New Delhi: For the third consecutive year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama on his birthday, a tradition that began after the stand-off between Indian and Chinese armies began in mid-2020.

"Spoke to His Holiness @DalaiLama and conveyed heartfelt greetings to him on his 88th birthday. Wishing him a long and healthy life," the Indian prime minister tweeted.

After becoming prime minister, Modi did not speak to the Dalai Lama until 2021, when he called up the octogenarian spiritual leader on his birthday. That call was made in 2022 and again this year.

The Dalai Lama has been living in India since 1959, when he made a dramatic escape after China assumed complete control over Tibet. An influential Tibetan diaspora also resides in India, with the establishment of numerous monasteries and educational institutions dedicated to the preservation of cultural and religious heritage.

China has denunciated the Dalai Lama as a “splittist”, while New Delhi has stated that the Indian government perceives him as a spiritual leader.

As The Wire reported last year, the Indian government has been inconsistent in playing the so-called “Tibet card” since Modi's term began. Modi invited the Tibetan government-in-exile to his official swearing-in ceremony in 2014. The following year, a US-based dissident Chinese was allowed to hold a conference about the status of minorities in China at Dharamshala but the visas of several attendees were eventually cancelled, including Uighur and Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.

In March 2018, the Tibetan government-in-exile announced a series of events to mark 60 years of the Dalai Lama’s escape to India. The Indian government asked officials to avoid the events, which meant the commemoration became a low-profile event.

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