A Ladahhi Tibetan-Buddhist monk serving as Indian Ambassador to Mongolia.
Since Ambassador Plenipotentiary Kushok G. Bakula Rimpoche became the Indian envoy in 1990, he has played a central role in the reconstruction of Buddhism in Mongolia and the neighbouring areas of Russia. However, his other antecedents are just as absorbing.
Bakula Rimpoche is without doubt one of the most central figures in modern Ladakhi history, and not an uncontroversial one. He was bom on 19 May 1917, on a full moon, and was recognised as the 20th incarnation of Arhat Bakula at the age of six and enthroned at Spituk (dPe-thub) Monastery near Leh. At the age of ten, Bakula went to Tibet for higher studies, spending 14 years at the Loseling College of Drepung Monastery near Lhasa, where he received with honours, the Geshe Lharampa degree, the ´PhD´ of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, from the Thirteenth Dalai Lama.
In June 1949, during Jawaharlal Nehru´s visit to Ladakh, Bakula Rimpoche was made District President of the National Conference, and he soon established himself as the pre-eminent force in Ladakh´s politics, emerging as an outspoken advocate of Ladakhi interests in the State Assembly in Srinagar. After Sheikh Abdullah´s arrest and the rise of Bakshi as Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Bakula began a 14-year stint in various ministerial positions in the state, but mostly as Minister of State for Ladakh Affairs, before being elected to the Lok Sabha in 1967 for the first of two consecutive terms.