March 31. Chakrata Karma. The Beginning of Life in Exile.
On March 31, 1959, I was living in Danavaipeta, Rajahmundry, East Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh, India. I was a student of Danavaipeta Municipal High School which is renamed as Danavaipeta Municipal Corporation High School. On March 31, 1959, I was blissfully unaware of the fact of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s arrival in India. However, my Destiny started making the preparation for my Journey to Chakrata.
March 31. Chakrata Karma. The Beginning of Life in Exile.
The event of March 31, 1959, the Beginning of the Dalai Lama’s Life in Exile did predetermine the Beginning of my own life in Exile. I am a Refugee. Who is My Refuge?
March 31. Chakrata Karma. The Beginning of Life in Exile. The Dalai Lama was received by India at the very first Indian post at Chuthangmu, north of Tawang, then part of the Kameng Frontier Division.
The Dalai Lama, fleeing the Chinese suppression of a national uprising in Tibet, crosses the border into India, where he is granted political asylum.
Born in Taktser, China, as Tenzin Gyatso, he was designated the 14th Dalai Lama in 1940, a position that eventually made him the religious and political leader of Tibet. At the beginning of the 20th century, Tibet increasingly came under Chinese control, and in 1950 communist China invaded the country. One year later, a Tibetan-Chinese agreement was signed in which the nation became a “national autonomous region” of China, supposedly under the traditional rule of the Dalai Lama but actually under the control of a Chinese communist commission. The highly religious people of Tibet, who practice a unique form of Buddhism, suffered under communist China’s anti-religious legislation.
After years of scattered protests, a full-scale revolt broke out in March 1959, and the Dalai Lama was forced to flee as the uprising was crushed by Chinese troops. On March 31, 1959, he began a permanent exile in India, settling at Dharamsala in Punjab, where he established a democratically based shadow Tibetan government. Back in Tibet, the Chinese adopted brutal repressive measures against the Tibetans, provoking charges from the Dalai Lama of genocide. With the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in China, the Chinese suppression of Tibetan Buddhism escalated, and practice of the religion was banned and thousands of monasteries were destroyed.
Although the ban was lifted in 1976, protests in Tibet continued, and the exiled Dalai Lama won widespread international support for the Tibetan independence movement. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his nonviolent campaign to end the Chinese domination of Tibet.
March 31, 1959. Chakrata Karma. The Beginning of Life in Exile.March 31. Chakrata Karma. The Beginning of Life in Exile. My Life’s Journey to live in Exile took me across this Railway Bridge during July 1970.
The Great Tibet Problem. The Balance of Power. 1. The King vs The Priest, or 2. The Man vs Mother Nature
In Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22-Vikas Regiment, I am often identified as the Doom Dooma Doomsayer. The concept of Doom,Apocalypse, Calamity, Catastrophe, or sudden Disaster is shared by people of various cultures apart from Tibetans.
The Great Tibet Problem. The Balance of Power. 1. The King vs The Priest, or 2. The Man vs Mother Nature.
The Great Tibet Problem is not about balancing the power of the King or the Priest. Tibetans enjoy a sense of Freedom, a gift granted by Mother Nature. Over thousands of years, Natural Forces, Natural Factors, Natural Causes, and Natural Conditions shaped the Tibetan Existence. For example, the creation of Tibetan Plateau demonstrates the Power of Nature.
The Great Tibet Problem. The Balance of Power. 1. The King vs The Priest, or 2. The Man vs Mother Nature.
I coined the phrase Tibet Equilibrium to describe a new Theory of Balance of Power in International Relations. I am describing the issue as Nature vs Man. In my analysis, a sudden, unexpected, natural calamity will restore the Balance of Power across the Tibetan Plateau to grant the Natural Freedom that the denizens of Tibet enjoyed during their entire history.
From the biography: How the Dalai Lama combines a rationalist’s view with a spiritual outlook
An excerpt from ‘The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life’ by Alexander Norman.
The Great Tibet Problem. The Balance of Power. 1. The King vs The Priest, or 2. The Man vs Mother Nature.
