China has to pay for development in Tibet now as they took away everything once said the Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama during an interview recently. While responding to a question from interviewee about his recent remark in Kolkata, the Dalai Lama said that now time has come for China to pay for the material development in Tibet.
In a recent interview by Narayani Ganesh of Times of India where he asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama about the promotion of peace, secular ethics and moral science as well as Tibet, Ganesh also asked His Holiness about his recent comment in Kolkata “We are not seeking independence from China… We want more development.” over which many people expressed mixed feeling.
“Material development! (laughs). China had removed even ladles from Tibet, everything was taken away! An important statue of the Buddha went missing in Lhasa during Panchen Lama’s time. Then, he enquired, ‘Where is that Buddha statue?’ Later, a lama who went to China told me that he saw an important Buddha statue in a Chinese warehouse, cut in the middle. They had tried to melt it. So he brought it to Lhasa and put it together again. Once communist China took everything from Tibet, many ancient Tibetan articles were discovered in Hong Kong’s markets.” His Holiness answered according to the excerpt of the interview.
“Now the time has come for the Chinese to pay more for our material development, which is good. Several thousand Tibetans even illegally emigrated to America and Europe — not seeking spiritual knowledge but seeking dollars. We also need material development. And many Chinese are showing genuine appreciation of Tibetans’ spiritual knowledge. A few years ago, Tibetans saw writings that politically, China controls us. Eventually in the future, with Buddhism, we could control China. Yes, this is possible!” added His Holiness.
In addition to this, the Tibetan spiritual leader also exerted that the Chinese government must respect Tibetan culture and the Tibetan language. While he told that the Chinese narrow minded officials tried to deliberately eliminate Tibetan language and script, His Holiness assured that it is impossible to do!