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| In 1959, when the young Dalai Lama fled the Chinese army and crossed over into India, his nervous hosts allowed him to set up his government-in-exile at Dharamsala but settled most of the Tibetans who followed him in the southern state of Karnataka. From here they have waged their uphill and lonely battle. | ||
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Though the Dalai Lama is officially banned from conducting political activities from Indian soil, Dharamsala has become the nerve center of the Tibetan cause. Once a sleepy cantonment town, the Tibetan community and their foreign benefactors have turned Dharamsala into a model community and major tourist attraction. |
Like the Persian Parsis (who took refuge in India from the Arab invasions of 657 AD), Jews, and even some Greeks, who came to India as Alexander's soldiers in 326 BC and never left, Tibetans have availed of India's extraordinary hospitality to preserve their uniqueness and culture. | Every year hundreds of Tibetans, many of them children, still make the ardous journey through the Himalayas into India. Monastries in India train them to be monks, but the Dalai Lama believes a return to the motherland is essential to preserve Tibetan culture. To facilitate this he has agreed to accept autonomy for Tibet in place of indendence from China. |
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| Many Tibetans are dismayed by the Dalai Lama's alledged surrender of Tibetan sovereignity. Banned together in the Tibetan Youth Congress, they are calling for the Dalai Lama to cede his political leadership of the Tibetans to an elected leader. | LL was part of the CIA-backed Tibetan guerrilla force that fought the Chinese in Tibet until 1971. He fears a Chinese railway project that will connect Tibet with eastern China will be used to flood Tibet with Han Chinese. A part-president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, he advocates "victim-less violence", such as the blowing up of railway bridges, against the Chinese. |
At 68, the Dalai Lama must be as impatient as a Buddhist monk can get. Eager to return to Tibet and concious of China's new position in the world, he sent a personal emissary to Beijing for the first time ever in September 2002. In June 2003 another meeting was held. Whether he can cut a respectable deal with China's new president Hu Jintao, who as governor of Tibet in the 1980s declared martial law there, remains unclear. |
