Unidentified Mongolian boy being hailed as new Buddhist Lama. How will China respond?

A boy from Mongolia, whose name and age are unclear, is at the centre of a tense geopolitical chess game which is being played out between powerful governments in east Asia.According to a report by The Times on Wednesday (March 22), the boy's formal title is the tenth Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa, the third-most senior Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, and the head of that faith in Mongolia.

Until this month, the boy's existence was little more than a rumour. But then, he appeared alongside the Dalai Lama — the supreme leader of Tibetan Buddhism —who lives in exile in India. The Times report said the boy's presence was mentioned in the account of a ceremony presided over by the Dalai Lama at his base in Dharamsala on March 8.

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This development has gone unnoticed outside Buddhist and diplomatic circles. But in Mongolia, it has caused intense excitement among Buddhists, contempt among secular nationalists and alarm among those who fear this news would provoke the rage of Mongolia's powerful neighbour — China, the report said.

Tsetsegmaa Demberel, a female devotee of Buddhism and one of the 600 Mongolians who attended the March 8 ceremony in Dharmasala, said, “For three days afterwards, I was elated and filled with joy.”

“I am so proud that we have a global spiritual leader, who is a Mongolian,” Demberel added.

At the centre of the controversy is Beijing's hatred for the Dalai Lama, 87. Back in 1959, he fled Tibet after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule. He is based in India.

The Dalai Lama is upheld as a spiritual leader in predominantly Buddhist Mongolia, but Beijing regards him as a dangerous separatist.

The belief of Tibetan Buddhists is that after death, the soul of a lama is reincarnated in a child, who is identified after lengthy rituals and divinations. However, China insists that only its appointees have the right to identify the reincarnations of lamas.

When the Dalai Lama named the new Panchen Lama in 1995, Beijing immediately arrested the child and replaced him with its candidate.

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In 2016, the Dalai Lama had visited Mongolia which was severely criticised by China. The Chinese government said the visit brought a negative impact on China-Mongolia relations. But before leaving Ulan Bator, the Dalai Lama said that Jetsun Dhampa — Tibetan Buddhism’s third-most-important lama — was reincarnated in Mongolia and the search was on to find him, The Times report said

This is the boy who was so discreetly presented in public for the first time, the report added.

Citing local media reports, The Times reported that the Mongolian boy is one of a pair of twins named Aguidai and Achiltai Altannar, although which one among them is not clear. He was born in 2015 in the United States and has dual nationality. The report also added that the boy has an elder sister and at least one other sibling.

The family is a long-standing patron of the Gandan Tegchinlen in Ulan Bator which is one of the greatest monasteries in Mongolia. But no one, including the boy's family and the government, will talk about the presentation which from the point of Mongolia’s foreign policy is fraught with peril.

Robbie Barnett, a Tibetan Buddhism expert at SOAS University of London, said, "It can be taken by China as a challenge to their past claim to sole authority in choosing lamas. These things can cascade into a confrontation with China, which could penalise Mongolia in damaging ways."

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