In Exile From the Land of Snows

by John Avedon

  At 4:00 p.m. on July 28, a few reporters noticed Tibetans beginning to gather in the courtyard of Guest House No. 2. Within an hour, over 2,000 people were standing shoulder to shoulder in the yard. As the sun set, the familiar white minibus appeared and the crowd went wild. Men raised clenched fists; women and children cried. Those closest to the bus stormed its occupants, placing their hands on top of their own heads in blessing, embracing them, tearing their clothes. Amazed, the correspondents began photographing while Phuntso Wangyal, chairman of the Tibetan community in Great Britain, addressed the gathering from the steps of the Guest House, “May the Dalai Lama’s hopes and aspirations be fulfilled,” he began, but before he could continue, a young man leapt up crying, “Long live His Holiness, the Dalai Lama,” a call the crowd began to chant in unison, raising their fists with each repetition. As the delegation retired indoors, correspondents rushed to speak with them, but were prevented from doing so by the Chinese.

  The next morning the bus failed to arrive as usual. By 11:30, a meeting of sixteen officials was convened in the sitting room of the guest house. Here, the second delegation was informed that its tour had been canceled. They were to pack immediately and return to Peking. “By your actions,” Sonam Norbu, a Tibetan vice-chairman of the TAR, stated, “you have deliberately incited the Tibetan people to break with the motherland, and to sever their ties with their elder brothers, the Han Chinese. This amounts to a grave breach in relations between the Dalai and Peking and will not be tolerated.” Hustled three hours later out the building’s back door, having, in the interim, been detained in their rooms, the second delegation was driven from Lhasa. Their route was watched over by cadres of the Public Security Bureau, soon to be reinforced by PLA squads, who had been meticulously held on their bases until now. Taken to Gongkar Airport, the delegation spent the night, and the next day was flown out of the country to Chengdu and thence to Peking.

  On hearing of the second delegation’s expulsion, the third delegation cabled Dharamsala from Shigatse. They received instructions to complete the remaining six weeks of their tour. A fourth delegation, however, scheduled to depart in August, never left India. Put off by Peking until the spring of 1981, it was then told that, although Ngabo Ngawang Jigme had replaced Tien Bao as the head of the TAR government (a further gesture of Chinese conciliation), their visit was postponed indefinitely. Nothing substantial occurred for another year until, in April 1982, a three-member team—comprised of Juchen Thubten Namgyal, the senior minister in the Dalai Lama’s Cabinet; P. T. Takla, Minister of Security; and Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, Chairman of the renamed Assembly of the Tibetan People’s Deputies—flew to Peking. There they met with Xi Zhongxun, Secretary of the Party Central Secretariat, Ulanfu, longtime head of the Nationalities Affairs Commission, and Yang Jiren, a Vice Premier. In several weeks of discussion, the highest level exchange to date, both sides sought to clarify their positions on Tibet’s status while exploring possible compromise solutions. Unfortunately, these talks ended in a stalemate. Their contents, though, were kept secret until a November editorial in Beijing Review claimed that the exiles had requested China to incorporate all Tibetan areas into a “unified big Tibetan Autonomous Region” which would be granted the same status offered by the PRC to Taiwan in its 9-point reunification proposal of October 1, 1981. It also noted that the most recent entreaty from the Tibetans had been automatically rejected since Tibet had been “liberated for more than three decades.” Ongoing calls for its independence were, it said, nothing more than “a dirty allegation of imperialist aggression … opposed by the Chinese people and most strenuously by the Tibetan people.”

  On May 9, 1983, Dharamsala finally responded. Not bothering to address the claim that the Tibetans had, in the manner of supplicants, initiated contact with China, the Kashag nevertheless refuted virtually every other point in the Beijing Review’s editorial. The Tibetan delegation had not asked for the status offered to Taiwan nor had it suggested the creation of a new autonomous region. Instead, while presenting a detailed brief on Tibet’s racial, cultural and historic independence, the delegation had noted the correct boundaries of the region (of which the TAR was only one third) and concluded, as an aside, that any concessions from Peking must entail “a far greater degree of freedom” than that presented to Taiwan.

