Tibetans in India

Tibet was seized militarily by China in 1951. Eight years later, following a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, Tibet’s 24-year-old spiritual and state leader, the Dalai Lama, fled the Chinese army and trekked from his 1,000-room Potala palace overlooking the capital of Lhasa, across the Himalaya into India in March 1959. The Indian Government offered refuge and a choice of several settlement sites. Dharamsala, a hill town in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, with snow-covered peaks and deodar-cloaked slopes, about 300 miles northwest of Delhi, was finally chosen. The Tibet border is only 100 miles away, as the crow flies. More than 100,000 Tibetan refugees have followed since. The government in exile functions from Dharamsala, and the 14^th Dalai Lama lives in a modest house in its upper reaches called Mcleod Ganj. But he has not seen his homeland for half a century.

Every year, at least 2000 Tibetans arrive in India from China – through the remote mountain passes in Nepal, risking bullets and imprisonment and braving extreme weather conditions – only to be in free environs amongst fellow Tibetans and close to Dalai Lama’s home in McLeod Ganj.

Tibetans in India have been able to preserve their culture and language, just as most of India’s diverse ethnic groups. Had they settled primarily in any other country this might not have been as easy.