Tucked away behind a small green gate off a bustling street in Dharamshala, a former British hill station in northern India, schoolchildren in pristine blazers play in the intermittent monsoon rains. They may not know it, but it’s possible that one of them might be the future spiritual leader of a six million-strong community of Tibetans.

Outside, the city is buzzing. Next Sunday, July 6, the 14th Dalai Lama will turn 90. Along with his celebrations he will also address, after 88 years as the figurehead of the Tibetan people, the question of his succession. He is expected to announce that when he dies a living successor will take up his mantle; probably a young child just like he was when he was chosen.

“It would be best if he stays longer, until 113,” says nine-year-old Tenzin Wangmo, at the TCV school for Tibetan children. Her classmates are preparing to perform traditional guitar and dancing for next week’s celebrations.

Any one of them, part of Tibet’s second-largest community in exile based in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India, could potentially be chosen as the next Dalai Lama. As could any of the thousands of Tibetan children living in India, some of them smuggled here and left behind by their families.

How will the next Dalai Lama be found?

The search for a successor — or recognising the leader’s reincarnated form — is shrouded in mysticism and little understood outside closed religious circles.

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Senior Tibetan monks undertake an elaborate quest to seek out — rather than choose — the Dalai Lama’s next incarnation. The process involves dream interpretation, inference from omens and ancient rituals, and pilgrimages to sacred sites. Clues may also be found when the body of the deceased Dalai Lama is cremated: smoke direction is monitored as a potential indicator for the direction of rebirth.

The current Dalai Lama was found at the age of two, after a senior monk saw his village and house in a vision at Lhamo Latso, Tibet’s mysterious “Oracle Lake”.

When the monks turned up at his doorstep in the remote Amdo region, the boy was able to recognise artefacts that belonged to the previous Dalai Lama, including a ritual drum and a walking stick. “It’s mine,” he reportedly said. At the age of 15 he assumed full political power.

Children attend science class at the TCV school in Dharamshala, India

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The sacred “Oracle Lake”

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Whatever the process, what is almost certain is that the reincarnation will be a child. When asked whether it was likely that child might be found in India, Tenzin Lekshay, the official spokesman of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), replied: “Obviously.” As of 2018, 85,000 Tibetans lived across 45 settlement camps in India.

“If a reincarnation has to be sought out, it would be best if they were born in Dharamshala,” Wangmo says. “The Dalai Lama has spent a long time here. If he is reincarnated here, he too would flourish and live very long.”

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Her teacher, Tsering Dolma, 46, breaks down at the thought of the Dalai Lama’s passing. “I’m so sorry,” she says, “he’s such an important figure in our lives, we don’t usually draw this question so near, we keep it at bay.” After she gathers herself, she adds: “But we have to accept the reality. Now the younger generation will have to take his responsibility on themselves.”

It is a tense time for the Tibetan community. Amid the celebrations and the sorrow, the question of succession carries with it heavy geopolitical weight.

It is almost 75 years since China sent troops into the mountainous plateau of Tibet, bringing it under its yoke. After a failed uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India to govern from exile. Four years ago the Chinese government passed a regulation to force all schools in Tibet to teach in the Chinese language. Children are sent to boarding schools in China for “Sinicisation”. Today, surveillance is pervasive; artificial intelligence, DNA surveillance to monitor whole families and location tracking are deployed with the ambition of making China’s grip iron strong.

Exile in India followed a failed uprising in 1959

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The current Dalai Lama has made clear his intention that Tibet should not fall further under Chinese control by saying that his successor would be chosen “from the free world”; code for not from within China. As a consequence there are fears the Chinese have concocted plans to seek out their own child for reincarnation.

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It would not be the first time China has interfered with the process. In 1995, the six-year-old Panchen Lama, appointed by the Dalai Lama and second only to him in spiritual authority, was kidnapped from Tibet by the Chinese authorities. Neither he nor his family have been seen since. So, the question of how India, the US and the international community responds is one with high stakes.

