Many individual members of the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) joined the International Shugden Community’s (ISC) campaign to prevent the Dalai Lama from banning the practice of Dorje Shugden and disrupting the spiritual lives of millions of people.

But these protests were not political. They were requests for religious freedom.

In an open letter to the Dalai Lama the ISC made their position clear. They requested the Dalai Lama to write to the Tibetan communities throughout the world informing them of the following four points:

  1. That both individuals and communities should completely stop all discrimination against the practice of Shugden and its practitioners;
  2. That they should maintain harmonious relationships with Shugden practitioners;
  3. That they should never try to harm Shugden practitioners either directly or indirectly;
  4. That they should solve this present problem by practically applying the above three points.

They believed that if this happened it would solve all the problems and the demonstrations could stop.

Two things should be noted: (1) the NKT is not the same as the ISC; and (2) the actions of the ISC were not political in nature. On the contrary, their aim was to free Buddhism from politics. The ISC no longer exists because it is felt that the problems have been resolved.

As it says in the NKT Internal Rules, the NKT must always remain free from any political affiliation.