Dalai Lama

Tibetan Buddhist monk, political ruler of Tibet 1940–59, when he went into exile in protest against Chinese annexation and oppression. He has continued to campaign for self-government, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989 for his work as spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet. Tibetan Buddhists believe that each Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of his predecessor and also of Avalokitesvara. His deputy is called the Panchen Lama.

Dalai Lama is the title of the second hierarch of the Gelugpa monastic order. Tenzin Gyatso was chosen to be the 14th Dalai Lama in 1937 and enthroned in Lhasa in 1940. He temporarily fled (1950–51) when the Chinese overran Tibet, and in March 1959 – when a local uprising against Chinese rule was suppressed – made a dramatic escape from Lhasa to India. He then settled at Dharmsala in the Punjab. The Chinese offered to lift the ban on his living in Tibet, providing he would refrain from calling for Tibet's independence. The Dalai Lama has limited himself to pressing for self-government in internal affairs and the cessation of forcible Sinification in Tibet. He concerns himself closely with the welfare of the many Tibetans who have fled into exile. In May 1998 he announced that he would team up with The Body Shop to support their programme for human rights.

In the 15th century, when the office was founded, Dalai Lama was purely a religious title. The fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) united Tibet politically and assumed temporal as well as spiritual powers.