Of all the news stories emanating from the exposé about Pegasus spyware and its alleged deployment by at least 11 governments, including apparently India, I am most fascinated by the one about the mobile devices of the inner circle of the Dalai Lama being targeted.
The Guardian reported yesterday that said, “The phone numbers of a top ring of advisers around the Dalai Lama are believed to have been selected as those of people of interest by government clients of NSO Group. Analysis strongly indicates that the Indian government was selecting the potential targets.”
New Delhi has vehemently rejected all such allegations as an attempt to “malign India’s democracy.”
Let’s for a moment or two put aside that denial and focus on why I am fascinated by this story. There are elements to it which seem so delightfully magical here. On the one hand, we have a more than six-centuries-old institution of the Dalai Lama flowing from the mysterious practice of finding, testing and anointing reincarnations of a Dalai Lama that died. The practice of the search itself is quite magical. I have written about it in my critically acclaimed and authorized biography of the Dalai Lama, first issued as ‘Dalai Lama: Man, Monk, Mystic’ in 2007 by Doubleday and over 20 other global publishers and recently updated as ‘The Dénouement: The 14th Dalai Lama's life of persistence’.
On the other hand, you have a piece of spookily magical software called Pegasus that sits on your mobile devices completely unbeknownst to you accessing everything on it, including remotely operating your camera and microphone.
If the Guardian report is to be believed, now these two have come together with the phones of the Dalai Lama’s inner circle being allegedly spied on. Interestingly, there are at least two names mentioned by the Guardian whose phones were apparently targeted, whom I have known for a long time. They are Tempa Tsering, the Dalai Lama’s longtime envoy to Delhi as well as his brother-in-law, and Tenzin Taklha, who was once in charge of the Dalai Lama’s security and went on to become a senior aide. I have known and interacted with both quite a bit during the course of my researching for the book. During my posting in New Delhi, I used to meet Tsering quite regularly to keep myself abreast of the goings-on.
The Guardian story suggests that the motivating factor behind the phones of the Dalai Lama’s inner circle being targeted by New Delhi could be the question of the Dalai Lama’s succession which is a very urgent and crucial one for China but India equally. Once again, I have extensively written about this over the years and have only recently engaged Dr. Orville Schell, one of America’s foremost Sinologists, on this very theme. You can watch that interview right here on my YouTube channel.
Even though officially China has always scoffed at and dismissed the institution of the Dalai Lama, it is equally aware of its unassailable sway over the Tibetan people in Tibet. It is equally conscious that the Dalai Lama enjoys considerable respect and fascination even within the Han Chinese via the agency of Tibetan Buddhism. Beijing has been doing everything in its powers to hijack the process of finding and appointing a pliable successor to the Dalai Lama once the 14th dies. It sees a great value to having a puppet Dalai Lama through whom it thinks it can control and calm a restive region. This notwithstanding that the Tibetans in Tibet will clearly see through these machinations.
With that as the backdrop, the 86-year-old Dalai Lama is keeping his intentions rather close to his chest even while from time to time suggesting that whether the institution of the Dalai Lama continues beyond him is up to the Tibetans. That is more a ploy to work behind the scenes to ensure that Beijing does not run away with the powerful institution.
The Guardian quotes an unnamed former staffer with the Tibetan administration in exile in McLeod Ganj, the seat of the Dalai Lama, to say, “India wants to make sure that Tibetans don’t strike a deal with the Chinese that involves the Dalai Lama going back to Tibet.”
I seriously doubt if the Dalai Lama will strike a deal of any significance without Delhi being at least aware of it if not actually consulted about. His return to Lhasa has been speculated about for years and I too have substantively addressed it in my book. In fact, during my last interview with him at his residence, he even joked, “You will come with me to Lhasa to do part 2 of the biography when I return.” He then guffawed as he does so often at the seeming improbability of it.
The idea that New Delhi may also be monitoring these devices over the informal contacts between China and Tibetans in exile in order not to be taken by surprise or upstaged by the making of any deal between the two is a far-fetched one. From what I know, the Dalai Lama is acutely conscious about the lengths to which India has historically gone to host him and the Tibetan refugees since 1959 and considers it important that whatever he may choose has official support from Delhi. He thinks he would be ingrate to not keep Delhi well informed.
The Guardian story about the Dalai Lama’s inner circle being targeted via Pegasus is quite remarkable in that it suggests how the spyware could become a powerful tool for such a wide variety of purposes, most of which are deeply worrisome.
* I am aware that the headline is gratuitous but these days one's got attract some attention.