Press statement: His Holiness the Dalai Lama has no plans of conversion of Hindus to Buddhism
5 October, 2001: My attention was drawn to news reports sometime back stating that His Holiness the Dalai Lama was going to convert one million Hindus into Buddhism. I did not react then because I thought this was utterly un-true and totally an irresponsible piece of news reporting, planted by some vested interests. I felt then this piece of irresponsible news reporting did not deserve a considered reaction.
But yesterday morning I had the good fortune to have an audience with Shri Shri Jagadguru Shankaracharya-Matha of Puri. His Holiness Jagaguru Shankaracharya mentioned to me that this same news appeared in leading national newspapers during His Holiness the Dalai Lama visit to Kolkata sometime in March this year. The news reports accompanied His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s photographs. The news reports claimed that His Holiness the Dalai Lama issued a statement to the journalists on the mass conversion plans. After sometime another news report appeared in the same newspapers saying that His Holiness the Dalai Lama had postponed his plans of mass conversion of one million Hindus into Buddhism. Recently the same news item appeared in the Delhi newspapers stating that the conversion would take place in Delhi on a specified date.
Hearing this from His Holiness Jagadguru Shankaracharya, I was deeply shocked and I felt that it is necessary to make our clarification on such baseless news reporting, which appears to be published with ulterior motives.
I would like to state here categorically that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has never converted any Hindus into Buddhism at any point of time and will not convert any Hindus into Buddhism in the future. In fact, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is always against conversion of a people, community or an individual from one religion to another. Nor has His Holiness the Dalai Lama encouraged anyone, including Hindus, to become Buddhists or to convert into our religion.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has always advised people to remain true to his or her traditional religion. At the same time His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that anyone could study any facet of Buddhism to supplement his or her spiritual growth, if anyone wishes to do so. To do this it is not required to embrace Buddhism and give up one’s own religion.
In future people must not be misled by such irresponsible news reporting that appear in the media.
This is to further clarify that there may have been certain class of Hindus who embraced Buddhism in various parts of India. This is to emphatically state that His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other followers of Tibetan Buddhism were not involved directly or indirectly in such kinds of conversion.
Samdhong Lobsang Tenzin Chairman of Kashag 4 October 2001