By Kalsang Rinchen
Dharamsala, February 19 – His Holiness the Dalai Lama has expressed hope for a solution to the Tibet issue with change in China. The Tibetan leader was speaking Friday in Mumbai to students and faculty of Mumbai University on “Ancient wisdom, Modern thought”. “In China, it is the same one party system, the same totalitarian regime but compare it to 30 years ago, there has been a lot of change. These are signs of change, the world is changing,” the 76 year old Tibetan leader said.
The 1989 Nobel Peace laureate who was listed recently by TIME magazine among 25 ‘Political Icons of All time’ said modern universities should provide students with a holistic approach to education. He said that violence was never a constructive way to any problem and exhorted the principles of Ahimsa.
“Violence has unpredictable costs and is an unrealistic method. The former US president George Bush — I love him, he is a very nice person, but his policy of war in Iraq and Afghanistan was not good. Always good to bring in democracy but the methodology is not good,” he said.
The Tibetan leader also spoke at a conference attended by neurosurgeons at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel later in the day.
He said recent popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia followed the tradition of non-violent protest practiced during British rule by Mahatma Gandhi, India’s father of the nation.
The exiled Tibetan leader said the principles advocated by Gandhi had inspired US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela against apartheid.
“Many years ago, from the Philippines up to Chile, popular peaceful movement really brought a lot of change,” he said. “Now the same thing has happened in Egypt and Tunisia without a single shot from the demonstrators. So, things are changing. They are following the principle of non-violence.”
“We should not consider non-violence as a sign of weakness but rather a sign of strength,” said the Tibetan leader. “The 20th century became a century of bloodshed… If that immense violence, including the use of nuclear weapons, had brought some kind of peace to the world, maybe there would have been some sort of justification,” he added. “But that was not the case… The 21st century should be the century of dialogue… in order to create a more peaceful society.”
