The chief of banned “Falun Gong” spiritual group in China, Erping Giang, has surfaced in New Delhi with an international delegation to set up its Indian chapter and to lobby with the Indian leadership so that it could convince China that this group was a non-governmental organisation with no political mission.
It is not yet clear how Erping Giang came to New Delhi. He is staying in the Hyatt Regency hotel here along with his close associates from Taiwan, Norway and Singapore. The delegation plans to meet Indian political, spiritual and non-governmental leaders, sources close to him said, adding that he may try to meet Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee or Home Minister L K Advani.
Falun Gong is a yogic movement in China promoting meditation and concentration techniques to spiritually starved people of that country. It was founded by a teacher Li Hong Hie in 1992. The ruling Communist Party of China feels threatened with this group whose membership rose to 10 crore as against five crore of the party. China, which treats this group as fundamentalist in nature, launched a crackdown on it in 1996 and banned it in 1998.
In the past three years one lakh supporters of Falun Gong were jailed, about 10,000 were tortured and 332 people died in police custody. China has imposed 18 years imprisonment for those who become its members. Falun Gong has its members all over the world.
Its founder Li Hong Hie had to take shelter in New York. Erping Giang has a mission -to create a public opinion in India to convey that Falun Gong was purely a spiritual, non-governmental organisation with international character but no political intentions and that China should consider lifting the ban on this group.
Sources close to Erping Giang say that Falun Gong was a more powerful, bigger and moral movement than that of the Dalai Lama. Like Karmapa, Erping Giang, who is the chief of International committee of Falun Gong, would not seek political asylum in India, the sources said. The question being debated in political circles is that China may feel irked over the activities of Erping Giang in a democratic country like India.
Beijing has not taken kindly to the activities of Dalai Lama, who is chief of the Tibetan government in exile, though New Delhi recognises Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.