  The contrasting versions of the talks underscored how far the two sides actually were from a negotiated settlement. Although the Panchen Lama had been permitted to visit Lhasa during the summer of 1982—where tens of thousands of people greeted him—a new wave of mass arrests, the imposition of a curfew in Lhasa and the public execution of a number of “counterrevolutionaries” occurred as late as the autumn of 1983. The attempt to find a solution to Tibet’s problems had, it seemed, collapsed, only a few years after it had begun. One single benefit continued to accrue, keeping alive the hopes of individual Tibetans: permission, granted warily and to a chosen few, to travel abroad.

  LATE IN OCTOBER 1980—a year after the first delegation’s visit to Lhasa—Dr. Tenzin Choedrak’s “black hat” was removed before 3,000 inmates of Sangyip Prison and he was proclaimed a free man. He was then informed that Lobsang Samten’s request had been granted. He would be permitted to go to India. Aware of his imminent departure, hundreds of people came to visit, bearing letters for the Dalai Lama. Unable to carry them, Dr. Choedrak promised instead to relate in person to the Dalai Lama how bad conditions in Tibet were. Meanwhile, at a tea party given for him by prison authorities on the eve of his departure, Tenzin Choedrak dutifully swore to abide by the Party’s newest maxim, that of “seeking truth from facts.” The next day he went by jeep to Shigatse and from there to the Nepalese border. On the Tibetan side stood a PLA guardhouse, the red five-starred flag of China displayed beside a single sentry standing rigidly at attention. Across the Nepal-China Friendship bridge, which spanned the fast-flowing Nyanang river, flew the blue and maroon double pennant of the kingdom, Nepalese soldiers relaxing over a cup of tea by a customs house beneath it. Dr. Choedrak walked in company with another Tibetan, and as he stood on the red line dividing the bridge, turned to face the PLA for the last time. The first real feeling of freedom he had experienced in twenty-one years surged up, and with the realization that he was beyond the control of his guards forever, he yelled, “Now all of you Chinese can go to hell, and may I never see you again!” Then smiling, but somewhat confused, he walked across the remainder of the bridge and stepped onto the free soil of Nepal.

  Dr. Choedrak continued his story: “A friend of Lobsang Samten’s picked me up at the border. He owns a restaurant and he drove me into Katmandu. When we arrived, there was so much noise and commotion that I didn’t feel settled. I wanted to relax, but I couldn’t help thinking, ‘When will there be a problem in this place? When will there be an unsettled period? When will trouble come here? Katmandu is such a small city and Nepal so little in comparison to Tibet that the Chinese could topple the whole country in just one or two hours if they wanted.’ That’s the feeling I had because of all the confusion. Nothing seemed secure.”

  Tenzin Choedrak stayed in Katmandu for almost a week before flying to India. During his first days of freedom the conflicting impressions continued.

  “When I entered Katmandu I was surprised by how much people possessed,” he said. “It was a shock to realize that the merchandise in the stores and that all the cars and scooters on the streets were privately owned. In all of Tibet there is not a single good cooking pot that a person can buy or sell individually. I asked the man who was my host, ‘Are these cars made in Nepal, or do they come from India?’ He replied, ‘No. These cars are made mostly in Japan.’ So I asked him, ‘How much does a car cost?’ And he said, ‘Oh, about fifty to sixty thousand rupees.’ And then I was completely overwhelmed, because if all the families in Lhasa put their money together, they still couldn’t afford to buy one car, and here many people actually owned their own.”

  Following his arrival in India Dr. Choedrak’s disorientation
grew stronger. “I flew from Katmandu to New Delhi at night,” he said. “All I could think about was how anxious I was to see His Holiness. But the next morning, when I walked through the city, again I became completely confused. There was so much more prosperity than even in Nepal, that I couldn’t help thinking, ‘This world really is unfair. In Tibet a person struggles just to eat and here they have so much!’ I remember seeing a store that sold silverware and another that sold meat. When I watched people shopping in them, I realized, ‘Oh, this really is a free country. If you have money you can buy as much as you want and no one can stop you.’ In Tibet, there is nothing to buy, there are no products and no one has money. Then I saw Indian ladies strolling about, well dressed and doing nothing. ‘This really is a free world,’ I thought. ‘People can just be idle if they choose to.’ And I wondered, ‘How can they have so much improvement if the people are not working all the time?’ In Tibet everyone works constantly. The women, especially, work all the time, day and night. But still there is no improvement. While here in India no one was working but there was so much of everything. This development must somehow result from freedom, but how it does is very confusing to me.”

