Word: panchen
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When the Chinese Communists seized Tibet in 1959 and drove its Buddhist god-King, the Dalai Lama, into exile, Peking found what it thought was a ready puppet in the kingdom's No. 2 Buddhist, the Panchen Lama. The Panchen seemed a perfect choice, since he was born and raised in China and had long coveted his master's post. Mao Tse-tung beamed benevolently as the young successor was given his official title, Acting Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The Reds even made him a Deputy in Peking's parliament...
...Panchen's popularity was doomed to fade. Last month the Communists' military commander in Tibet began lashing out at unnamed "schemers" who were "plotting the restoration of integration of politics and religion." Sure enough, he was talking about the Panchen Lama, on whom so many Communist hopes had been pinned. Last week the Panchen was not only out of his job in the Red Chinese parliament, but had been stripped of his Tibetan chairmanship as well and forced to confess "antipeople, anti-state and anti-socialist activities." To Asian Buddhists, many of whom nurture the illusion that they...
Recent arrivals from Tibet report that Red China has now dropped even the pretense that Communist rule in Tibet has the approval of the Panchen Lama. First employed by the Chinese as a puppet against his traditional rival, the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama is now a prisoner in Suthilinga palace in Lhasa, suspected of organizing the underground. Meanwhile, Tibetans estimate that the Chinese have carried off $420 million worth of monastery valuables, turning many a wrecked temple into a dance hall or military head quarters...
...Peking with full notebooks, the tunnel-visioned correspondents ticked off what they saw. Lhasa-where 15,000 died in the bloody fighting-was "quite normal." Everywhere, the people smiled on their oppressors-a piece of information the reporters picked up during lunch in Shigatse with Mao's puppet Panchen Lama. Then, suntanned and refreshed by their exercise, the correspondents trotted back to their cages...
...king accepts as likely reports that the Chinese Communists have arrested the Panchen Lama, who had been serving as their puppet ruler in Lhasa: "The Panchen Lama is, after all, a monk, and is now witnessing the Chinese atrocities and therefore might protest." This week the Dalai Lama sent an emissary to New Delhi urging U.N. help for Tibet: "The suffering of my people is beyond description." Nehru now plans to meet with the Dalai Lama this week, the first indication that Nehru is about to swerve from his policy of minimizing the tragedy of Tibet...