H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama and "Cancel Culture".

The Dalai Lama is a position more than a person and the current Dalai Lama, whose name is Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th reincarnation of the same entity. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, who is the Bodhisattva of Compassion and the patron saint of Tibet. 

When China invaded Tibet in 1950, the 14th Dalai Lama had to assume full political power and deal with the situation. Despite his best attempts at negotiating peace, China was relentless in its invasion of Tibet and suppression of resistance. This forced the 14th Dalai Lama to escape with his people to India who provided refuge. Since then the Dalai Lama has been living in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh and the Tibetan people live as refugees all over the world or in China as subjugated subjects. 

He has been widely regarded as a wise and spiritual person and is a Nobel Peace laureate. Thus it came as quite a shock to the world when a video started circulating of him interacting with a child. His interactions were perceived by most as inappropriate and bizarre. In the video, we see a kid interacting with the Dalai Lama, in which the kid asks if he can hug the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama asks the kid to kiss him on the cheek first, before they embrace in a hug. Then the Dalai Lama says quote, "suck my tongue". 

The Internet collectively outraged over this video as it circulated all over social media platforms or "went viral". Many accused the Dalai Lama of pedophilia and demanded immediate justice. Tibetans and many others attempted to satiate the rage and defend the Dalai Lama and we bore witness to verbal warfare among the two sides. Major news outlets aired the story and child's rights groups too condemned the actions of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama did issue a statement apologizing for the hurt his words may have caused. 

This entire episode provides an interesting exploration of the modern court of public opinion and cancel culture. 

To understand cancel culture we first need to understand the ecosystem of the modern social media environments. It is essentially a market of creators and viewers wherein creators try their best to hold on to the limited attention span of their viewers. This environment thus pushes creators to use any method possible to make viewers watch their content and more importantly share it forward. And it is often seen that content that inspires anger or rage within you is the most watched and shared content. It is a basic human trait to want to inform our fellow human beings of wrongdoings and evil. It is also true that we tend to share more of content that makes us angry than content that makes us happy.

Another important aspect is the lack of faith in institutions in the modern era. Most people do not feel that the institutions built to protect and serve us are efficient or honest in what they do. The government, police, law, economic companies and religious organizations are constantly accused of being corrupt and inefficient. More and more distrust is promoted and thus no one believes that these institutions are capable of achieving results. Thus the people have in recent times taken matters into their own hands and created the court of public opinion on the Internet. Many famous personalities have become victims of such an attack on their integrity and character. Although there are cases when the accusations ring true, it is often seen that victims of cancel culture mostly are just guilty of a minor offence or sometimes even innocent. 

Two of the most fundamental pillars of justice are the notions of "innocent until proven guilty" and the need to back up accusations with evidence. However in the Internet we often see that these are not followed and what incites more emotion is often what is promoted while the truth is often buried for the crime of not being interesting. Creators often support false narratives only to ride the viral wave and gain views out of it. Thus once a narrative is built it becomes increasingly difficult to break it or challenge it. What makes it worse is since the need to be truthful or accurate does not really exist, many false facts or edits to photos and videos are done by creators to better support the narrative. This coupled with the tendency of creators to copy each other builds a dangerous idea. The narrative garners a cult like following and prominent figures are forced to choose sides on the issue. Most choose the side of the narrative to avoid negative backlash or to gain some fame themselves. And thus their audiences too follow their narrative. 

Therefore we see the snowballing effect that the narrative can gain even when the truth is something completely different. Such is the case of the viral video of the Dalai Lama and the narrative that he is a pedophile. However to understand the truth we need to have a bit of context. In the age of globalization, it is often easy to forget the cultural context of things and how different communities express themselves. The relationship between grandparents and children is a central tenet of not only Tibetan culture, but most south Asian cultures. It is common for grandparents to be playful with children and this is reflected in Tibetan practices. For our purposes three Tibetan practices are important - "Oothuk", "po" and "che le sa" 

"Oothuk" is a traditional greeting among Tibetans in which they touch foreheads. "Po" is a kiss that usually takes place between a child and a elderly person which is a sign of endearment. "Che le sa" is a phrase that is used as a greeting along with sticking the tongue out. Sticking the tongue out is a very common way of greeting each other. The story goes that Tibetans do this to prove that they are not a reincarnation of the cruel Tibetan who was known to have a black tongue. "Che le sa" also roughly translates into "eat my tongue" or "kiss my tongue". 

Thus with this context in mind, the video that surfaced makes a lot more sense. The fact that the child and his family spoke to the media and showed their support for the Dalai Lama and denied any wrongdoings on his part is also very telling. Of course, on the surface it seems that something wrong was going on but just a minor exploration of the story shows the reality of the situation. 

However these facts do not matter to the narrative and thus are ignored completely by those pushing the narrative as resolution of the issue would mean their loss. And there is a large element of personal gain in the actions of the individuals. Most people would like to signal to the world their good nature and virtues by condemning the Dalai Lama and his actions. Such virtue signaling is done to please the personal ego and not due to a genuine concern as publicly stating your displeasure validates their personal view of their own virtue. Another motivation could also be a need to discredit religion and religious heads to justify their own choices to be atheistic. Since if religion is proven to be evil it justifies their choice to be atheists. 

Whatever the reasons may be, we can see that cancel culture gets very dangerous and volatile very fast. It snowballs very quickly and the viral nature of social media platforms encourages and sustains cancel culture. Internet rage is a very blunt instrument and has historically done more harm than good. We have functioning systems of law and justice and we should leave it up to them to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. We should develop faith in such organizations and watch ourselves when we get too quick to judge others. We should try and find out the truth and look at things from an unbiased perspective. And even then it might not be enough to stop the next time the Internet decides to be judge, jury and executioner. 

Written by Ariyaan Moktan