  Arriving in Dharamsala on November 19, 1980, Tenzin Choedrak was reunited with Lobsang Samten and given a room in Meunkay Khangsa, the government guest house, in McLeod Ganj. Though he wished to meet the Dalai Lama in the traditional manner, on an astrologically auspicious day, he was summoned almost immediately to Thekchen Chöling. Dressed in a new chuba with leather shoes replacing the blue sneakers he had been issued in Lhasa, he walked through McLeod Ganj’s main street and out the far end of town. Reaching the Dialectical School behind the exiles’ own Central Cathedral, he passed a group of young monks, lined up in pairs for their morning debate class. Then, met by a secretary at the green and white canopied gate of the Dalai Lama’s compound, he was ushered past turbaned Indian guards up the hillside to the Tibetan leader’s office. Holding a white scarf, he walked nervously down a flower-lined veranda and into a large room hung with bright thankas. The Dalai Lama stood waiting for him, smiling broadly. “The moment I saw His Holiness,” recounted Dr. Choedrak, “I couldn’t say a word. I just started to cry. He led me to a chair and sat beside me. He called for tea. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. Every time I began to talk I would break into tears again. His Holiness just sat patiently, and finally, when the tea came, I felt composed. While we talked I noticed how much older he looked. Of course, he was a young man when I saw him last and now he has grown into middle age. But he also looked very well, and I could tell that he has learnt so much about the world, very different from how we were in Tibet before. I was happy because I found that after all my doubt and concern, he was living quite comfortably. Everything was well kept and clean. This was the most important thing to me—that His Holiness was well.”

  After meeting with the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Choedrak visited the Cabinet. Here, however, the changes between the old and new Tibetan society reinvoked his sense of disquiet.

  “The Kashag appeared to be working in better quarters than His Holiness. Their office seemed more decorative, richer,” he explained. “I became quite upset, quite angry. ‘Now the world has gone upside down,’ I thought. ‘Our leader is sitting on a small cushion and the members of his Cabinet have fat mattresses with beautiful Tibetan rugs on them.’ I know I’m from the old Tibet now, but I think that this new equality is not right. And also, when I looked around at all the large buildings in Dharamsala, the library, the government buildings, the medical center, I wondered if the Tibetans in exile are really planning to go back to Tibet at all. I asked them, ‘Have you bought these buildings?’ And when they said, ‘Yes,’ I couldn’t help thinking that the money should have been saved to use in Tibet when we are free. But now my ideas are gradually changing. I realize that over twenty years something had to be done. And perhaps the Tibetan question won’t be resolved all that quickly. So naturally the Tibetans in India need some place to settle. And I realize that there is much for the government officials to do as well. It is with those outside of Tibet that the hope for our freedom really lies.”

  Despite Dr. Choedrak’s difficulties in adjusting to life outside prison and Tibet, he was soon absorbed in his duties as the newly designated head of the Tibetan Medical Center’s hospital and pharmacy. Appointed to be the Dalai Lama’s chief personal physician, he walked to Thekchen Chöling just after dawn every other day to examine the leader’s pulse. With the Dalai Lama’s support, he undertook the manufacture of tsother, one of Tibetan medicine’s most powerful drugs, whose ingredients had been unknown in exile until his arrival. Having received the medicine’s formula directly from Kenrab Norbu, the Master of Mendzekhang, Dr. Choedrak was eager to pass on his knowledge before it was lost. Under the Dalai Lama’s insistence, the drug was made—by a staff of eighteen pharmacists working twenty-four hours a day for three months—in Thekchen Chöling itself, where he could observe the preparation. Successfully completed, it was the largest quantity of tsother to be manufactured in the history of Tibetan medicine and once combined with other compounds, vastly enhanced their efficacy. In light of the achievement, Dr. Choedrak looked back over both his own fate and that of Tibet as a whole. “Of the 76 men in my group who went to China only four are now alive,” he said. “I have survived and so the lineage of this important medicine, tsother, has too. This is true for Tibet as well. We came very close to losing everything, but we have not. We have endured. In his last testament the Thirteenth Dalai Lama warned us of what lay ahead. He plainly said that if people behaved according to the precepts of religion and ceased to deceive one another, acting out of self-interest alone, the disaster could be averted. But the Tibetan people ignored his advice and as a result Tibet became a land of beggars. Now Tibetans in and out of Tibet are following closely the white way, the religious path. Our faith has been strengthened. For the future, we are placing all our hope in it and the guidance of His Holiness.”

