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Dear members,
Our next seminar will be at 6:00-7:30pm on Wednesday November 25 in
the Rogers Room (N397) of the John Woolley Building, University of
Sydney.
We hope you can attend.
Kind regards,
AABS Executive
The Shugden Affair: A Religious or a Political
Issue?
The controversy about the Tibetan protective deity named Shugden or
Dolgyal, was explained in religious terms by the few scholars who wrote
about it. In this paper I will first show why this controversy is today
mainly a political issue, and how this development is closely linked to
the political situation of the Tibetan Government in Exile. Then, I will
show that beyond the exile context, the political development of this
controversy can be understood in the light of the traditional Tibetan
political system based on the union of politics and religion, or chos srid zung ‘brel,
which was challenged in exile but remained the central doctrine of the
Government in Exile. Finally, I will attempt to show how this controversy
can help us to build a more critical understanding of religion (chos) and politics (srid) in the Tibetan
cultural system.
Frederic Richard holds a BA and MA
in Religious Sciences from Lausanne University in Switzerland and has
worked on the Tibetan sacral kingship and the Dalai Lama institution. He
is currently research assistant and PhD student with the Chair of the
History and Anthropology of Political-Religious Processes in the Faculty
of Theology and Religious Sciences of Lausanne University. The topic of
his PhD research is the relation between politics and religion in Tibet (chos srid zung ‘brel)
as illustrated by the Shugden affair. He has carried out fieldwork in
India and in Nepal, where he was an affiliated researcher at the Rangjung
Yeshe Institute during the year 2014-2015.
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