India, China need to trust each other and resolve issues through talks: Tawang Monastery head

PTI, Oct 8, 2023, 11:28 AM IST

India and China need to have trust in each other and move forward to resolve the issues through discussions, the Abbot of the Tawang Monastery has said.

The Abbot, Shedling Tulku Thupten Tendar Rinpoche, claimed that there is no religious freedom in Tibet from where he came to India decades ago.

He added that he will visit his home again only when the claims over his place of birth are resolved. “Indian and Chinese governments should have some kind of trust between them and we have to first analyse what is the reality. We have to focus on the reality of what they are claiming,” the Abbot said, talking to PTI through an interpreter. Stating that discussion is the only method of addressing issues, he said, “We cannot solve the problems of the people living in Tibet, China or India by war. We can solve only by discussion in a peaceful way.”

“For that, we have to discuss every problem, find the reality and discuss,” the spiritual leader added, without taking any apparent sides on the matter. He, however, lamented that there is ‘no religious freedom’ in his birthplace Tibet, from where he had fled as a teenager in the 1960s and had gone back only once since then in 2001. Though he constantly remembers his native place, the yearning to return home has diminished, he said.

“It is not that I don’t remember my country or my family. But now, there is no feeling to return home as there is no religious freedom in Tibet,” the Abbot said.

He maintained that he would visit Tibet only if the Dalai Lama goes there and ”the issue with the Tibetan government is solved”. On growing religious intolerance across the globe, the spiritual leader said that it should be borne in mind that every religion is for the good of human beings.

“If we follow religion with the concept that only mine is the best, it won’t be a true religion then,” he said, adding that mental and physical happiness, aspired for by every living being, can only be achieved by respecting each other and viewing the world as one’s own. Shedling Tulku Thupten Tendar Rinpoche had taken over as the head of the Tawang Monastery in September last year.

The Tawang Monastery is the second biggest and oldest in Asia, and it was founded in 1680-81.

The 14th Dalai Lama had taken shelter in this Monastery for a few days after fleeing Tibet and reaching India following an arduous journey in 1959.