In Exile From the Land of Snows

by John Avedon

  “In 1970 things were still pretty bleak in Dharamsala,” recalled Jamyang Norbu, a Youth Congress convener, describing the organization’s birth. “There were no Westerners, only the Peace Corps people who came around at Christmastime to sing carols. Among the Tibetans there were a lot of idealistic youth. It was very bohemian, not intentionally, but just because the life was so hard. Each night five or six people would crush into your room to sleep. No one had any money, so nobody gave a damn. Whatever you got, you would just spend in a few days. A group of us used to get together and drink barley beer and, if we could afford it, rum. Then we’d always start talking about Tibet. It was a bit sentimental, I suppose. We’d say, ‘So what are we going to do? What is our dream?’ Then someone would declare, ‘One of these days I’m going to get across that pass with my tank and see the Potala.’ That sort of talk. After a while we’d make tea on a kerosene stove, but we never had enough glasses or spoons, so we’d always have to stir it with a toothbrush.”

  Enough late-night talks produced a consensus. Not only were young Tibetans in exile not in touch with one another; many felt that the refugee government had continued, despite its efforts at reform, in the lesser traditions of its predecessor in Lhasa. “There was too much mediocrity. It had become the fashion to play it safe,” continued Norbu. “It’s always the same old story. The people with conviction and talent stayed behind and fought in Tibet to the last, and a lot of second-level people, bureaucrats, made it out. In India, the whole establishment always kept quiet. It was not particularly the Indian government who clamped down on them, but their own selves. No one was pushing.”

  To unite exile youth in a more aggressive struggle for Tibetan freedom, the group decided to hold a small conference. Once informed, the Dalai Lama offered to cover the meeting’s cost on the condition that it be expanded to include representatives of the younger generation from among all the refugees. “His Holiness didn’t impose any terms on us. He just took a very sympathetic, laissez-faire attitude of ‘Let it grow and let’s see what these kids can do.’ Everyone was thrilled,” said Norbu.

  A month later, on October 7, 1970, 300 young Tibetans sat before a pennant-lined table outside Conium House, a large green map of Tibet draped behind them. At the conclusion of the national anthem, the Dalai Lama, flanked by his two tutors and the Cabinet, rose to give the opening address. There followed a week-long debate, unlike anything that had taken place before, either in exile or in Tibet. “No one had anticipated how outspoken the proceedings would be,” related Norbu. “People asked the Cabinet point-blank about the past. How could the Chinese get into our country just like that? Why didn’t the army put up a good fight? What really happened at Chamdo when it fell? Then there were very probing questions about favoritism in the present administration and misuse of funds. One of the ministers was really shivering. The tablecloth wasn’t long enough, and you could see the folds in his Tibetan chuba trembling. So because of all this our relationship with the government started right off on a little note of tension.”

  With the Tibetan Youth Congress officially inaugurated midway through the conference, the role of loyal opposition was effectively filled in the exile community. Yet it was an odd situation. Heavily dependent on the younger, better-educated English-speaking refugees, the government counted almost 40 percent of its employees among the Congress, a figure which grew to 75 percent by 1984. An awkward combination of the establishment and its chief critics was thus created. When Youth Congress members in the government criticized bureaucratic errors and corruption, the Cabinet saw disloyalty in its ranks and reacted by attempting to undermine the TYC Central Executive Committee, or Centrex. “Centrex repeatedly made clear to the Kashag that we always considered them the rightful government of Tibet,” said Jamyang Norbu. “Our loyalty was beyond question. But just because of this, we maintained, the Congress was not obliged to behave in a servile way or agree with all their decisions. When we challenged the Cabinet we felt that we were acting out of idealism, but they only saw us as a threat to their power.”

  Two years after the founding of the Youth Congress, in July 1972, a second popular organization called Struggle for the Restoration of Tibet’s Rightful Independence was inaugurated in Dharamsala. Its leadership, though, was given over to the Commission of Tibetan People’s Deputies, who primarily employed it to collect the refugees’ voluntary tax, consisting of up to 2% of their monthly wages, and accounting for almost a third of the exile government’s revenue. Simultaneously, trouble between the Cabinet and the Youth Congress continued to grow, climaxing in the Tibetans’ first real test of democracy, produced by a dramatic confrontation during the spring of 1977.

