GANGTOK, India (Reuters) - Indian police on Sunday stopped a young Buddhist monk, accompanied by hundreds of supporters, from entering a remote Himalayan monastery to stake his claim to Tibetan Buddhism's disputed third-highest post.
Police stopped 24-year-old Dawa Sangpo Dorjee, clad in traditional maroon and yellow robes, and a convoy of 500 supporters about 10 km (six miles) from the monastery just outside the state capital, Gangtok, almost 2,700 km (1,700 miles) east of New Delhi.
Dorjee is one of three monks claiming to be the 17th Karmapa Lama, head of Buddhism's Karma Kagyu sect headquartered at Rumtek monastery in India's isolated and mountainous Sikkim state bordering China.
"We have to ensure peace and tranquility at the monastery premises and also to prevent any bloodshed there," senior police officer Akshaya Sachdeva told the convoy. "We therefore cannot allow you to go."
Various factions of the 900-year-old sect have been fighting over the top post and the valuable relics and jewels which come with it for almost 10 years. The struggle has been further complicated by fragile diplomatic ties between nuclear neighbours India and China.
Sikkim-born Dorjee is battling Delhi-based Trinley Thaye Dorjee and the boy-monk Urgyen Trinley Dorjee, who fled 1,400 km (850 miles) through the Himalayas from China to India last year and has the backing of the Dalai Lama.
The position is the highest in the sect and ranks as third most important in the Buddhist religion.
The final decision will be up to the leadership of the Rumtek monastery after conducting a series of tests of the claimants.
But Rumtek is itself divided and no claimant has been able to reach the monastery since police set up a permanent presence there after a bloody clash between rival groups in 1993.
Urgyen Trinley Dorjee has been granted refugee status, but has not been allowed by Indian authorities to travel to the Rumtek monastery.
New Delhi is believed to be under pressure from China to restrict his activities after his flight, which revived memories of the Dalai Lama's own escape to India in 1959 after a failed bloody uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet.