Chandigarh: Few issues agitate Beijing more than matters concerning the Dalai Lama – especially his succession – and Tibet’s territorial status, all of which the Chinese Communist Party views as existential threats to its sovereignty, rooted in historical trauma and strategic insecurity.Conversely, it also remains an immutable reality that Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, who turned 90 last weekend, continues to pose a profound challenge to China’s authority over Tibet, 75 years after Beijing occupied it militarily.As the living embodiment of Tibetan identity and resistance, the maroon-robed monk’s moral stature and global soft power have, much to Beijing’s chagrin, persistently undermined its legitimacy over Tibet’s conquest in 1950.For, despite its economic heft, military might and superpower aspirations, China still remains deeply anxious about the Dalai Lama and his successor – treating both as unresolved challenges to its control over Tibet. Decades of brutal Sinicisation – ethnic, economic, cultural, social and linguistic – through mass Han Chinese migration too had failed in extinguishing Tibetan reverence for their exiled leader.In this extended asymmetric David-Goliath struggle – obsessed with winning a battle it has already lost morally – China continues to deploy political commissars across Tibet to discredit and vilify the defenceless Lama armed only with spiritual grace, wisdom, resilience and above all, quiet defiance of Beijing.According to open source accounts, China has branded the Dalai Lama a ‘monk in wolf’s clothing’ and heaped far worse pejorative appellations upon him which, over time, have paradoxically only served to deepen the exiled leader’s moral standing globally and in Tibet in inverse proportion to the abuse heaped upon him.Alongside, Beijing had also employed economic coercion and proxy narratives to undermine the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala – largely in vain. And, ironically Chinese outrage each time Western leaders, celebrities or public figures engaged with the Dalai Lama, whether in Dharamshala or abroad, only amplified his international stature much to Beijing’s discomfiture.Meanwhile, on his 90th birthday, the Dalai Lama yet again added fuel to China’s vexatious Tibet fire by reigniting his succession debate and reiterating that only his Gaden Phodrang Trust has the authority to recognise his future reincarnation – a direct rebuff to Beijing’s claim of control over the process.The Dalai Lama was only echoing similar views expressed by religious leaders at a conclave in Dharamshala in November 2019. Representing the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, these ecclesiastical personages had at the time unanimously affirmed the Dalai Lama’s sole authority to determine his successor.Their three-point resolution had unequivocally declared that “the authority of decision concerning the way and manner in which the next reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama (the 15th Dalai Lama) should appear, solely rests with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama himself.”The resolution stated with emphatic finality that the 15th Dalai Lama chosen by Beijing would be rejected by Tibetans and would lack legitimacy among millions of Buddhists worldwide.But China over the years had dismissed such claims – unmoved by the further collapse of its credibility in Tibet or the deepening alienation within its fractured and subjugated society.China’s obsession with controlling the Dalai Lama’s succession is central to its broader goal of completely dominating Tibet. By selecting a pliant successor within its borders, Beijing hopes to sever forever the spiritual and political link between the Tibetan people and their exiled leader, weaponising reincarnation to cement control.For China, Tibet also holds strategic and territorial value.Other than geographically being a buffer zone with India, it is also the source of key river systems feeding much of South and Southeast Asia. Hence, Beijing views any unrest or foreign interest in Tibet as a national security issue, not just an ethnic or cultural matter.Therefore, a successor to the Dalai Lama chosen outside China – especially in India – would upend decades of state propaganda and, more worryingly for Beijing, reignite Tibetan aspirations.India, for its part, has long maintained strategic silence on the Dalai Lama’s succession. Despite offering him sanctuary in 1959, New Delhi’s treatment of the Tibetan leader thereafter has oscillated between reverence and realpolitik. Successive governments have kept a careful distance from his political advocacy – especially when it risked straining ties with Beijing – and have broadly treated him as a diplomatic liability, despite publicly acknowledging his piety and stature.Delhi’s broad approach to the Dalai Lama has largely been one of quiet containment: permitting religious activity but constraining political expression. And, while Indian civil society too reveres him as a moral figure, a symbol of peace, compassion and moral clarity, the state tends to keep him at arm’s length.In 2018, for instance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP-led government advised officials to avoid Dalai Lama-related events, citing a “very sensitive time” in Sino-Indian relations.That same March – just weeks before Modi’s summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan – the Tibetan community was abruptly denied permission to host a major event in Delhi marking the Dalai Lama’s 60th year in exile. Senior Indian dignitaries had been invited, but under ‘direction’ and ‘advisement’ from the Ministry of External Affairs, then-cabinet secretary P.K. Sinha instructed officials to stay away.The event was hastily shifted to Dharamshala and as explanation Ngodup Dhongchung, the Dalai Lama’s representative in Delhi, diplomatically acknowledged the disappointment, but urged Tibetans to understand India’s compulsions – pointedly noting that Tibetans remained guests of the host country. His statement, though tactful, underscored the irony of India denying political space to the venerated monk and his peoples it had sheltered.Among the 95,000-odd Tibetans living in exile in 40-odd formal settlements and multiple informal communities across India, this cancellation sparked visible discontent. Younger Tibetans expressed anger at what they widely viewed as an affront to the Dalai Lama, believing that the event had been cancelled at Beijing’s behest for financial and strategic gains – inducements that never materialised as bilateral ties between India and China soon worsened.In May 2020 the People’s Liberation Army occupied Indian-controlled territory in eastern Ladakh, leading to a clash between the two armies, in which 20 Indian and reportedly four Chinese soldiers died.The ensuing military standoff continued for four years till 2024 and in response several retired security officials and analysts in Delhi advocated openly backing the Dalai Lama as a strategic counter to China. They argued that India’s long-standing policy of keeping the exiled Tibetan leader at arm’s length had done nothing to restrain Beijing’s bellicosity.Former national security adviser (NSA) M.K. Narayanan went a step further at the time. Writing in The Hindu, he declared that with a view to appeasing China in recent years, India had distanced itself from the Dalai Lama which, without doubt, was a mistake that needed rectification.Restoring the Dalai Lama to his earlier level of eminence in India’s official thinking, the former NSA had stated, needed to be an important plank in India’s anti-China policy.Even Arvind Gupta, head of the pro-BJP Vivekananda Foundation in Delhi, declared at a seminar in the capital on economic and political options for India in dealing with Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang that Delhi should be supporting Tibet. He advocated giving the Dalai Lama a higher position and more visibility in Indian political circles.Several China analysts too urged the government to ’course correct’ and make amends for having marginalised the Dalai Lama to placate Beijing. They argued that such conciliation had achieved little – and that, with the Dalai Lama’s succession issue looming, it was critical for India to reassert its moral and strategic alignment with the Tibetan cause.Within Buddhist circles, however, it is widely expected that the 15th Dalai Lama would, like his predecessor, be based in Dharamshala – a spiritual and political centre that, for nearly seven decades, has embodied Tibetan exile identity.Yet regardless of where he emerges or resides, his appointment remains a high-stakes geopolitical contest – one in which Dharamshala and not Beijing, holds the moral and symbolic upper hand.For rather than gaining ascendancy on this count, China has only deepened its credibility crisis and reinforced the exiled leader’s enduring spiritual authority in choosing his successor.