In Exile From the Land of Snows

by John Avedon

  Since the first word of fighting in Lhasa had appeared late in March, news of a revolt in remote Tibet had leaped into world headlines. Over a hundred correspondents flew in from Paris, London, New York, Africa and East Asia seeking what was already billed as the “story of the year.” Choosing Kalimpong as the best spot to begin their search, they converged on the Himalayan Hotel, run by David Macdonald, a former British trade agent in Tibet and an acquaintance of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. While “Daddy” Macdonald took to his bed from worry on hearing of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s flight, the press scoured the surrounding peaks with binoculars, accosted the town’s more prominent Tibetan citizens, drove a hundred miles a day back and forth to Gangtok in search of leads and, under increasing pressure from their editors to provide front-page news on the whereabouts of the mysterious “God-King,” began issuing fabricated reports over Kalimpong’s antiquated Morse-key telegraph. Competition for a scoop was so stiff and genuine news so scarce that much of the reporters’ time was spent surreptitiously tailing one another for sources. With word of the Dalai Lama’s crossing into the NEFA, however, they could, just by looking at the map, infer that he would eventually emerge at Tezpur. Thereupon the press corps decamped en masse, first to Shillong, the capital of Assam, and then to Tezpur itself. Sleeping on the couches and billiard tables of the local Planter’s Club, they clogged the town’s tiny airstrip with single-engine planes hired to race exclusive photos of the “God-King’s” arrival to Calcutta’s Dum Dum Airport and the presses of the world’s periodicals beyond.

  In the early hours of April 18, Indian officials lifted a travel ban previously imposed on a small road camp called Foothills, thirty miles from Tezpur, where, shortly after dawn, the Dalai Lama was due to arrive. Those able to acquire transport caught their first glimpse of the exiled leader as, followed by his mother, sister, Ngari Rinpoché and the seventy-man remnant of the Tibetan government, he stepped from a jeep, walked down an impromptu carpet of tarpaulins laid between facing rows of Indian troops and entered an overseer’s cottage for a breakfast of cornflakes, poached eggs and toast. Emerging, the Dalai Lama was met by a shiny red Plymouth, the Tibetan and Indian flags mounted on bamboo splints above its headlights. An hour and a half later batteries of microphones and television cameras came to life before Tezpur’s Circuit House as once more he walked smiling, but silent, inside. While Tenzin Gyatso looked through hundreds of letters and cables sent by leaders and well-wishers from around the world, an Indian and a Tibetan official appeared before the press to read a statement composed by the Dalai Lama in the third person. Giving a capsule history of the key events leading up to his flight, the document revealed for the first time that the Seventeen-Point Agreement of 1951 had been signed “under pressure from the Chinese government” and that from the day of the PLA’s arrival in Lhasa “the Tibetan government did not enjoy any measure of autonomy.” It then denied Chinese claims that the Dalai Lama had been abducted, stating that he had come to India “of his own free will and not under duress.” “His country and people have passed through an extremely difficult period,” the statement summed up, “and all that the Dalai Lama wishes to say at the moment is to express his sincere regret at the tragedy which has overtaken Tibet and to fervently hope that these troubles will be over soon without any more bloodshed.”

  China reacted harshly. “The so-called statement of the Dalai Lama … is a crude document, lame in reasoning, full of lies and loopholes,” declared the New China News Agency two days later. “Actually, Tibet’s political and religious systems were all laid down by the Central Government in Peking.… Not even the title, position and powers of the Dalai Lama were laid down by the Tibetans themselves. In modern history the so-called Tibetan independence has always been a scheme of the British imperialists for carrying out aggression against China and first of all against Tibet.… Indian expansionist elements inherited this shameful legacy.…” Citing as evidence of his abduction the fact that the Dalai Lama’s statement had not been written in the first person and that an Indian official had passed out copies of it to reporters, the dispatch upgraded Peking’s earlier accusations in what was perceived in New Delhi as an unwarranted and bellicose reversal of the facts. “The publication at the present moment of this so-called statement of the Dalai Lama, which harps on so-called Tibetan independence, will naturally cause people to ask: Is this not an attempt to place the Dalai Lama in a position of hostility to his motherland, thus blocking the road for him to return to it? What is meant by independence here,” it stated, “is in fact to turn Tibet into a colony or protectorate of a foreign country.”

