In Exile From the Land of Snows

by John Avedon

  His efforts, nevertheless, proved out. As a result of them, Ireland and Malaya co-sponsored Tibet’s case to the Steering Committee of the General Assembly, where, unlike its cursory dismissal in 1950, the issue was now debated in depth. In many respects the discussion reflected that of India’s Parliament. As introduced by the sponsoring nations, Tibet’s plight was depicted primarily as one involving human rights; the underlying issue of its nationhood was ignored, as the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan, though not in occupation, also claimed sovereignty. In his opening comments, Dato Ismail Kamil, Malaya’s representative, cited the conclusions of the International Commission of Jurists’ initial report, which maintained that “almost all the rights which together allow the full and legitimate expression of human personality appear to be denied to the Tibetans at the present time, and in most cases for some time past.” “On the basis of the available evidence,” the report concluded, “it would seem difficult to recall a case in which ruthless oppression of man’s essential dignity has been more systematically and efficiently carried out.” In his rebuttal, Vasily Kuznetsov, the Soviet Union’s representative, dismissed the report’s validity, accused the appeal’s sponsors of attempting to “utilize the United Nations in order to intensify the Cold War,” and maintained that “a nonexistent Tibetan question has been fabricated in order to worsen the international situation and the atmosphere in the Assembly.” Like India’s own Marxists, the entire Communist bloc, following Russia’s lead, voiced Peking’s view of the Tibetan issue as a matter “wholly and completely within the domestic competence of the Chinese People’s Republic,” even the discussion of which “would constitute a gross and wholly unjustified interference” into China’s internal affairs. Thus, Tibet’s case—just as Nehru had predicted—fell immediate victim to the broader global conflict. Nonetheless, by meeting’s end a large majority voted to include the issue on the agenda of the 14th General Assembly, where many Third World countries joined Western democracies in passing a resolution in Tibet’s favor by a vote of 45 to 9 (with 26 abstentions). Though not identifying the People’s Republic of China by name, it called for “respect for the fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people and for their distinctive cultural and religious life.” As continued reports of atrocities and wholesale destruction were brought out by repeated waves of refugees from Tibet, two more resolutions were passed in 1961 and 1965. In these the United Nations considerably stiffened its language. It not only registered, as in the second resolution, “grave concern” and “deep anxiety” over the “severe hardships” imposed on the Tibetans through the “suppression of their distinctive cultural and religious life,” but “solemnly” renewed its call “for the cessation of practices which deprive the Tibetan people of their fundamental human rights and freedoms, including most importantly their right to self-determination.”

  In December 1959, with the initial UN appeal behind him and the end of his first year in exile drawing near, Tenzin Gyatso went on pilgrimage. At Bodh Gaya, site of the Buddha’s enlightenment, he stayed in the Tibetan monastery within sight of the great second-century Mahabodhi Temple next to the Bodhi Tree, under which the Buddha had attained nirvana. Here the Dalai Lama met with some sixty representatives of the refugeees, who pledged their continued efforts to fight for Tibet’s freedom. Afterwards, for the first time in his life, he ordained a group of 162 monks. Then, traveling on to the Deer Park at Sarnath, where the Buddha’s first sermon had been delivered, the Dalai Lama drove with a typically reduced entourage of sixteen through a crowd of 2,000 weeping Tibetans who were camped around tea stalls beneath the trees, selling old clothes and a few of the valuables that they had managed to retain. Remaining for two weeks, he gave religious teachings in the traditional Tibetan style, seated on a high brocade-draped throne before the crowd. At their conclusion, Tenzin Gyatso spoke for an hour in the advisory manner he would address his people with from now on, presenting a long-range plan he had conceived, in which the exiles’ reconstruction and their struggle for Tibet’s independence would be combined. “For the moment Tibet’s sun and moon have suffered an eclipse,” said the Dalai Lama, “but one day we will regain our country. You should not lose heart. The great job ahead of us now,” he revealed, “is to preserve our religion and culture.”

  *Most Tibetans lack a shared family name and are known by personal names only.