  The engagement evolved from a chain of events beginning on March 10, 1977, the eighteenth anniversary of the Lhasa uprising, celebrated that year, among other gatherings, by a TYC-organized demonstration at the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. There had been many Tibetan demonstrations at the embassy previously, some of them violent. This time, plans were drawn up to break into the compound and disrupt it. The Intelligence Bureau or IB, India’s internal secret service, however, got word of the arrangements. Early on the morning of the tenth, as hundreds of demonstrators massed near Majna-ka-Tilla, the Tibetan refugee camp on the banks of the Jumna River in Old Delhi, police cordoned off the area. The few hundred Tibetans who managed to get through were all subsequently arrested after a pitched battle at the embassy. They were released without being charged, but not before the protest had been joined by a thousand more refugees. Putting their gathering to a new purpose, the demonstrators decided to hold a hunger strike calling for the implementation of the United Nations’ three resolutions on Tibet. A Coordinating Committee for the newly formed Tibetan People’s Freedom Movement was created and a large tent, equipped with beds for the strikers to rest on and a medical unit to monitor their condition, erected across from the UN Information Office near the Lodi Gardens. From eighty-three volunteers three teams were selected, their members to fill in one at a time as each person died. The strike, it was decided, would only be called off if the United Nations agreed to once more take up the question of Tibet. “We put the fear of God into them,” recalled Norbu. “We called in the volunteers one at a time and said, ‘This is for keeps. We are going to live, but you will die. It’s going to be very difficult. You’ll be lying there starving to death and we won’t be paying any attention to you. We’ll be laughing and talking. So you better pull out now.’ That reduced the numbers right away. Finally, we came up with three guerrillas, a woman and three other men for the first group. Then we put them all under the charge of a real tough character, an ex-guerrilla who didn’t give a damn about death. This was our insurance to guarantee that no one would weaken their will with false sympathies.”

  The strike started at 10:00 a.m. on March 20, 1977. Within a few days the Tibetans received more press and television coverage than at any other time since the Dalai Lama’s arrival eighteen years before. There could not have been a more opportune moment. India was in the midst of elections following Indira Gandhi’s twenty-month-long emergency. Within a week, the Janata Party was voted into power on a dramatic wave of popular libertarian sentiment. The coincidence was astonishing. The Janata leaders, who had been relegated to the opposition for decades, were the same men who had championed Tibet’s cause most vociferously. Now, given power, they were finally in a position to recognize the exile government, and at the very time when the Tibetans, encouraged by widespread support for the strikers throughout the diaspora, had mustered their most unified political effort to date.

  Recognizing the moment’s potential, Lodi Gyari (then president of the Youth Congress) decided to speak directly to the Janata Party leaders, many of whom he knew. With the dual pressure of their past commitments to Tibet and the hunger strike—whose massive publicity was clearly detrimental on the eve of their inauguration—he hoped to obtain formal pledges of support for Tibetan independence. Without notifying the Cabinet in Dharamsala,
who undoubtedly would have suppressed the plan, Gyari, joined by Jamyang Norbu and a heavy monk nicknamed Gosey or the “Blond Lama” (from his skin being slightly yellow), went immediately to Janata Party headquarters. “ ‘How the hell are we going to get in?’ I asked Lodi,” recalled Norbu. “They were choosing the Prime Minister and the building was packed with people and press. Besides, we looked a mess. I had come down from Dharamsala in a hurry with just a toothbrush. I was wearing shorts, a blue jean shirt and flip-flop sandals. Lodi was in his white Indian pajamas with his briefcase and then we had this portly monk. But the three of us just got a taxi and drove over anyway.”

  When they arrived, the young men pushed ahead of the journalists and managed to catch the attention of the secretary of J. P. Narayan, the Janata Party’s most respected elder statesman and kingmaker. The secretary, however, promptly denied them permission for a meeting. “ ‘Just tell J.P. we’re Tibetans. He’s never refused a Tibetan.’ That was Lodi’s line,” said Norbu. “I told him, ‘Lodi, all your bullshit is not going to get us anywhere this time.’ But the next minute the secretary came out and said, ‘Gentlemen, please come this way.’ Then all the reporters started bawling, ‘How come these low characters are getting in?’ and we just walked through.”