  At one o’clock in the afternoon of April 18, a few hours after his arrival in Tezpur, the Dalai Lama boarded a special train for the three-day ride to his newly designated residence, the former British hill station of Mussoorie in the mountains north of New Delhi. Riding in a private saloon, behind the long, black barrel-nosed steam engine of Indian Railways, a pilot train clearing the tracks in advance, the Tibetans headed west across the dusty northern edge of the subcontinent, traversing Assam, Bengal, Bihar, and finally Uttar Pradesh, where, turning due north, they approached Dehra Dun, the railhead eighteen miles from Mussoorie. Tens of thousands of white-clad Indian students and laborers lined the train’s route, choking the stations it passed through, chanting “Dalai Lama Ki Jai—Dalai Lama Zindabad.” (“Hail to the Dalai Lama—Long live the Dalai Lama.”) Along the empty tracks between towns, farmers waited for hours on the edges of their fields, palms pressed together in reverence, for a glimpse of the holy presence. At the major stops of Siliguri, Benares and Lucknow, Tenzin Gyatso left the saloon to address mass gatherings. It was not until early in the morning on April 21, as the Dalai Lama drove into the cool, pine-covered slopes of Mussoorie, the snow-capped peak of Nanda Devi visible in the distance, that his month-long, 1,500-mile journey concluded at Birla House, a summer resort owned by the powerful Birla family.

  Located on a pine-and-oak-covered promontory overlooking Happy Valley on the outskirts of Mussoorie, Birla House was built in the style of an English country home: two stories marked by steep dormers above a prominent veranda and a terraced garden filled with irises, lilies and blue and white violets. Inside, it was furnished in deep-backed chairs and couches, portraits of Gandhi and Nehru interspersed with paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses on the walls. There was a large radio in the drawing room before which the Dalai Lama and his Cabinet soon began listening to news bulletins while a chamber next to the Dalai Lama’s bedroom on the second floor was converted into a shrine for meditation. With Tenzin Gyatso and his family isolated behind Birla House’s new fourteen-foot-high barbed-wire fence and the Tibetan government quartered mainly at the Happy Valley Club, headquarters of the Provincial Armed Constabulary, a thick security screen of roadblocks and undercover agents effectively sealed the Tibetans from all contact with the press or other visitors.

  On April 24, three days after the Dalai Lama’s arrival at Birla House, Prime Minister Nehru drove through the streets of Mussoorie, dressed in his traditional tight white pants, black knee-length coat, buttonholed rose and Congress Party cap, to loud cheers from thousands of hill folk and vacationers. Stopping to address a convention of travel agents, his ostensible reason for making the trip, Nehru commented that he had come to fulfill “an old engagement,” not realizing he would “meet a big traveler.” In response to a reporter’s question he pointed out that India’s interest in Tibet was “historical, sentimental and religious and not essentially political.” “Our entire policy,” Nehru said, his words clearly directed to Peking, “whether it relates to cooperative farming, community development or industrial expansion, is based on cooperation.” After inviting the Panchen Lama and other Chinese officials to visit the Dalai Lama and see for themselves that he was not held “under duress,” Nehru drove past the police tent pitched at the gate of Birla House and posed with the Tibetan leader for a brief round of photographs on the lawn. The two men then retired insid
e, where they conferred for almost four hours, assisted only by an interpreter. “I explained the full situation to Nehru,” recounted the Dalai Lama. “His advice was to rest and consider things well without being hasty. Like a true, old friend he showed every sign of sympathy. It gave me happiness and hope. Yet at the same time, he cautioned me in line with reality. So because of this I felt a little discouraged, somewhat helpless, in fact.” The “reality,” Nehru made clear, was that, although offering “sympathy,” India would never substantially support the cause of Tibetan independence. “I mentioned casually to Pandit Nehru,” continued the Dalai Lama, “that we had established a temporary government in southern Tibet. He became slightly agitated. ‘We are not going to recognize your government,’ he said immediately. You see, I think we came from Tibet with some blind, unreasonable hope that with support we could still make a stand. But after discussing these matters with the Indian government we realized that, in reality, it was not so easy. Despite their sympathy they had to follow their policy of complete nonalignment. Of course, Pandit Nehru was a very knowledgeable and a greatly experienced person. But I think because of the Tibetan crisis he must have gotten a lot of headaches.”