  4

  Reconstruction

  1960–1974

  THE DALAI LAMA’S vision of exile society took root in his new headquarters, an abandoned British hill station called Dharamsala, located a day west of New Delhi on the northern margin of the Punjab. Perched across the lower ridges of the Dhauladar Range, a plumb barrier of snow-capped peaks fencing in the Kangra Valley, Dharamsala had been established by the British in the early 1860s as the summer seat of the Jullundur Division. Beginning with a military cantonment on the shoulder of the tallest crest, Mun Peak, they had gone on to found a small town, McLeod Ganj, on a slender ridge facing the plains below. A colonnade was erected to house shops, fronted by a genteel park of cedar trees, a birdbath and stone benches. Down the hill rose the rusticated belfry of St. John’s in the Wilderness, an Anglican church, while, scattered well apart over the slopes, more than a hundred bungalows sprang up, sporting turrets and gingerbread woodwork, vaulted ceilings and multiple wings, and dubbed with a bevy of romantic names such as Ivanhoe, Eagle’s Nest, Chestnut Villa, Wargrave and Retreat.

  By the turn of the century, McLeod Ganj supported one of the most vigorous societies, outside the cities, of any in the Raj. With the rail line put through to Pathankot, seven miles from the foothills, bureaucrats from both Delhi and Lahore flocked to the mountains. In the spring the woods were blanketed with primrose, mistletoe and red and mauve rhododendron, followed in June, after the onset of the monsoon, by an explosion of buttercups, violets and honeysuckle. Wildlife abounded: leopards, panthers, porcupines, foxes, jackals, hyenas, red-faced monkeys and huge white-maned langurs roamed the lower hills, joined in the colder months, when they descended to forage, by black and brown bears. Above McLeod Ganj hawks and white-bellied vultures wheeled in wide gyres on all sides. Partridges, pigeons, ravens and snow pheasants flew tamely into town. Slated to become the summer capital of the Raj, Dharamsala’s future seemed secure until an earthquake struck in 1905. The British picked Simla instead and those local officials who remained relocated their offices 1,500 feet down the hillside to the less exposed Lower Dharamsala. On August 15, 1947—India’s independence day—they departed as well.

  Only one man remained to preside over the spectral life of McLeod Ganj: N. N. Nowrojee. As proprietors of a general merchandise “Oilman” or “Europe Store” as they were called, the Nowrojee family had lived in Dharamsala since its inception. Parsees, they had journeyed to India themselves as refugees, fleeing religious persecution in Persia over a thousand years before. The family line had remained intact and, with the founding of their own business in McLeod Ganj, become, to generations of British bureaucrats, something of the hamlet’s guardian spirit. Entrusted now with dozens of abandoned bungalows, N. N. Nowrojee, fifth proprietor of Nowrojee and Sons, unsuccessfully sought to bring the village back to life. For twelve years he offered the buildings free of charge to schools and as tourist lodges to the state government, but there were no takers. Finally, on hearing through friends of the central government’s hunt for a permanent residence for the Dalai Lama, he approached New Delhi directly. His tale of a forgotten ghost town wasting in the woods proved intriguing enough to warrant inspection, following which, to his surprise, Delhi deemed it ideal. First, however, the Tibetans had to agree. “Pandit Nehru personally chose Dharamsala for us, based on what he called its ‘peace and tranquillity,’ ” recounted the Dalai Lama. “From our viewpoint, though, it had good as well as bad sides. Delhi is the nerve center. The nearer to Delhi, the better the communication. Dharamsala’s disadvantages, then, were clear. But we also saw its potential. It was open and there was more room to
expand. Thus, after complaining at first that we were reluctant to move, once our officials visited and formed a good opinion, we decided to shift.”

  On April 29, 1960, after a little more than a year’s stay, the Dalai Lama left Mussoorie. Traveling by overnight train to Pathankot, he was met at the station the following afternoon by state and municipal authorities, as well as a few thousand Tibetan refugees en route to Dalhousie for road work. Pausing to console the crowd, many of whom were weeping uncontrollably at the sight of their leader in such reduced circumstances, Tenzin Gyatso admonished them not to lose courage, promising that “one day we will go back to Tibet.” Then, led by an escort of police jeeps, he began the two-hour drive up the narrow, boulder-strewn valleys leading to Dharamsala, the shining white summits of the Dhauladar Range rising ahead.

