War of Words Over Dalai Lama Succession; Kashmir: Appropriate Is as Appropriate Does; Pakistan Hopes Bitcoin, Rare Earths, Trump Nobel Will Fend Off US Tariffs

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

---

Dear readers

If you are already a paid subscriber, thank you! And be sure to renew your subscription when it expires.

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content.

To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the following link - https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable

1. Please give us at least up to 2 business days to activate/upgrade/renew your subscription

2. These are one-time payments and there will be no auto-renewal

Over to Siddharth Varadarajan for today’s Cable

---

Snapshot of the day

July 3, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

No one other than the Dalai Lama and nothing except existing Tibetan conventions can dictate his succession, Union minority affairs minister Kiren Rijiju said today, a day after the top Tibetan spiritual leader reiterated that only his Gaden Phodrang Trust – to be read with ‘and not the Chinese government’ – will pick his reincarnation. This is the first time an Indian government official has publicly commented on the succession issue, but it is not clear whether Rijiju's remarks mark an official change in the Indian government's position.

Rijiju's statement is likely to draw a response from Beijing, whose ambassador to India Xu Feihong had said yesterday that the Dalai Lama's successor will need the Chinese government's approval to assume office. Xu also said that the succession will need to be determined by the “Golden Urn lottery procedure”, which the Dalai Lama in the past has rejected as having been “imposed” by Manchu officials and lacking “any spiritual quality”.

If New Delhi is on board with what Rijiju said, what kind of a shift would this represent in its stance on not just the Dalai Lama’s successor but the wider Tibetan question? India has maintained that the Dalai Lama is a “revered religious leader” who is “accorded all freedom to carry out his religious activities” in India, but it has never said anything about his succession or recognised the Central Tibetan Administration. Former foreign secretary and