In April 2011 the Dalai Lama announced his full retirement from office as leader of the Tibetan government in exile. Henceforth it would be headed by a democratically elected first minister. In thus handing over political power, the Precious Protector brought to an end three and a half centuries of theocratic rule – albeit that power had for long periods been vested in regents acting in the name of the Dalai Lama.
It was a reform not universally applauded by Tibetans, but it had clearly been among the Precious Protector’s plans from the moment he decided in favour of democracy on first coming into exile.
The Dalai Lama effected extraordinary change with this move. When Altan Khan, the Mongol strongman of sixteenth-century Central Asia, pro- claimed Sonam Gyatso, abbot of Drepung, to be Taleh (the Mongolian term for ocean, from which the word “Dalai” is derived) Lama, the Tibetan was head of a monastery comprising several thousand monks. But although this conferred immense prestige and great wealth, the direct political power attaching to him personally was limited to the sway he held over the Gelug establishment in general and over Drepung and its sister monasteries and their estates in particular.
It was not until the Great Fifth secured the patronage of another of the Khans that the institution of the Dalai Lama attained such prestige that, in combination with his viceroy and backed by the military might of the Mongols, he could exercise political power across the Tibetan Buddhist world as a whole. In so doing, the Great Fifth forged the Tibetan people into a broadly harmonious society in a way that had not been seen since the fall of the religious kings in the ninth century.
Moreover, his imaginative recapitulation of the Tibetan empire brought the spiritual realm of gods, demons, and protectors together with the earthly realm of human beings, their landed property, and their possessions, and made both answerable to a single authority.
What the present Dalai Lama brought about with his retirement was thus not just his withdrawal from politics but the end of the dispensation whereby, in effect, the Dalai Lama united within himself the functions of both priest and patron.
This, it will be remembered, was the paradigmatic relationship whereby the priest, or lama, guaranteed the legitimacy of the king, while the king in turn supported the lama temporally. Under the new dispensation, the Dalai Lama continues to rule the supernatural realm while earthly matters are placed under the authority of a secular establishment. What is especially innovative about this manoeuvre is the elevation of the people themselves to the role of patron.
The withdrawal of the Dalai Lama’s authority from the temporal realm was almost as important for its psychological as for its political value. No longer should Tibetans look to the Dalai Lama for answers to every question of a practical nature that, in theory at least, they had hitherto been free to put to him. Instead, they would stand on their own feet.
The Dalai Lama and his successors could thus concern themselves with what they are actually trained for, namely, spiritual direction, even if, to the end of this life, he would remain a symbolic figurehead for his people.
Given that the Precious Protector’s every word is held by most of his people to have divine authority, it presumably takes considerable restraint on his part not to speak out on earthly matters from time to time. But save for his handling of the Shugden controversy, insofar as it is a political matter, the Dalai Lama has so far shown little inclination to intervene in affairs of state. Instead, the former leader has dedicated himself to fulfilling what he describes as his three “main commitments.”
These are, first, as a human being, by helping others to be happy; second, as a Buddhist monk, by working to bring about harmony among the world’s various religious traditions; and third, as a Tibetan, by helping to preserve his country’s unique language and culture. In this last, he emphasises the enormous debt the Tibetan tradition owes to what it inherited from the Indian scholar-saints of Nalanda, the Buddhist monastic university that flourished from the fifth to the twelfth century and provided the blueprint for the monastic universities of Tibet.
A major component of these commitments is the Dalai Lama’s dedication to the environmentalist cause. The destruction of wildlife in Tibet since 1950 is a continuing sorrow to him, though his attitude toward the environment generally is neither sentimental nor a function of his religiosity. There is nothing “sacred or holy” about nature, he writes in his autobiography; rather, “taking care of our planet is like taking care of our houses.”
Similarly, while he is a ready advocate of compassion in farming and has said on occasion that he would like to be the “world spokesman for fish,” he does not go so far as to deny categorically the possibility that animal experimentation might, in certain circumstances, be justifiable – provided that the motive in doing so is altruistic. It is characteristic of the Buddhist approach to avoid absolutes.
Also to the dismay of some, the Dalai Lama, though he has often spoken in favour of vegetarianism, is, as we have seen, not a vegetarian himself. Moreover, he recognises the difficulty of living in an environmentally responsible way and does not make a fetish of doing so. While eschewing baths, he admits that, in taking a shower morning and evening, there might be little difference in his water consumption.