  “It was a very small town,” recalled the Dalai Lama of his first sight of Lower Dharamsala, “but the local people gave me a hearty welcome—all they had to offer.” Driving slowly past the old British post office, police station and district headquarters, Tenzin Gyatso’s motorcade entered the tumbling warren of fruit and vegetable stalls, open-air barbershops, tailors, cobblers and sweet-sellers cluttered around the main street bisecting Katwali Bazaar. Three thousand people, hill folk in their bright embroidered mountain caps, Sikhs in scarlet and blue turbans, bureaucrats and businessmen wearing black suits, their wives clad in diaphanous saris, and even Gurkhas, descended from the still-active army cantonment, lined the route showering their new neighbor with flowers, one of which carried a small caterpillar, which, as the Dalai Lama reminisced, rather ungraciously bit him on the leg. With the sun tinting the adjacent dome of Mun Peak violet, the column drove five miles more up steep switchbacks through the cantonment to McLeod Ganj, where at 5:00 p.m. it passed beneath a freshly hewn bamboo gate dressed in fir boughs and colored streamers, a big golden WELCOME written across its top. Behind it, 250 Tibetan refugees who had arrived a week before began performing full-length prostrations, while khaki-clad Indian police frantically urged them back. N.N. Nowrojee stepped forward, introduced himself and directed the Dalai Lama to a waiting jeep for the drive up the hair-raising track leading to his new home, Swarg Ashram. “When I arrived at Swarg Ashram it had become quite late, so I didn’t see much,” remarked the Dalai Lama. “The next morning I woke up at my normal time of five and the first thing I heard was a bird, peculiar to this place, chirping very loudly. Karakjok. Karakjok. Like that. Later I was told that one of our senior officials had been kept awake all night by this bird. Then I didn’t engage in a meditation session, but just looked out at the mountains and the view. It was the first day of May 1960. A very nice day and quite hot.”

  Under Nowrojee’s direction four bungalows had been renovated to accommodate the Tibetans. The original seat of the District Commissioner, Highcroft House, renamed Swarg Ashram or “The Heavenly Abode,” had been chosen as the Dalai Lama’s residence. Roughly a quarter of a mile above McLeod Ganj, the building occupied a small flat on the western edge of the mountainside. The view was astounding, the entire enclosure seemingly anchored on a buttress of rock flung into space, yet the house itself was almost windowless, a thirty-two-room behemoth, one-storied, with cavernous chambers lit by trap-like dormers and heated in winter by only a few diminutive fireplaces. On its front end—turned sideways, for lack of room, to the vista—two giant bay windows jutted into a covered porch overlooking a narrow walkway, beyond which a stone wall dropped twenty feet to a grass lawn, previously used as a tennis court but soon to become an audience ground. Behind, three outbuildings, including the kitchen, rose on progressively higher and smaller levels up the mountain. While the three villas prepared to house the eighty government officials, the Dalai Lama’s senior and junior tutors and New Delhi’s liaison officer were even more removed, Swarg Ashram received the benefit of guard huts, barbed-wire fencing and, in time, a tall concrete gate, standing incongruously amidst the dark green pine groves cloaking the hillside, the sole emblem of the hidden compound’s prestigious occupant.

  From his first day in Dharamsala the Dalai Lama realized that he was very much alone in the woods. With the departure of the 250 refugees for road work a few weeks later, only Nowrojee remained in McLeod Ganj. Constantly on call, he supplied the Tibetans with everything from blankets, toiletries and thermoses to cooking oil and umbrellas. Life in Swarg Ashram itself was crowded. Behind the Dalai Lama’s monastic bedroom, prayer room and office—all at the front of the house—lived his mother, his two sisters, his brother-in-law P.T. Takla, the Masters of Robes, Ceremonies and Food, the Lord Chamberlain and an assortment of secretaries and translators. Both Tibetan and Indian guards patrolled the grounds, leaving the only free space beyond the gate. Soon after his arrival the Dalai Lama began trekking up the mountains, sometimes climbing as high as 16,000 feet to a pass below the pinnacle of Mun Peak, from where he would descend for the night to a hikers’ lodge called Triund. Only a few companions accompanied him. “We used to climb very steep hills,” remembered the Dalai Lama. “It would have been very difficult for the Indian guards to follow us. Poor fellows, they wore heavy boots, which had slippery nails in their soles, and they also carried large guns. So instead we had them put their rifles down and just wait below for our return. We were all very friendly. We often drank tea and ate together in a good meadow that I found in the woods. I really enjoyed it. That was one of my new experiences in Dharamsala and it had its own special beauty.”

