This year marks 25 years since His Holiness the Dalai Lama first unveiled before the US Congress his Five Point Peace Plan for Tibet. This peace plan, along with the Strasbourg proposal of 1988, formed the bedrock of what has since been known as the Middle Way policy of our exile administration. This policy has been subjected to a number of piercing critiques over the last 25 years but despite receiving a harsh review, it has gone on to attain a monolithic personality of its own. Speaking ill of it has got people accused of disloyalty to the Dalai Lama and proposing alternative approaches has earned them reputations as extremists and radicals. Needless to say, changing this policy altogether has become a forlorn possibility. Regretably, our exile administration has not even considered making a few strategic adjustments to the current policy of reconciliation with Beijing in order to induce the latter to come to the table.
In light of this fact, I think any change in the existing orthodoxy is inconceivable so long as our veteran activists, intellectuals and emerging youth icons, who profess political views contrasting that of the policymaking elite in Dharamsala, keep on operating outside the exile institutions and choose only to episodically cry foul from the side-lines.
In light of this fact, I think any change in the existing orthodoxy is inconceivable so long as our veteran activists, intellectuals and emerging youth icons, who profess political views contrasting that of the policymaking elite in Dharamsala, keep on operating outside the exile institutions and choose only to episodically cry foul from the side-lines.
