Dalai Lama Successor: China Demands Golden Urn Lottery, India Monks Object

Dalai Lama succession, 2025: China’s foreign ministry decrees the next reincarnation must win a centuries-old golden urn lottery, directly contradicting the Dalai Lama’s India exile plan. Trending searches like “Who decides the Dalai Lama?” and “What is the golden urn system?” spike as Beijing claims, “The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama must comply with Chinese laws and regulations as well as religious rituals and historical conventions.”
While China touts its 1792 Qing dynasty urn system as “unique” religious freedom, the Dalai Lama’s Gaden Phodrang Trust in Dharamshala brands it interference, fueling queries like “Can China choose the next Dalai Lama?” and “Dalai Lama succession controversy.” Picture monks scrutinizing lottery balls while bureaucrats monitor enlightenment levels: “No one else has any such authority to interfere,” the Dalai Lama retorts, making the process seem part game show, part statecraft.
Official protocol now requires the Dalai Lama’s successor to be divined via golden urn lottery balls—Beijing’s surreal attempt to regulate reincarnation by historical decree.