With respect to his commitment to helping others find happiness, the Dalai Lama includes scientific research as an important component in the human search for felicity. To this end, he continues to meet and to engage in dialogue with scientists from around the world. Whether a consequence of this is that he has himself “become one of the world’s greatest scientists,” as Robert Thurman has suggested, may be open to question. It is certainly not a claim he would make for himself.
But his patronage of a compendium of Buddhist scientific texts demonstrates his wish to see Buddhist inquiry, especially into the nature of consciousness, given serious consideration by outsiders. Noting the congruence between the Buddhist and the scientific worldviews, the Dalai Lama wonders why “the impulse for helping and kindness are not recognised as drivers for human behaviour and… flourishing?” If scientists were to ask these questions honestly, he believes that they would find the answers provided by Buddhist thinkers compelling.
In the field of interreligious dialogue, the Dalai Lama has, since retiring from office, continued to meet and to pray with religious leaders and prominent spiritual figures from around the world. Setting aside his vow to refrain from intoxicating beverages, he once partook of Holy Communion administered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. On another occasion, he donned an apron to serve food in a church-run homeless shelter in Australia.
Despite hostility from some quarters, the Dalai Lama has visited Israel more than once; in 2006, he met with both the Sephardi and Ashkenazi chief rabbis. He has also visited several Islamic countries, notably Jordan, again more than once, meeting with Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed, a leading figure in Islamic interfaith dialogue, later that same year.
Besides advocating pluralism with respect to other religions, it is evident that the Dalai Lama also wishes to strengthen his followers in their faith. As a rule, he counsels people to remain within their own faith tradition, remarking that if a person is a poor practitioner of one, changing to another will do nothing to improve matters.
Referring to his visit to the monastery of Le Grand Chartreuse, where he noticed the monks’ feet cracked with cold from wearing only sandals, he praises the dedication of followers of non-Buddhist religions. At the same time, he speaks of his concern about Tibetan teachers abroad who live luxuriously or flout their vows.
Yet his concern about behavior inappropriate to prelates is not confined to Buddhists. When Pope Francis removed a German ecclesiastic for the ostentatious restoration of his residence, the Dalai Lama wrote to congratulate the Roman pontiff. Whether or not it is true that, of all the other religions, the Dalai Lama feels closest to Catholicism is an open question.
On the one hand, for him it is given a priori that there is no creator. On the other hand, the superficial similarities between many of the liturgical practices of Rome and Lhasa cause him to wonder if there was not earlier contact between the two traditions. Both religions practice ritual eating and drinking, and both venerate the relics of saints. It is also true that the Dalai Lama has been hosted many times by ecumenically minded Catholic organisations, and if he is not mistaken, the Dalai Lama enjoys divine approval for fostering links with the Catholic Church.
On a visit to Fatima in 2001, he experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary, whose statue turned and smiled at him. In this context, it is not entirely clear how we are to interpret his remark that one of the biggest surprises of his life came when Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the indispensability of reason to religious faith. In the Dalai Lama’s view, if people would only think hard enough, they would come to see the truth of how things really are – and thus the falsity of the pope’s position and the correctness of his own.
The Great Tibet Problem. The Balance of Power. 1. The King vs The Priest, or 2. The Man vs Mother Nature.
Excerpted with permission from The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life, Alexander Norman, HarperCollins India.
The Great Tibet Problem. The Balance of Power. 1. The King vs The Priest, 2. The Man vs Mother Nature, or 3. David vs Goliath. THE BATTLE OF RIGHT AGAINST MIGHT. Just like David who defeated the Philistine Champion Goliath, Tibet will prevail in its just battle against the military might of the man.
The Dalai Lama Review. Alexander Norman Dead Wrong. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was not petrified of upsetting Mao Zedong. HISTORY OF THE US-INDIA-TIBET RELATIONS: OCTOBER 11, 1949 .
In my analysis, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was never petrified of upsetting Chairman Mao Zedong. In fact, Nehru made no attempt to avoid upsetting Mao Zedong. China is fully aware of all of Nehru’s initiatives in support of the Tibetan Resistance Movement that began in 1949.
Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22-Vikas Regiment
The Dalai Lama Review. Alexander Norman Dead Wrong. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was never petrified of upsetting Mao Zedong. HISTORY OF THE US-INDIA-TIBET RELATIONS . Prime Minister Nehru with the US president Eisenhower in December 1959. :
‘The Dalai Lama’ Review: Bodhisattva of Compassion
A Westerner with rare access to his subject writes an authorized biography of one of the world’s most feted, and charismatic, figures.
The Dalai Lama Review. Alexander Norman Dead Wrong. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was never petrified of upsetting Mao Zedong.The Dalai Lama in 2016. PHOTO: PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By Tunku Varadarajan Feb. 26, 2020 7:27 pm ET Mr. Varadarajan is executive editor at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
The Dalai Lama Review. Alexander Norman Dead Wrong. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was never petrified of upsetting Mao Zedong.
On July 6, 1935, was born a boy to a family of peasants in the village of Taktser in the far northeast of Tibet. Its inhabitants spoke a coarse dialect that was incomprehensible in Lhasa, Tibet’s storied capital. The boy, Lhamo Thondup, was one of only seven siblings, out of 16, who survived into adulthood.
Although the village was remote, it was not godforsaken. At barely 2 years of age, Lhamo Thondup was identified as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, who had died in 1933. Solemn portents and divinations had led a party of monks to Taktser, where the lively little mite convinced his visitors that he was next in a line of Tibetan Buddhist god-popes stretching back 600 years.
In “The Dalai Lama,” a biography written with generous access to its subject, Alexander Norman describes the scene. With the monks looking on, the boy picked out, unprompted, a series of objects that had belonged to the Great Thirteenth. Locals spoke of a rainbow appearing over the boy’s house at the time of his birth. “This was a theogony,” writes Mr. Norman, “the coming of a god.”
A rival candidate was in contention, a well-born child in Lhasa; but there could be no doubt that the boy from Taktser was the next Dalai Lama, the paramount monk who is Tibet’s spiritual and temporal leader. It is an office like no other on earth: “The profundity of the emotional connection Tibetans have with the Dalai Lama,” Mr. Norman writes, “is beyond anything that others can easily imagine.” The one in whom “the bodhi—the awakened mind of the Buddha—resides is not merely a monarch. He is someone who connects, in himself, the seen world with that unseen.”
The subtitle of Mr. Norman’s book, “An Extraordinary Life,” is an understatement. The 14th Dalai Lama, regarded as divine when he could barely speak, was enthroned at the age of 4. After a childhood in which he had no friends and was forbidden to play soccer, he took on full political duties at 15, outgrowing his oppressive regents. At 23, he fled to exile in India, crossing the border, Mr. Norman tells us, on the back of a dzo, a cross between a yak and a cow: “And it was on this humble form of transport that the Precious Protector, the Victor, Lion Among Men, Wish-Fulfilling Jewel, Ocean of Wisdom . . . quit his homeland.”
That journey occurred in 1959, when it became clear that Communist China intended not merely to obliterate Tibet’s culture but to imprison the Dalai Lama himself. Exile from Tibet—which continues to this day—was not just personally devastating to the Dalai Lama; 80,000 Tibetans fled to India in that year alone—to the consternation, Mr. Norman notes, of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, who was petrified of upsetting Mao Zedong.
The Tibetan diaspora numbers 150,000, most of them (including the Dalai Lama) residing in India. The population of the Chinese-occupied Tibet Autonomous Region is put at three million, of which 90% is ethnic Tibetan, according to Beijing’s own reckoning, which certainly undercounts the Han Chinese interlopers. Given that China’s “ascent as a world superpower looks set to continue into the foreseeable future,” laments Mr. Norman, fewer countries “will dare risk their trading relations with China for the sake of a few million Tibetans.”
Mr. Norman knows the Dalai Lama better than most, having helped him to write his autobiography. His new book is rich, sometimes heaving, with detail; his supple prose, often beautiful, is as adept at explaining Tibet’s theology as it is at describing its spiritual world. “Every feature of the landscape and every creature dwelling within it,” he writes, “falls under the aegis of some sprite or spirit or deity. Even the bolts of lightning in a storm were said to issue from the mouths of celestial dragons.”