  Offering Narayan a white scarf, Lodi Gyari congratulated him on the Janata Party’s victory and appealed for support for the hunger strike. Narayan instantly agreed. Furthermore, he promised to secure the backing of Morarji Desai, the Prime Minister-to-be. Somewhat stunned by their success, the three left a few minutes later. Over the next days an unprecedented series of letters and politicians about to be appointed to the new cabinet arrived at the tent. One and all pledged to back Tibet’s cause: the first time that the refugees’ struggle had been publicly condoned by their host country. In exchange for its unique gesture, the Janata Party secured the cessation of the hunger strike and the fast was broken on its tenth day as Acharya Kripalani offered orange juice to the seven Tibetans. Elated, Gyari and Norbu returned to Dharamsala, in the wake of the strikers’ tumultuous welcome, bringing with them the Janata Party letters to present to the Cabinet.

  The result was chaos. Preempted by the youth in contacting the new Indian government, the Kashag condemned the entire affair. It accused the strikers of recklessly endangering all the refugees’ efforts, there being no way of knowing what, once in office, the government’s final stand on the Tibetan issue would be. To repair the damage, the Cabinet demanded the resignation of the leaders of the Tibetan People’s Freedom Movement, whose key members also headed the Youth Congress. For days Dharamsala was filled with angry crowds denouncing the government. Both the Cabinet ministers and the people’s deputies (who, it was assumed, were in collusion with the Kashag) were accosted in public, few of the refugees comprehending why they had turned against the triumph. Finally, to defuse the crisis, the Coordinating Committee of the Tibetan People’s Freedom Movement disbanded and, as an act of protest, the four founding members of the Youth Congress resigned from its Central Executive Committee. Not long after its inauguration, the Janata Party reneged on all of its promises, preferring, like its predecessor governments, to keep the Tibetans from impeding a still-hoped-for peaceful coexistence with China.

  The limits of political freedom in exile had been vividly drawn by the confrontation. Yet, as evidence of democracy’s strength, within a few years all of the youth leaders were not only back in politics but working in the very posts they had previously attacked—as a Cabinet minister, as directors of the Information Office and of the Drama Society, and, in Lodi Gyari’s case, Chairman of the Commission of Tibetan People’s Deputies. Meanwhile, the Youth Congress received new leadership, at the head of which stood Tempa Tsering. Not long after his arrival in Dharamsala, Tempa had found his name put up among thirty other candidates for election to Centrex. On the basis of his reputation as general secretary of the Byllakuppe branch, he was voted in 1974 to be the Congress’s treasurer. Four years later, he was elected to be an adviser to Centrex, among the highest posts in the Congress and one of the most powerful positions in exile society. Under Tempa the Congress initiated a new militant course of action. Its leaders decided, in strict secrecy, that the time had come to employ terrorism in the fight for Tibet. Though the idea had been discussed for years, its adoption now seemed inevitable, made so not just by the failed attempt to win public backing from India’s new government, but by the outcome of a clandestine martial struggle already underway since 1959.

  EARLY IN 1961, the leader of Gendun Thargay’s 500-man road gang called him aside for a private talk. “You’ve been chosen to go for training,” said the foreman. “You’ll need an X ray and a photograph of yourself.” Obtaining the two items in Tezpur, Gendun returned to the camp a few days later and was introduced to another young man, who, like himself, was also from Kham, tall and ruggedly built. “Tell your friends that you are going to work in Darjeeling,” said the foreman. “From now on, whatever happens you are sworn to secrecy.” Vowing to neither ask questions nor divulge what had already occurred, the two men received packets of money, an address in Darjeeling and a six-digit number which, presented at their destination, would gain them access. Uncertain as to the type of training they were to receive, they departed, all the while fearful of capture by IB agents who, searching for Chinese spies among the refugees, had banned unapproved travel by Tibetans. On the train the next day, though, Gendun noticed two other men, like him and his partner strikingly robust and undoubtedly from eastern Tibet. When they exited one stop before Darjeeling, Gendun hurriedly followed and on a hunch sought their aid. Inquiring whether they knew of a good restaurant in the vicinity, he received a subdued assent and was guided to a small cafe. There, after a brief meal, a truck arrived. Without a word concerning the apparently shared mission, the men instructed their companions to lie on the truck’s floor. When it eventually stopped, Gendun looked out at the exact address he had sought in Darjeeling. Presenting his number at the door, he was ushered in, and henceforth permitted to leave only for short walks or an occasional meal. Though the people who ran the house never so much as mentioned their work, in the interim, Gendun clearly realized that he had come under the auspices of Chushi Gangdruk, Tibet’s still-active guerrilla resistance.

