The readers’ editor on… Buddhism and organised lobbying

July 6, 2015;

By Stephen Pritchard, The Guardian, 4 July 2015

Hundreds of protesting emails demanding retractions and apologies poured in last month after the Observer reported on planned demonstrations in Britain against the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader. Coupled with a storm on Twitter and placard-waving near our office in London, it had all the hallmarks of a carefully organised campaign to pressure the paper to kill a story, and all from apparently peace-loving Buddhists.

The article alleged that the Chinese authorities were encouraging a “toxic” campaign by the International Shugden Community to undermine the Dalai Lama and which could threaten Buddhism itself. The sect, described as extremist by the International Campaign for Tibet, had disseminated images of the guru as a pig, described him as a Muslim and compared him to Hitler. The story added, without attribution, that the sect believed in an evil spirit that inflicts madness and death on its enemies. It said demonstrations, organised by the Shugden-following New Kadampa Tradition, were planned when the Dalai Lama arrived at a new Buddhist centre in Hampshire and at the Glastonbury festival. NKT declined to comment.

Shugden followers wrote to deny that they were extremist, that they had any links with the Chinese or that their campaign was aimed at splitting Buddhism. They denied that NKT was organising the protests and they rejected entirely the idea that they believed in an evil spirit. They maintained that the “false” Dalai Lama, as they called him, was himself a follower of Shugden teachings until 1976 but was now banning the practice and suppressing human rights.

“The net effect of your biased and harmful accusations is to abuse and alienate innocent Shugden Buddhists,” wrote one emailer. “Instead, why don’t you honestly assess the claims of Shugden Buddhists?” So I turned to an acknowledged authority, Professor Robert Barnett, director of modern Tibetan studies at Columbia University.

“Their campaign depends on the implication that a ban by the Dalai Lama on Shugden practice exists throughout the Tibetan Buddhist community,” he said. “There is no ban in that broad sense, though some Tibetan organisations are said to have at certain times imposed such bans on their own members, which is indeed a matter of concern. But the Dalai Lama did issue a [Shugden] prohibition to those who ask to take religious teachings with him. This could be loosely termed a ban, but it was a requirement that applied only to those people who ask to study religious texts with him. The ISC literature does not acknowledge this distinction.”

Discriminatory statements by some in the exile Tibetan administration had not helped and he believed the Dalai Lama should have done more to clarify that Shugden worshippers should not be discriminated against. “But, regrettably, the Shugden campaign has tended to elide and confuse those questions and to focus on political, personal and sectarian issues which are extraordinarily provocative and incendiary.” All this had closed off most avenues for reasonable discussion.

There was no firm evidence, he said, of Chinese funding or involvement in Shugden protests organised in the west, but there was very strong evidence of significant Chinese involvement in Shugden organisations in India and Tibet. “NKT and its sister groups have formally linked themselves to those exile groups in India at times, including at least one joint statement and campaign. Leaders of the exile Shugden groups in India frequently travel to China and have formal receptions with Chinese officials, in which they make public statements.”

But more significant, he felt, was the fact that Shugden groups in the west expressed the same core views as the Chinese authorities and used the same specific strategy, and often the same terminology, notably the decision to focus their campaigns on attacking the Dalai Lama and describing him as “false”. He believed that a convergence of strategic objectives and methods was evident.

It was not, however, correct to say that Shugden followers in the west believed in an evil spirit. “Novice members are taught that Shugden is a caring and enlightened figure. So for those followers, the sect and its teachings are not extremist,” he said. The ISC, which claims not to be an NKT organisation but clearly is largely composed of and led by its members, operates by a kind of strong manipulation, he said, which is also central to its social media campaigns. “Whenever challenged by the media, the protesters claim to be conducting a human rights campaign, as they are entitled to, but in practice they carry out a campaign of personal abuse against a prominent religious leader.”

And so it was that the Observer came under such sustained fire. We will remove the reference to an evil spirit in the online version of the story, but retract and apologise? I don’t think so.