Yet the most potent forces against which the Dalai Lama has grappled have been infernal. His two regents were, Mr. Norman says, martinets who coveted the power they enjoyed when he was a minor. The first was jailed by his successor and, as one account has it, killed by having his testicles crushed. Remarkably, the man who emerged from these dark beginnings has proved to be a serene statesman, known for his beatific smile and ecumenical diplomacy.
The Dalai Lama is among the world’s most feted figures. Mr. Norman explains how he has done more to promote Buddhism in the Western world than any person in history and stresses that it is his charismatic wisdom, even more than his campaign for freedom, that makes him a darling in the West. His appeal transcends ideology, and he has had admirers as diverse as Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet, and George W. Bush, along with Hollywood stars galore. Mr. Norman’s book, while respectful, is not adoring: He doesn’t flinch from offering examples of his subject’s behavior that are awkward. These include an instance in Norway when the Dalai Lama giggled and told a teenager she was “too fat.” His views on homosexuality are not in lockstep with those of Western progressives, and no one can deny that his judgment faltered when he granted audiences to the leader of a cult that went on to murder people with sarin gas in Tokyo.
If he has shown himself to be fallible, on occasion, his understanding of China cannot be faulted. The horrors heaped on Tibet during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution abated with Mao’s death, but it is still a land that lives under brutal subjugation. A realist, the Dalai Lama has stated for decades that he would accept China’s sovereignty over Tibet in exchange for autonomy. But China dismisses him as a separatist under the sway of “hostile foreign forces.”
In 2011, the Dalai Lama announced his retirement as leader of Tibet’s government in exile, giving the role to a democratically elected minister. The next Dalai Lama may well choose to undo this political reform, and yet, in thus “handing over political power,” writes Mr. Norman, “the Precious Protector brought to an end . . . centuries of theocratic rule.” It was the act of a thoroughly modern monk—the first democrat to lead Tibet’s people. It breaks the heart that he has, in China, a foe so all-consuming.
The Dalai Lama Review. Alexander Norman Dead Wrong. Indian Prime Minister Nehru was never petrified of upsetting Mao Zedong. The history of Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22: 1957 was a turning point in the history of Tibetan Resistance Movement.
To open the Door to the Dalai Lama, India has to keep the Window open for the Russian Support to safeguard Kashmir.
In my analysis, Alexander Norman’s forthcoming book “The Dalai Lama — An Extraordinary Life” has utterly failed to reveal the reason for not granting political asylum to the Dalai Lama during his first visit to India in 1956.
India-Tibet relations cannot be discussed without mentioning Kashmir. Since 1947, India is facing the challenge of defending Kashmir from aggression by Pakistan sponsored by the United Kingdom, and the United States. To open the Door to the Dalai Lama, India has no choice other than that of keeping the Window open for the Russian support to safeguard Kashmir.
To open the Door to the Dalai Lama in 1959, India has to keep the Window open for the Russian Support to safeguard Kashmir. HISTORY OF THE US-INDIA-TIBET RELATIONS: SEPTEMBER 04, 1959 .
Alexander Norman’s book throws light on spiritual leader’s dilemma
In 1956, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was not keen to open the Door to the Dalai Lama for India has to keep the Window open for the Russian Support to safeguard Kashmir.
Tribune News Service
Shimla, , February 22
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was reluctant to grant political asylum to Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, claims Alexander Norman in his latest biographical account of the Nobel laureate, prior to his arrival in India in 1959.
To open the Door to the Dalai Lama in 1959, India has to keep the Window open for the Russian Support to safeguard Kashmir.
Norman’s forthcoming book “The Dalai Lama — An Extraordinary Life” provides a glimpse into the Tenzin Gyatso’s first visit to India in 1956 on the invitation of Nehru when he was in his early 20s.
Norman, closely associated with the 14th Dalai Lama for decades, gives a detailed account on the dilemma he faced while deciding whether to return home or ask Nehru for asylum.
