His Holiness the Dalai Lama will turn 90 this week. He entered India aged 23 and has spent the last 66 years in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, where the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) was established a few days after his arrival. It continues to regulate the activities of the Tibetan exiles in India.
On the fateful afternoon of March 31, 1959, the Dalai Lama’s party arrived at the Indian border village of Kenzamani, near Tawang in the North-East Frontier Agency, which became the state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1978. His Holiness was seriously ill, and physically exhausted due to two weeks of hard travel from Lhasa through the Tibetan countryside to the Indian border. His 80 companions were received by the Indian Army officials guarding the border. P N Menon, a foreign service official who had previously served in Lhasa, was there, carrying a message from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
“My colleagues and I welcome you”, Nehru wrote, adding that India would be happy to “afford the necessary facilities” for the foreign guests to stay in its territory. Lest no political meaning was read by China into this gesture, Nehru contended that “the people of India, who hold you in great veneration, will no doubt accord their traditional respect to your personage”. Three years earlier, when the Dalai Lama visited India for the first time in November 1956 to participate in the 2,500th Buddha Jayanti celebrations at Bodh Gaya, Nehru was not that generous. Alerted by the rumours that the Dalai Lama may not return to Tibet, and influenced by his friend, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, he categorically told the Tibetan leader that India could not support him and hence, he should go back to his country and try to work things out with the Chinese.
In 1959, Nehru not only allowed the Dalai Lama to enter India as a refugee but also provided asylum for him and thousands of his followers. Thousands of Tibetans continued to enter India. They were settled across the country at several places including Dharamshala, Dehradun, Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal, Mainpat in Chhattisgarh, and Bylakuppe and Mundgod in Karnataka. The number of Tibetan refugees swelled substantially, crossing 1,00,00 at one point. However, over the years, the numbers decreased as many Tibetan youth opted to migrate to other countries, including the US and Europe. According to the census conducted by the Central Tibetan Administration in 2022, an estimated 66,000 Tibetans live in various settlements in India.
Respecting the commitment given to the Indian government, the Dalai Lama and his followers conducted their lives in the host country with the utmost dignity and peace. They made sure that Indian soil wasn’t used for activity against any other country. As a renowned guru of the Mahayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama became famous and soon started attracting followers and supporters from across the world. The people of India, including successive Indian governments, always held him in high esteem as a religious and spiritual master.
Through decades of living in exile in India, the Dalai Lama developed a special bond with the country and its people. I have had the fortune of interacting with him on several occasions and his genuine and emotional bond with his spiritual motherland was evident each time. He is a man of not only great wisdom but also of subtle humour. “I may be a Tibetan, but my blood is Indian,” he once told me, playfully adding, “You know, I ate the rice and dal of this country for 60 years and my blood is formed out of that.” On a more serious note, he once reminisced about his meeting with Morarji Desai. The former PM apparently told the Dalai Lama that Hinduism and Buddhism were two branches of the same tree. “But I respectfully corrected Morarji Desai and told him, ‘You are the tree and we are a branch,’” he confided.
This humility and deep respect for Indian spirituality have remained the hallmarks of the Dalai Lama. “I describe myself as a son of India. My mind has been nourished by India’s rich philosophical tradition, while my body has been fed by Indian rice and dal. I am a messenger of two great gifts of India to humanity – religious pluralism and the teachings of ahimsa, the principle of nonviolence”, he wrote in his book Voice for the Voiceless.
Engagement between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government began at the end of 1979 when Deng Xiaoping invited his brother, Gyalo Thondup, for a meeting. He came back with a message from Deng that “except for independence”, everything could be discussed. Several rounds of negotiations continued between the two sides for years. In his speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1988, the Dalai Lama publicly indicated that he was willing to “remain a part of the People’s Republic of China but only with a guarantee of genuine autonomy”. That appears to be the position of Tibetan exiles to this day, although the engagement became erratic due to a lack of trust on both sides.
India has always maintained that the Tibetan political question is a matter to be resolved bilaterally by the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership.
As the Dalai Lama’s age advances, questions about his succession dominate the discourse. He issued a statement recently, citing a decision of the heads of Tibetan traditions in September 2011, affirming that the institution would continue. He added that the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, will be exclusively responsible for recognising the future Dalai Lama. Not unexpectedly, the Chinese government rejected this decision and insisted that the process would take place under its gaze.
While the reincarnation issue may remain a major conflict between China and the Tibetans, what could become a bigger contention is His Holiness’ assertion that “the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world”.
The writer, president, India Foundation, is with the BJP. Views are personal
