Taiwan President follows PM Modi, wishes Dalai Lama on his 86th birthday

Many other leaders of international stature and several chief ministers also called up to wish the Dalai Lama. Prominent among them are foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and US envoy to Nepal Randy Berry.

Published on: Jul 6, 2021, 21:52:45 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday greeted the 14th Dalai Lama on his 86th birthday. This was the second such call to the Tibetan spiritual leader by Modi since he took over as the prime minister of the country in 2014.

Tibetan spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. (File photo)

The officials in Dharamshala said Modi spoke to the 14th Dalai Lama for almost 20 minutes on Tuesday morning and His Holiness, who is in Dharamshala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, was delighted to receive the call.

Apart from PM Modi, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen – a country claimed by China – also wished the revered leader on this birthday, sources close to the development said.

In a Twitter post, Ing-wen said, “Wishing a very happy 86th birthday to His Holiness the@DalaiLama. Thank you for teaching us the importance of coming together to help one another through this pandemic.”

Many other leaders of international stature and several chief ministers also called up to wish the Dalai Lama throughout the day.

Prominent among them are foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Union civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri and road transport minister Nitin Gadkari.

ALSO READ | Dalai Lama turns 86, still longs for Wutai Shan pilgrimage in China

US Ambassador to Nepal Randy Berry also took to Twitter to greet the Tibetan spiritual leader on his birthday. He said that “peace and freedom cannot be ensured as long as fundamental human rights are violated.

The envoy’s tweet followed another tweet by US Ambassador in India Atul Keshap, who said the Dalai Lama's messages of peace and compassion inspire and transcend globally.

Several chief ministers including Punjab’s Captain Amarinder Singh, Madhya Pradesh’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik, Sikkim’s Prem Singh Tamang and Delhi's Arvind Kejriwal also greeted the Dalai Lama in a show of respect.

Other leaders who also called him included oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan, chief ministers Pema Khandu (Arunachal Pradesh), Pamod Sawant (Goa), Conrad Sangma (Meghalaya), James Sangma (Meghalaya's minister of environment and forests) and Bimal Borah (sports and culture minister in Assam).

In exile now for 62 years, the 14th Dalai Lama has been a symbol of struggle for the Tibetan people to the entire world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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