  Nehru indeed found himself in an increasingly complex situation. The initial discussion of Tibet in the Indian Parliament took place in late March and early April and gave way, in May, to a lively, often acrimonious debate. While India’s Communist Party articulated China’s view of the crisis, accusing the government of entertaining designs on Tibet, virtually all of the other opposition parties labeled Nehru’s stand as one of appeasement. The previous year, Acharya Kripalani, leader of the Praja Socialists, had condemned Panch Sheel as “born in sin to put the seal of our approval on the destruction of an ancient nation.” Now India’s leading politicians castigated their Prime Minister for failing to stand up to Peking, whose successful conquest of Tibet paved the way for a direct attack on the country’s northern regions, parts of which China already claimed as properly belonging to itself. “I cannot understand how it is possible to be friendly with this nation with this mentality,” said Kripalani. “Yet our efforts to save it [friendship] will only result in this: They will not give us credit for good intentions. They will only give us credit for cowardice.” “The tragedy of Tibet hangs heavily on our conscience,” asserted K. M. Munshi. “For a young independent nation like ours, with its spiritual heritage, our handling of the Tibetan situation has been a crime in history.”

  While admitting shock “beyond measure” at Peking’s charges, Nehru refused to alter his position, insisting it was of “the greatest consequence” that India and China get along. Indispensable to this was the Dalai Lama’s good behavior. Given the current atmosphere, a Sino-Indian war could be sparked by the slightest provocation—a conflict India was utterly unprepared to fight. Recognizing that as a guest in India his position, and with it Tibet’s sole hope for an independent future, hung in the balance, Tenzin Gyatso temporarily took Nehru’s advice to “rest” and “consider things well” and set about adjusting to his new state in life.

  The great changes in the Dalai Lama’s circumstances soon became apparent. By public demand, he commenced giving a weekly darshan or blessing from a silk-draped chair on a rickety wooden stage at one end of the Birla House lawn. As summer began, Tibet’s exiled “God-King” turned into Mussoorie’s greatest tourist attraction until, on June 3, after being showered with rose petals by an audience of five thousand well-wishers and called to reappear twice on a balcony by latecomers chanting “Darshan! Darshan!“ his ministers, already in a storm over many Indians’ attempts to shake hands with “the Presence,” canceled all future appearances. Tenzin Gyatso, though, took eagerly not only to shaking hands but also to abolishing almost all of the centuries-old protocol surrounding him. “In the past there was too much formality. You couldn’t talk, you couldn’t even breathe freely,” he commented. “I hate being formal. Now, the new circumstances made it easier for me to change things. In this way, you see, becoming a refugee was actually useful. It brought me much closer to reality. And also it deepened my understanding of religion, particularly impermanence. Although the world is always changing one never notices it. Then suddenly your home, friends and country all are gone. It showed how futile it is to hold on to such things.”

  While the Dalai Lama adapted, Indian officials paradoxically did their best to maintain past protocol. Three years after his arrival confusion still reigned, demonstrated by the experience of one journalist who having been instructed not to touch or to turn away from the Dalai Lama, stumbled backwards toward the door at the conclusion of his audience. For a moment the Dalai Lama looked on amused. Then he strode quickly after the reporter, took him by his shoulders, turned him around and gave a friendly push.