  DHARAMSALA, JANUARY 21, 1983, 4:00 A.M. An alarm clock rings in the Dalai Lama’s hilltop cottage. Tenzin Gyatso wakes, rises from his bed, washes and, once dressed, moves through an adjoining room to the center of the house. Outside the night is overcast. The Central Cathedral looms dark against the mountains. A lone Indian sentry, rifle by his side, guards the canopied gate of Thekchen Chöling. As lights come on in the Dalai Lama’s cottage, his attendants stir in the staff quarters below and a kettle is set atop the stove for the day’s first pot of butter tea.

  In a large, windowless room Tenzin Gyatso stands before a golden statue of Avalokiteshvara. Folding his palms in prayer, he prostrates three times and then, sitting on a cushion to the left of the image, briskly polishes the surface of a small, copper tray with his right sleeve. Upon it, he doles out handfuls of rice, gradually building, along with prayers and visualizations, a three-tiered cone. Buttressed by circular bands, crowned by a solar and lunar disk, the mandala represents an image of the cosmos. When it is complete, the Dalai Lama offers it to the assembly of Buddhas, together with a request that they continue to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings. At 5:30 sharp, he leans to his left, uncovers a large shortwave radio and tunes in the international news on BBC World Service. President Mitterand of France is in Bonn to mark the twentieth anniversary of the West German-French friendship treaty. A nuclear-powered satellite belonging to the Soviet Union is due to fall to earth two days hence. President Reagan has called for the establishment of “Democracy Institutes” around the world. After listening, he continues to meditate. At 6:00 he walks to his study, a narrow room carpeted in a maroon rug at the rear of the cottage. Its windows are lined with pink and white flowers tinged now by a soft gray light. It is dawn. Sparrows and finches dart between the fir trees of the garden and a wooden bird-house the Dalai Lama has hung close by. Their singing fills his room. Seated beneath a portrait of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, a color postcard of Bodh Gaya stuck in the corner of its frame, Tenzin Gyatso glances across the way
at a neatly arranged altar case. A doorway to its left opens on his workroom where a pile of broken watches waits to be repaired. There is a low murmur at the front of the study and Lobsang Gawa, the Dalai Lama’s chief attendant, enters, setting a breakfast tray of toast, tea, cornflakes and tsamba on a low table. He returns the Dalai Lama’s greeting and departs, as the Tibetan leader opens a clothbound scripture to read while he eats.

  At seven o’clock Tenzin Gyatso leaves his residence and descends a steep flight of stairs to a beige Range Rover. After bidding farewell to the Cabinet, which is lined up to see him off, he is driven past his greenhouse and office complex, before which wait two Ambassadors filled with nine members of his party. Together the cars leave Thekchen Chöling, bypass the Cathedral beyond and, turning right at the edge of McLeod Ganj, drive gingerly down the precipitous back road, past Gangchan Kyishong, the Secretariat Compound, and through the silent streets of Katwali Bazaar. Despite a run of foul, winter weather the day is pleasantly mild. Ngari Rinpoché, riding in the second car with Dr. Tenzin Choedrak and Delhi’s new liaison officer, Mr. A. N. Khanna, notes that Dharamsala itself is particularly warm. The closer the car comes to the plains, the colder the temperature turns. Emerging from the foothills to battle Pathankot’s perennial snarl of traffic, he rolls up his window against the chill, barely heeding the familiar sight of dust-encrusted buildings, their cockeyed balconies melting, it seems, off the insipid mud of their walls. Then Pathankot is gone and a grueling drive across the Punjab begins, ending, after one flat tire and a thorough assault from the local roadworks, at the Amritsar airport two and a half hours later.