What happens when the Dalai Lama dies?

The question looms over this raggedy hillside town, a place where ancient mysticism constantly brushes against the realities of modern geopolitics. The monks who fled across the Himalayas ask it quietly, as do the exile politicians. Even the angry young activists are careful how they raise the issue.

But as the man at the center of the Tibetan exile movement approaches his 75th birthday, the question has become impossible to escape: What happens after the Dalai Lama dies?

The issue echoes far from Dharmsala, the Dalai Lama's home since he fled Tibet after a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. It ranges from policy decisions in Beijing to widespread fears inside Tibet and among the 150,000 exiles that their struggle for autonomy may collapse with the death of their icon.

It is something he thinks about all the time.

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