New Delhi, Jan. 7 -- In the week that he turned 90, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama made the much-anticipated announcement on his succession along anticipated lines. At the start of the Fifteenth Tibetan Religious Conference in Dharamsala on July 2, he said that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue after him, and that the responsibility for finding his successor will rest with the Gaden Phodrang Trust, based in his private office in Dharamsala.

Since he came into exile in 1959, the Dalai Lama had been publicly equivocal, often playfully and provocatively so, about the question. He had been saying since 1969 that there would be a reincarnation only if it served the Tibetan people. He also disentangled the shared Buddhist...