Why Tawang conference on Arunachal-born Dalai Lama sparked Beijing’s anxiety

Tsangyang Gyatso, the Sixth Dalai Lama (1683-1706), was born at the end of the 17th century in Monyul, the land of the Monpas now known as Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh). Tsangyang Gyatso was an exceptional Dalai Lama on many counts.

According to legends, he possessed extraordinary powers since childhood, in particular, the ability to leave his footprints in rocks or appear at different places simultaneously.

In his study Hidden Treasures and Secret Lives, British scholar Michael Aris and the husband of the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, wrote, “the simultaneous appearance of two Dalai Lamas, even two born at different dates, far from undermining the concept of incarnation, serves instead to demonstrate its universal truth and power.”

Aris added that in the 20th century, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, while acknowledging the Sixth’s siddhis, was critical of his predecessor’s habit “of jumping from body to body”.

Talking to Charles Bell, the British representative in Lhasa, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama said that the Sixth “used to have his body in several places simultaneously, for example in Lhasa, in Kongpo (a traditional cultural region in central-eastern Tibet and east of Lhasa in today’s Gongbo'gyamda County), and elsewhere. Even the place whence he retired to the Honourable Fields (i.e. died) is uncertain; one tomb of his is in Alashan in Mongolia, while there is another in the Rice Heap monastery [Drepung] in Lhasa. Showing many bodies at the same time is disallowed in all the sects of our religion because it causes confusion in the work”.

However, there is no doubt that these multiple appearances had only one objective: to promote the Buddha Dharma.

Another of Bell’s Tibetan contacts told the British officer about Tsangyang Gyatso’s nocturnal escapades to the Shol area in Lhasa: “His own body used to be in the Potala Palace, while a secondary body used to roam about, drink wine, and keep women.”

Diverging views of his legacy aside, the Sixth Dalai Lama has left us the most beautiful (and profound) poems about his human experiences, including in Monyul; he probably realised that it was the most efficient way to teach the common man about life and death, samsara and nirvana.

The Tawang Conference

A four-day International Conference on the “Cultural and Historical Significance of His Holiness the Sixth Dalai Lama, Gyalwa Tsangyang Gyatso” was recently organised in Tawang from December 3-6, and this columnist had the privilege to participate in it. The conference was inaugurated by Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu and had in attendance the rinpoches (reincarnated lamas), geshes (doctors in Buddhist philosophy), and monks, as well as lay scholars from India and several foreign countries.

In a post on X, Khandu said, “Tawang [has] today become the centre of a global academic dialogue on his cultural, historical, and spiritual legacy. His Holiness [the Sixth Dalai Lama] continues to inspire humanity through his timeless teachings, poetry, and compassion.”

In another post, he remarked, “This gathering marks a global effort to build a clearer and well-researched understanding of his life, legacy and timeless relevance. … The world remembers his poetry but not the fullness of his teachings and wisdom. It is time that changes.”

Khandu asserted that the event was a proud moment for the region: “A historic moment for Tawang, where faith, culture, and scholarship unite.”

An Indian Dalai Lama

Tsangyang Gyatso remains a legend in Tawang, first for his delightful poems:

The cuckoo bird from the land of Mon brings rain,
It descends from the sky
It brings blessings to the earth.
Life grows and blossoms.
When the cuckoo bird comes from Mon
My lover and I join as one
In body, heart and mind.

He was born in 1683 in Urgyeling village, a few kilometres south of Tawang. Many legends still revolve around this place.

Near the hamlet’s temple, where Tsangyang took birth, there is a tall and magnificent sandalwood tree: it is said that it was planted by Tsangyang Gyaltso before being taken away to his destiny in Lhasa.

The youngster made a prophecy, saying that when the three main branches would become equal, he would come back to Tawang.

During my first visit to Urgyeling some three decades ago, the local priest told me that the three branches reached the same size in 1959, a few months before the Dalai Lama, fleeing Tibet to take refuge in India, passed through Tawang.