  The Dalai Lama’s life in Swarg Ashram was altogether different than that in Tibet. Its rigors included two to three buckets of water a day dripping during the monsoon from an unrepairable ceiling around his bed; its pleasures, snowmen and snowball fights the first winter, table tennis in the main sitting room, where Tenzin Gyatso took meals with his mother and, after office hours at five, a regular badminton game on the lawn before the porch. A novel series of pets including a young deer and a number of independent-minded Lhasa Apsos, added to the household’s informal atmosphere.

  Though the Dalai Lama found more time in Swarg Ashram for spiritual matters, the bulk of his day focused on the refugees’ plight. By waging a constructive fight for Tibet, through the re-creation of Tibetan culture abroad, he was convinced that Peking’s efforts to legitimize its rule over his homeland would fail. Moreover, such an effort not only would prevent the collapse of the refugee community but would offer the chance to modernize, if in embryo, Tibetan society, fashioning a template of sorts for the Tibet of the future, once its freedom was regained.

  As a first step, the government had to be reconstituted. Using Mortimer Hall for a Secretariat, the Cabinet divided its ministers and workers among six portfolios: Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Religion and Culture, Education, Finance, and Security. A bureau was established in New Delhi to serve as the Tibetan link with the Indian government and the various international relief agencies that were coming to the refugees’ aid. It was followed by four offices, in New York, Geneva, Tokyo and Katmandu, each in its way acting as an unofficial embassy for the government-in-exile. Ten civil service ranks, scaled up from the seven in Tibet, were created, while the Dalai Lama, assisted by Indian lawyers, set about drafting a democratic constitution upon which to found the first elected government in Tibet’s history. Rehabilitation, however, was the immediate task at hand. “At the beginning of our work,” related the Dalai Lama, “two factions existed among the community of our responsible people. One thought we Tibetans must concentrate in northern India; the other—including myself—felt that it didn’t matter where we lived. The important thing was to find a place and settle properly so that we could preserve the Tibetan identity, culture and race.” The Dalai Lama’s view eventually won out, as northern India, despite its desirable proximity to Tibet’s border, lacked large tracts of unused land. Once apprised of the Tibetans’ wishes, Prime Minister Nehru canvassed the chief ministers of India’s less populated southern states for vacant countryside. Karnataka responded affirmatively, offering an un
inhabited stretch of jungle situated in gently rolling hills fifty-two miles west of Mysore. As a joint investigating team from Dharamsala and New Delhi soon discovered, the available land was wilderness, save for a single road running down from Mysore along which lay a few primitive villages. Regardless, its potential was equivalent to that of Dharamsala; whatever success the Tibetans managed to wrest from the land would be their own.

  In the second week of December 1960, almost two years after their arrival in India, the first group of 666 Tibetan refugees left their camps along the northern thoroughfares to build permanent homes in the south. “No one had the slightest idea where we were going,” recalled Lobsang Chonzin, a sturdy, aquiline-featured farmer who became leader of the settlement’s first village. “A Tibetan government official told us that we had been chosen to pioneer new land. Then a few weeks later he came to put us on a special train that traveled south for three days. At the end, buses were waiting at a station in a big city. They took us straight into the countryside, further and further, until we finally saw our destination, a group of tents in a clearing in the middle of the jungle.”

  Unlike the subtropical rain forests of Bhutan and Assam, through which most of the refugees had passed, this new jungle, at the very heart of the Indian subcontinent, was psychologically as well as physically remote. The few mud-and-wattle villages the refugees had glimpsed from the buses as they drove through, hung with brilliant clusters of red peppers, bananas and mangoes, sheltered a small, dark race of semi-aboriginal people who looked altogether alien. The Tibetans’ sense of displacement gave way to disorientation after the buses had gone and only a few Indian police stayed on to help organize homesteading. Aware that the primeval expanse surrounding them was the natural abode of elephants, tigers, wild boars and other dangerous animals, the settlers’ first act was to fashion tall bamboo stakes into a protective rampart around one of the larger tents. Inside, they built a makeshift altar upon which to place a precious image of the Buddha given to them by the Dalai Lama. As night fell they dug pits, lined them with stones and cooked their first dinner. “We forced ourselves to eat,” continued Chonzin, “but we all felt so frightened and forlorn that no one could speak. Many people sat helplessly on the ground crying to themselves. We could hear the calls of wild animals in the jungle and, unlike in Tibet, you couldn’t see a thing. Wherever you looked there was nothing but trees.”