The author says Nehru, refusing to make any commitment, lest it harmed India’s ties with China, advised the Dalai Lama to hold the Chinese forcefully to the 17-point agreement. He gives a vivid account of the massive turnout in Sikkim to catch a glimpse of the Dalai Lama and to seek his blessings.
There is an account of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Bodh Gaya during his 11-week stay in India, including at the Chinese Embassy. Norman claims that had he been a little more certain of Washington’s intentions of championing the Tibetan cause, he may have considered not returning to Tibet.
Referring to the Dalai Lama as the “Precious Protector”, the book reveals how China tactically ensured that Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai would be in India at the same time.
To open the Door to the Dalai Lama, India has to keep the Window open for the Russian Support to safeguard Kashmir.
What is Tibet Equilibrium? A new Balance of Power Theory in International Relations. The concept of Equilibrium shared by Physics.
Balance of power, in international relations, the posture and policy of a nation or group of nations protecting itself against another nation or group of nations by matching its power against the power of the other side.
What is Tibet Equilibrium? A new Balance of Power Theory in International Relations.
When all the forces that act upon an object are balanced, then the object is said to be in a state of equilibrium. … If an object is at equilibrium, then the forces are balanced. Balanced is the key word that is used to describe equilibrium situations. Thus, the net force is zero and the acceleration is 0 m/s/s.
What is Tibet Equilibrium? SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – WHOLE DYNAMICS – WHOLE EQUILIBRIUM: THE CAR IS IN DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM BECAUSE IT IS MOVING AT CONSTANT VELOCITY. THERE ARE HORIZONTAL, AND VERTICAL FORCES, BUT THE NET EXTERNAL FORCE IN ANY DIRECTION IS ZERO.What is Tibet equilibrium? SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – WHOLE DYNAMICS – WHOLE EQUILIBRIUM: IT WILL BE INCORRECT TO ASSUME THAT A STATIONARY PERSON IS IN A STATE OF EQUILIBRIUM. LIFE IS A DYNAMIC EVENT. THE LIVING BEING IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING. THE THING OR BODY CALLED LIVING BEING IS ALWAYS IN MOTION AND THE FACT OF MOTION BRINGS CHANGES EVEN WHEN THE OBJECT IS NOT MOVING IN ITS EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT.
I am not concerned about China’s growing military power in Tibet. I am not concerned about balancing the military power of China by compensating India’s military power with the addition of the military power of other countries. My concern is entirely about the role played by the Four Fundamental Forces of Nature that always operate on all that we do.
What is Tibet Equilibrium? A new Balance of Power Theory in International Relations.
In my analysis, Love is a Fundamental Force. In the Land of Tibet, the denizens enjoy Freedom and have pursued an independent style of living over thousands of years as their Freedom is the gift of Nature and it prevails as a Natural Condition for it is the product of the influence exerted by Natural Forces, Natural Mechanisms, Natural Causes, and Natural Factors. The man’s attempt to upset the Natural Equilibrium in Tibet to compromise the Natural Freedom will be counteracted by the Fundamental Force of Love sustaining human existence.
What is Tibet Equilibrium? A new Balance of Power Theory in International Relations.
Why China’s Growing Military Might in Tibet Should Worry India
What is Tibet Equilibrium? A new Balance of Power Theory in International Relations.
The rising tempo of Chinese deployments in Tibet should be of concern to New Delhi.
By Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
March 03, 2020
Last month, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) engaged in a major military exercise in the Tibet region. The engagement showcased some of the latest weapons in the Chinese military inventory and also spotlighted its deployments in the region more generally.
According to reports, the exercise last month in Tibet witnessed the deployment of several key aspects of Chinese military capabilities, including the Type 15 light battle tank and the new 155 mm vehicle-mounted howitzer. A Chinese military analyst speaking to the Global Times said that both “had powerful engines, allowing them to maneuver efficiently in Tibet’s terrain.” The same Global Times report also stated that the PLA Tibet Military Command had deployed helicopters, armored vehicles, heavy artillery, and anti-aircraft missiles across the region, from Lhasa, which has an elevation of around 3,700 meters, to border defense frontlines at an altitude higher than 4,000 meters.
