Dalai Lama

New Delhi, May 12: The Dalai Lama has revealed he has received reports from Tibet warning that Chinese agents have trained Tibetan women for a mission to poison him while posing as devotees seeking his blessings.

“We received some sort of information from Tibet,” the 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who last June gave up his political role as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India, told the Sunday Telegraph.

“Some Chinese agents training some Tibetans, especially women, you see, using poison — the hair poisoned, and the scarf poisoned — they were supposed to seek blessing from me, and my hand touch,” he added. The Tibetan Buddhist leader, who lives within a high-security cordon in Dharamsala, said his aides had not been able to confirm the reports.

Despite being one of the world’s most widely revered spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama has enemies in China and among some Buddhist sects. Relations between China and the Tibetan government-in-exile are poor and mutual suspicion is at a high following 30-odd self-immolations in the past year by Tibetans in protest at alleged Chinese moves to marginalise their language and culture.

The monk said that suspicion of Chinese interference in finding his reincarnation after his death meant he might be the last Dalai Lama and that Tibetans could decide to abandon the institution. A number of young Buddhist monks, including the 17th Karmapa who heads the Karma Kagyu sect, could emerge as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, he said. The Karmapa title now has four claimants, two of whom are fighting it out in Indian courts.

The Dalai Lama said he believed China would change its hard-line stance within his lifetime and adopt democratic reforms in Tibet to safeguard the region’s economic growth.

“Advisers, secretaries, other people around me, when they make some little, little mistake, then sometimes I burst. Oh yes! Anger and shout! Oh! And some harsh words. But that remains a few minutes, then finished.”