There are few positions on the left so silly and opportunistic as this clucking against the Dalai Lama made popular by Christopher Hitchens. The Dalai Lama is the inevitable leading man of Buddhism. He is articulate and fun. He has a great personal back-story. He represents a very mysterious, mystic form of Buddhism that couples Buddhism's virtues with an occult appeal. He is also the spiritual and cultural leader for millions of oppressed Tibetans and their most visible, able, political spokesman.
For someone essentially plucked straight out of the sixteenth century and an obscure culture, he has done exceptionally well. Anybody who expects the Dalai Lama to be anything like a secular humanist is an idiot. Anybody who tries to excuse Beijing's treatment of the Tibetan people is a barbarian. Hitchens does both and his arguments should be dismissed out of hand.
If Hitchens had any real interest whatsoever in Tibet, which he has not, then he would see that democratic movements for Tibet would be insane not to use the Dalai Lama, both as an ambassador for his people and culture to the West and India and, ultimately, as an ambassador for democracy to his people, who have never known it.
People on the left are rightly suspicious of religion, but this anti-Dalai-Lama thing is just ridiculous.
peace,
boddi