During his annual address to the Tibetan people on March 10, the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet announced that he wished to complete his decades-long effort to divest political authority from the Dalai Lama’s own institution. While the media has characterized this as a retirement announcement, it is really the final stage of an effort he has been shepherding since the 1960s to shift political authority from monastic-led institutions to democratically elected ones. In his latest remarks, the Dalai Lama has proposed having the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, called the Kashag, pass amendments to the Tibetan constitution that would allow him to retire completely from political life in order to concentrate on his religious and humanitarian works.  

At 76, the Dalai Lama surely deserves the right to retire. The question at this point is whether the Tibetan people and the rest of the world will let him. He has often had to drag the Tibetans kicking and screaming to accept the responsibility of democratic self-rule, and even his latest announcement has met with resistance from none other than the current elected prime minister in exile. Nonetheless, the Dalai Lama is doing what he can to prepare for the time after he leaves this earthly realm. Ultimately his success in creating a better future for the Tibetan people depends heavily on having Chinese interlocutors who are not driven by fear, mistrust, and misguided nationalism. Unfortunately, such interlocutors are nowhere to be found in Beijing today. If anything, things are worse.