Dalai Lama's peaceful image hides real agenda

Norbu Dondup from the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee, speaks at a press conference held in Beijing on September 6, 2015. [Photo/ China.org.cn]

Dialogue is the way the Dalai Lama proposed settling the conflict and differences between the civilized world and the Islamic State terrorists when he was interviewed by an Italian paper recently.

Hoping that goodwill dialogue will be able to change the blood-thirsty nature of the terrorist organization is like consulting with a tiger for its hide.

He knows that there is no foundation for dialogue between the international community and the IS, whose fundamentalist ideology is characterized by zero tolerance toward any individual or state in disagreement with its extremist doctrines.

Its ruthless killing of all it considers standing in its way leaves no leeway for any political deal with the international community through any channel and by any means.

None of the parties involved in the fight against the IS would be expected to take the Dalai Lama's words seriously in this case. And clever, even cunning, as he is, he certainly does not believe it himself.

Then why did he say this?

Because he has cultivated the image of a "pacifist" in the Western world, and so he is not supposed to talk about fighting terrorism with military means, even though he knows full well that peaceful talk with the terrorist group is mission impossible.

He knows that as a Buddhist, he should never take an attitude that deviates from the doctrine that a murderer can be turned into a Buddhist believer.

By talking about world politics in terms of Buddhist doctrines in this way, he is once again trying to convince the world that he is not a political figure but only a Buddhism follower.

Yet the tactic he has used, of hiding his understanding of world politics under the cover of religious thinking in order to give prominence to his "pacifist" image as a religious figure, reveals that he is not just a religious figure. As the head of a separatist organization that seeks to split Tibet from China, he is much more political and shrewd than his image in the West suggests.

As it is, whether as a political figure or Buddhist monk, he should say what he really thinks, rather than what he believes he should say to reinforce his image as a pursuer of peace, especially on the issue of the global fight against terrorism.

Instead, the only impression we get from what he says is that he has got used to the Machiavellian way of politics, and pretense has already become a way of life for him.