As the regent, Sangey Gyatso, was keen to complete the Potala Palace in Lhasa, a task assigned to him by the Fifth Dalai Lama, he did not reveal to anybody that the latter was no more, fearing that intrigues would start as soon as the news of his passing away would be known.

But a series of divination and special pujas had given the regent the certitude that the reincarnation of the deceased Dalai Lama was born in Monyul.

When the delegation searching for the reincarnation of the Fifth Dalai Lama reached Urgyeling, Tsewang Lhamo, the mother of the future Dalai Lama, asked her son to get a piece of wood and fix it in the soil to tie a cow. Instead of planting the stick in the soil, the young Tsangyang made a hole with his finger in a big stone and stuck the stick inside it. It is one of the many miracles he is said to have performed. The stone is still kept in Urgyeling.

At a young age, Tsangyang was taken away to Tsona, the main monastery on the other side of the border, where he was kept for several years under the tight surveillance of the local governors (his real identity was not revealed to anybody). He was already an adolescent when he finally left for Nagartse near Lhasa, where his guru, the Second Panchen Lama, enthroned him as the Sixth Dalai Lama.

He consistently refused to take the monk vows from his guru and preferred the pleasures of life, visiting at night the taverns in the village of Shol below his Potala Palace and writing love songs to his beloveds.

His exquisite poetry is still known to all Tibetans and Monpas and sung during long evenings around a fire after a few cups of chang.

Academicians can fight about whether he was a great tantric master or only an ordinary man and whether his poetry contains esoteric teachings written in a secret language or is only the verse of a libertine. But for ordinary folks, he was both at the same time; perhaps Tsangyang came a couple of centuries too early to be really understood.

He loved freedom and could not bear the prison that life in the Potala seemed to have been. He was suffocating in the dark rooms housing thousands of peaceful and wrathful gods. He also felt oppressed amid the power struggles and intrigues between aristocrats in the Tibetan government in Lhasa and the Mongol chieftains; he preferred the company of his friends.

His legend continued after his presumed death. The already mentioned Secret Biography, written by Michael Aris, tells us that he escaped the Mongols who had deposed him and wanted to kill him; he secretly left for Eastern Tibet and Inner Mongolia, where he first became a wandering monk and settled in Alashan, today in Inner Mongolia.

He passed away in 1746, forty years after his official death, after building many monasteries. Though only very few knew who he really was, he had thousands of disciples.

His last poem before his presumed death is known by all; it announced his return as the Seventh Dalai Lama: “Oh White Crane! Lend me your wings; I shall not fly far. From Lithang, I shall return.”

Two years later, a young boy, Kalsang Gyaltso, was born in Lithang (Eastern Tibet); he would soon be recognised as the Seventh Dalai Lama.

China’s Reaction

Beijing immediately reacted to the Tawang conference. An official website, China Tibet Online, spoke of Pema Khandu as ‘the so-called Chief Minister’ of Arunachal Pradesh and added: “This provides new evidence that India is pursuing a strategy to consolidate its illegal territorial occupation of Zangnan [Southern Tibet = Tawang] through cultural encroachment.”

The article continued: “Unlike its previous attempts, India has now wrapped its territorial and sovereign provocations in a more subtle guise of faith, culture, and academia. It aims to establish a fait accompli of illegal occupation by reconstructing cultural narratives.”

It is obviously nonsense, as Beijing seems to have forgotten that Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier, told Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s that China had no problem with the McMahon Line; Zhou just did not like the boundary being given the name of a British official.

What was really touching at the conference was the exceptionally attentive large attendance of young and less young Monpas who filled the hall and auditorium for four days. Tsangyang, synonymous with freedom and free thinking (something not existing in occupied Tibet), is still their beloved leader.

The conference comes at a critical time as China seeks to control the reincarnation of the 14^th Dalai Lama. China is today nervous that the Fifteenth Dalai Lama, flying on a white crane’s wings, will ‘return’ to Monyul and not to occupied Tibet. This explains Beijing’s strong reaction to the international conference.

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Originally Published as Claude Arpi. 2025. ‘Why Tawang conference on Arunachal-born Dalai Lama sparked Beijing’s anxiety’. Firstpost. 12 December.