Tenzin Wangmo, left, wants the current Dalai Lama to stay longer

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Tenzin Norzin practices Tibetan scripture

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In 2020, President Trump signed an Act of Congress that frames the Dalai Lama’s succession as a sole prerogative of the Tibetan Buddhist community. It even authorises the US government to sanction Chinese officials who try to interfere in the process.

Minutes away from the Tibetan school in a crowded Buddhist temple, two child monks clad in maroon robes chatter and laugh in hushed voices.

They are both rinpoche, a Tibetan term for highly respected Buddhist figures — in this case lamas, or spiritual teachers. Most importantly, both are recognised by the Dalai Lama as reincarnations. Buddhists make pilgrimages from across the world to seek their blessings.

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Kunga Jorden and Tenzin Wangchen are among the chosen ones training at the Dalai Lama Temple in Dharamshala

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“When I am older, I hope to be the teacher of the 15th Dalai Lama,” grins 11-year-old Tenzin Wangchen. Accompanied by a monk, and aged only six, Tenzin was brought from his home in Ladakh Nubra, a valley close to the disputed border with China.

The idea was to see if he had the ability to interpret spiritual texts. “Some are fond of reading spiritual texts, or are drawn to dharma at a young age,” says Tenzin.

“Some remember previous lives,” chips in the other monk, 11-year-old Kunga Jorden.

A painting of the Dalai Lama in the 1930s

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Next week will be a long-anticipated moment for Tibetan Buddhists worldwide. “Everywhere is booked out next week,” says Gen La, a local monk. But beneath the celebratory veneer is worry. How will a child fill the shoes of a Nobel peace prizewinner who, having escaped Tibet on foot at just 23 years old, disguised in Chinese military clothes, went on to build, brick by brick, the schools, homes and institutions of the entire Tibetan exile community?

For Tibetans in exile, everything is at stake. The Dalai Lama has shaped and protected their community since 1959. “For someone like me, he’s like a father figure — it’s like imagining a father dying,” says Rinchen Dorjee, 32, who escaped Tibet with his mother at the age of six.

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The challenge is that the Tibetan community is defined by fracture, exile and diaspora. Everywhere in Dharamshala are stories of families ripped apart and children left behind. “One of the biggest problems in our community is that a lot of people are leaving to the West, and are not able to take their children, so they leave them behind,” says Kunsang Tenzing, founder of Stories of Tibetans, who fled the country with his aunt when he was six. Now, one of these lost children might well become the next leader.

After their escape, Rinchen’s mother left him and his two sisters at the TCV boarding school in Dharamshala and went back to Tibet. Since then they’ve communicated only once via an hour-long phone call, his mother driving far away from cities into barren land to escape Chinese surveillance.

Monks at the Dalai Lama Temple in Dharamshala

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Rinchen’s case is not isolated. For years it has been nearly impossible to speak to people inside the country — particularly since the 2008 unrest, during which the Chinese government reported 23 deaths — though the CTA reports far more. If families outside do find ways to communicate, such as through the Chinese chat app WeChat, they are immediately incorporated into a byzantine surveillance network.

Rare leaks from Tibet have suggested “emergency” crackdowns have heavily restricted freedom of movement — and forbidden movement for monks and nuns. Internet monitoring has also been heightened next week as China fears the birthday and succession announcement might trigger uprisings.

For many young Tibetans in the diaspora, however, it will be a time to celebrate the resilience of the Tibetan community, despite decades of harsh struggle. “My grandfather always believed he would be able to return to Tibet, so he and the family stayed at the border for his whole life,” says Tenzin Passang, 28, who runs Students for a Free Tibet, the Dharmshala-based NGO.

Tenzin Passang, director of Students for a Free Tibet

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“This is the belief my grandfather had in the future of Tibet. Now I can only really live that in his memories. Day by day, we are trying to hold onto our identities.”

The children of Dharamshala also have other dreams. “When I grow up, I want to be Miss Tibet,” laughs ten-year-old Tenzin Norgay, whose mother migrated to America when she was three. “Then I can go to New York to see her.”