratic ideals are, from a Western point of view, not easily compatible concepts. But for Tibetan expatriates living in India, religious leadership and democracy are not only compatible, they are logically connected; indeed, they consider democracy to be an enchanted gift bestowed upon them by their spiritual and political leader, the 14th Dalai Lama.

So says PhD fellow Trine Brox in the introductory remarks to her PhD dissertation The Enchanted Gift of Democracy that she defends 31 March 2009 at the Faculty of Humanities – exactly two months prior to Dalai Lama’s next visit to Copenhagen.

Brox’ dissertation deals with the Dalai Lama, who has acquired a god-like status among his Tibetan followers, and with the Tibetan expatriate community’s notions of democracy. Brox points to the paradox that it is the Tibetans’ religious beliefs in the Dalai Lama which have legitimised democratic reform in the expatriate community.

Trine Brox has conducted field work in the Tibetan settlements in North and South India, and through her interviews she discovered that Tibetan expatriates seemed to agree that radical change in Tibetan society must be dictated from above. Suggestions offered from below will not be taken seriously by any Tibetan.