The Dalai Lama yesterday said recent popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia sat firmly in the tradition of non-violent protest espoused by the likes of India’s independence icon, Mahatma Gandhi.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said the principles advocated by Gandhi had inspired US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela against apartheid.

“Many years ago, from the Philippines up to Chile, popular peaceful movement really brought a lot of change,” the 75-year-old former Nobel Peace Prize winner said on a visit to India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

“Now the same thing has happened in Egypt and Tunisia without a single shot from the demonstrators. So, things are changing. They are following the principle of non-violence.”

The anti-government protests that began last month in Tunisia and spread to Egypt saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets, successfully demanding the ouster of Presidents Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.

Sporadic incidents of violence were reported, however, mainly between pro- and anti-government factions as the authorities tried to shut down the protests with force.

The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule, said the world “really needs” to learn the principle of peaceful protest after many bloody wars in the last century.

“We should not consider non-violence as a sign of weakness but rather a sign of strength,” he told a neurosurgery conference at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, which itself was the focus of the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166.

“The 20th century became a century of bloodshed... If that immense violence, including the use of nuclear weapons, had brought some kind of peace to the world, maybe there would have been some sort of justification,” he added.

“But that was not the case... The 21st century should be the century of dialogue... in order to create a more peaceful society.”