Voice for the Voiceless by the Dalai Lama

BOOK REVIEW

Globetrotting Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who is turning 90 in July, will release his new book, Voice for the Voiceless: Over seven decades of struggle with China for my land and my people, this month.

Now living in exile in Dharamshala, India, the Dalai Lama offers insights into his decades-long dealings with China.

The spiritual leader is no stranger to authorship, having dozens of books, including two autobiographies and works on ethics, to his credit, covering Buddhist philosophy and practice and the overlap between religion and science.

The Dalai Lama has rarely delved extensively into raw politics.

Here he offers his first detailed account of the fraught negotiations with a succession of China’s leaders.

This unique book offers personal, spiritual and historical reflections, some never shared before.

He tells the full story of his struggle with China to save Tibet and its people for 75 years.

The Dalai Lama has had to contend with China his entire life – he was just 16 when Communist China invaded Tibet, 19 when he first met Chairman Mao; and at 25 he had to escape to India and exile.

In the decades since, he has faced Communist China’s leaders, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping, in his efforts to protect Tibet and its people, with their distinct language, culture, religion, history and environment, in the face of the greatest possible obstacles.

The Dalai Lama reminds the world of Tibet’s unresolved struggle for freedom and the hardship his people continue to face in their own homeland.

He offers his thoughts on the geopolitics of the region and shares how he was able to preserve his humanity through the profound losses and challenges that threaten the very survival of the Tibetan people.

Committed to finding peaceful resolution, his book captures the Dalai Lama’s extraordinary life journey, discovering what it means to lose your home to a repressive invader and to build a life in exile, dealing with the existential crisis of a nation, its people and its culture and religion, envisioning the path forward.

This is a powerful testimony from a global icon, who shares both his pain and his enduring hope in his people’s ongoing quest to restore dignity and freedom.

The weight of his responsibility would overpower the best of men, but he knew his duty.

“The responsibility for the nation and people of Tibet was placed upon me the moment I was recognised as the Dalai Lama at the age of two,” he says.

“Mao probably realised that with me gone out of Tibet, China would struggle with the question of legitimacy both of their authority and their presence in Tibet; he was right.”

A surprising discovery is that the Dalai Lama has long been willing to leave Tibet within the People’s Republic of China, but with control over its own internal affairs and a democratic government.

Julie Chessman