The Dalai Lama video is a gift to propagandists
Millions of people around the world have watched in disgust as a globally renowned spiritual leader revealed himself to be…just another creepy old man. The video of the Dalai Lama, the 87-year-old leader of Tibet, kissing a young boy and asking him to “suck his tongue” was filmed in February at an event that brought together around 100 school students in a temple in Dharamshala, in northern India.
I’ll describe it to you so that you don’t have to watch it: One of the students in the audience asked the Dalai Lama if he could hug him. The octogenarian invited the boy to come up to the stage. As the boy leaned in toward the Dalai Lama to pay his respects, the Dalai Lama planted a kiss on the boy’s lips, then put his forehead against the boy’s, stuck his tongue out and said: “Suck my tongue.” The boy moved away while the Dalai Lama giggled and pulled him in for another hug.
The Dalai Lama’s office issued an apology, and media outlets around the world were quick to resurface the 2014 BBC article that explained how sticking your tongue out, while rude in most cultures, is a greeting in Tibet. Lhagyari Namgyal Dolkar, a Tibetan activist and member of the Tibetan parliament in exile, stretched the bounds of credulity to “argue” that the Dalai Lama’s bizarre behavior could not be interpreted through a “vividly westernized” lens.
At a time when the United States has been demanding that China restart talks over Tibetan self-determination with the Dalai Lama, this video is proving to be a gift to Chinese propaganda. The state-funded Global Times almost immediately argued that the video “raises concerns about the Dalai Lama’s private life” and that the only reason we don’t know of other occasions when he must have “asked someone to kiss his tongue publicly” is because of his “carefully crafted” image in the Western media.