  After three weeks in Darjeeling, Gendun Thargay was told to store away his few belongings. Given money, he was then released to the nearby market to purchase a single pair of sneakers. Returning to the house, he waited through the day with four other men—all from Kham and Amdo—his only remaining possession a tung-wa or cloth bundle worn around the neck, containing red protection cords and barley grains blessed by the State Oracle. At five o’clock, Lhamo Tsering, a high-ranking officer in Chushi Gangdruk, arrived with a document in hand. He instructed the men either to leave or to sign the paper, which, as a recruitment form for the National Volunteer Defense Army, bound them to obey to the death any order given by a superior. All five signed and at six o’clock sharp under cover of darkness, a canvas-roofed jeep picked them up at the bottom of the hillside street on which the house stood. At a second stop, six more men crammed into the jeep, compelling Gendun to hang out the back as it drove south from Darjeeling, heading directly, it seemed, for the border of East Pakistan.

  “You don’t have to think about what’s under you—mud, water or shit,” said the man in charge three hours later. “When we arrive in a minute, do only what I say, just like in war.” Pulling onto the shoulder of the road, the jeep stopped and the men were ordered to sprint in silence across an open field. They started running, but a pair of headlights appeared, followed by the leader’s abrupt command to drop. The car passed and they ran again. The bank of a wide river loomed in the darkness. Arriving, they regrouped and for the next few hours wandered back and forth along the shoreline until, plainly lost, their leader asked a member of the company who spoke Hindi to enter a nearby village and cautiously inquire whether or not it lay in Pakistan. A half hour later the man returned surr
ounded by a mob of angry villagers carrying sticks and rifles. Outnumbered, the luckless Tibetans were promptly hustled to a nearby police station where, they were convinced, a jail cell would be waiting. On entering, however, they were surprised to witness the commanding officer dismiss the villagers and once they had gone offer a cordial reception. He then explained that not only were they in Pakistan but that the special agent whose presence they had fruitlessly sought on the riverbank had already alerted authorities throughout the region to look for their group. A short while later the contact showed up in a Pakistani army truck. The Tibetans were put inside, driven to a small house and left for the remainder of the night.

  Early the next morning, at the first hint of dawn, Gendun was roused from sleep and ordered to run to an adjacent building. From here he watched the rest of his group race over, one at a time, followed by the agent, who was clearly concerned that there be no further sighting by local people. Given food and blankets to sit on, the Tibetans spent the day indoors waiting for nightfall when the army truck once more picked them up. Driven into a forest, they were placed in groups of threes and told to sprint again. Across a clearing lay a railroad track. On it stood a solitary car. As he ran, Gendun glimpsed a station farther down the line. Reaching the car, he paused to look at it more closely, but was quickly pulled inside by a squad of Pakistani soldiers armed with submachine guns. Escorted to a locked compartment, the metal blinds of its windows firmly shut, he soon heard a train arrive, couple with the car and begin pulling it in what he judged to be a southerly direction. One day later, the sounds of a large terminal became audible. Unhooked, the car jolted loose from the train and was drawn some distance away. The door of Gendun’s compartment then flew back and a Pakistani soldier gestured for him to follow. Outside the train, the Tibetans were rushed into a waiting troop truck, which, led by a military jeep, exited the station and drove swiftly through a large city—Dacca, as Gendun learned years later. On the outskirts of the city, the truck halted before a lone building standing at the far end of an airstrip. Within a few minutes, a gray unmarked two-propeller craft landed and taxied directly over. Though some of the Khampas had seen Chinese planes from below as they flew bombing missions over Kham, none had glimpsed a namdu or “skyboat” at close quarters. An even greater surprise followed, however, when a small door near the tail of the plane opened, a ladder descended and out stepped a tall, sharp-featured white man smoking a pipe.