  Within two months the Dalai Lama’s self-imposed silence ended. Since early April thousands of refugees had begun streaming over the Himalayan passes leading into Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal and India. With them came news of a wholesale effort on the part of China to uproot Tibetan society and culture. As they had been in Kham, “democratic reforms” were about to be imposed: collectivization of property and labor, class division, daily political “reeducation,” dismantling of the clergy, as well as plans for an influx of Han settlers to begin the Sinicization of Tibet. In addition, there were reports not just of mass imprisonment and execution but of repeated atrocities, torture, rape and dismemberment, carried out directly by the newly established Military Control Committees in each region. The full dimension of Tibet’s tragedy now compelled the Dalai Lama, against Nehru’s admonishments, to launch a campaign for international support.

  On June 20, Tenzin Gyatso held his first news conference. Under a large shamiana or open-sided tent, pitched on the lawn of Birla House, scores of reporters listened to the Dalai Lama read a lengthy statement cataloguing the destruction in Tibet, while identifying China’s ultimate aim as “the extermination of the religion and culture and even the absorption of the Tibetan race.” He called for an international commission to investigate the reports of atrocities, made clear that the Seventeen-Point Agreement was abrogated and stated: “Where I am, accompanied by my government, the Tibetan people recognize us as the government of Tibet. I will return to Lhasa,” he added, “when I obtain the rights and powers which Tibet enjoyed and exercised prior to 1950.”

  The Dalai Lama’s most immediate concern, however, was the problem of refugees. By the end of June almost 20,000 Tibetans had fled their homeland, the first of repeated waves of exodus, eventually totaling 100,000. While those closest to the border had been compelled to scale the world’s highest and least frequented passes, others, traveling inland from Kham and Amdo, had fought their way free in running battles lasting three and four months. These saw their ranks drastically reduced; a typical group of 125 survivors, who reached Assam in June, reported that they had set out 4,000 strong. Most of the refugees were starving or wounded, ill from the low altitude and stunned by a profound culture shock on descending to an alien world. “During the summer of 1959 my immediate task was to somehow save the refugees,” said the Dalai Lama. “They came just as the hot season started, wearing heavy boots and long robes which had to be burned, as they were completely useless. It was necessary to take very close care of their health. Then, with the little knowledge we possessed, we took it as our duty to tell these ‘fresh’ refugees that it was not so easy to return to Tibet. ‘We will have to remain in India for a longer period than expected,’ we said. ‘We will have to settle mentally as well as physically.’ ”

  Two large transit camps had been established to handle the influx: one called Missamari, located ten miles from Tezpur; the other, Buxa Duar, a former British prisoner-of-war camp situated near the Bhutanese border in West Bengal. The camps represented an effort not only of the Indian government but also of the opposition parties, who, led by Acharya Kripalani, united to create a Central Relief Committee that was instrumental in obtaining food, medical supplies and inter
national aid. Disinfected, fingerprinted, interrogated by Indian intelligence, issued blue-green trousers and brown bush shirts, the mixture of monks, guerrillas and families waited in barracks to be dispersed for road work to the cooler regions of northern India, a plan the Dalai Lama and New Delhi had jointly devised to check the growing number of fatalities. As July began, the first group left Buxa, to be followed shortly by hundreds more, deployed over a twelve-hundred-mile arc across the Himalayas. With their own limited chances for survival lay the sole hope for Tibet’s eventual self-determination.

  AFTER THREE DAYS of tramping over the 25,000-foot mountains dividing Tibet and Bhutan, Tempa Tsering, his parents and two younger sisters faced their goal. Beneath them stretched the heavily wooded slopes of the southern Himalayas, breaking for the first time in days the uncharted wilderness of brilliant snow-capped summits, ridges and defiles that they had struggled through. Six months earlier, the revolt had been crushed. Tempa’s father, Chopel Dhondub,* together with all the able-bodied men in the village of Drumpa, had been imprisoned by the PLA. Released, he was rearrested after only a few weeks, and then freed again, just in time to see his wife beaten and denounced in thamzing or public “struggle session.” He then received notice that Tempa, though only ten years old, was to be sent away with thousands of other Tibetan children for education in China. Frightened of losing their only son, Tempa’s parents decided to flee.