These developments were by no means surprising. Indeed, the PLA has been beefing up its overall combat proficiency in the last few years by engaging in training and joint exercises, especially in high-altitude regions, with implications for how China’s military operates and how other actors in the Indo-Pacific region respond in kind.
With respect to Tibet in particular, the PLA has been doing a number of exercises in Tibet, and the frequency seems to be increasing. Close to a decade ago, in 2011, the PLA conducted two joint exercises at the group army level in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), with the goal of practicing employing a division-size force in a truly integrated manner, involving armor, artillery, and the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). There were also reportedly network-centric operations in a high-intensity electromagnetic environment practiced during this exercise. A J-11 regiment was sighted engaging in night-combat training in Tibet in August 2015.
Beyond individual exercises and more broadly, these developments demonstrate the growing air infrastructure in the TAR, including civilian airports, many of which are used by the PLAAF. These exercises have continued to grow bigger and more sophisticated. Even amidst the Doklam crisis in 2017, the PLA was engaged in a joint military exercise on the Tibetan plateau to test agility and combat proficiency in tasks such as assaults on enemy positions.
China’s engagements are part of an effort to step up their combat proficiencies in Tibet. More specifically, they address a significant lacuna of the PLA – lack of recent operational experience. These exercises have also focused on bringing about true jointness and integration in military operations. In addition to these exercises, there are other indicators of increased PLA activity in the TAR. For example, from 2013 onwards, PLAAF aircraft and helicopters have been sighted doing increased patrolling. Since 2013, troops coming to sectors opposite the Ladakh sector have been instructed to only travel by air and not by road, though the implications of this is unclear. Since April 2015, there have been increasing PLAAF activities, with J-11 and Su-27 aircraft of the PLAAF engaged in periodic exercises in the TAR.
From an Indian perspective in particular, China’s military efforts in the TAR are of grave concern. Even though this was the first major exercise of the PLA in 2020, there has been a significant increase in PLA engagements in terms of military training and exercises in the TAR over the last decade. The fact that Beijing has established all-weather physical border infrastructure in these areas has enhanced its ability to project military power in the region.
Additionally, the PLA is also known to have set up many military camps close to the border areas with periodic deployment of forces in these camps. This would imply that the PLA remains relatively acclimatized to the high-altitude conditions prevalent in the region, whereas on the Indian side, most forces responsible for the Sino-Indian border areas are in the plains of Assam.
This is a challenge in itself, but the bigger worry for New Delhi should be the growing number of Chinese military exercises in the TAR. The PLA has been engaged in many single-service and joint military exercises to validate several operational concepts.
The increase in the frequency and complexity of the PLA exercises in the TAR could also be an indicator of things to come. The fact that the Chinese state-run media are publicizing these exercises in Tibet is possibly an effort to send a signal to India and a demonstration of the overall better combat proficiency of the PLA. New Delhi cannot afford to ignore them.
Clearly, the tempo of China’s military activities in the TAR is growing, and it is likely to lead to even greater efforts on the Indian side. Though the Doklam confrontation ended peacefully, the preparations being undertaken by both sides suggest that the next one may have a different outcome.
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
Dr. Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan is Distinguished Fellow and Head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), one of India’s leading think tanks.
What is Tibet Equilibrium? A new Balance of Power Theory in International Relations. SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – WHOLE DYNAMICS – WHOLE EQUILIBRIUM: HUMAN EXISTENCE DEMANDS A BALANCE OR HARMONY TO MAINTAIN A STEADY STATE CALLED DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM OR “WHOLE EQUILIBRIUM.”
SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – IMPERISHABLE, IMMUTABLE, AND IMMORTAL PRINCIPLE OPERATING ALL LIVING THINGS
March 03, World Wildlife Day. The principle of unity underlying the biodiversity. Qing Mendous, extinct species was part of a group of Lobe Finned Fishes.
Living Things are made up of 1. Living Matter, and 2. Physical Form. The Form or Morphological Appearance of Living Things is used in their identification and for classification.
Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of all Living Things. Living Things Change Under Influence of Time. Changes of Growth and Development.
Theory of Evolution carefully records similarities between different living things and claims that living things are constantly changing and descend into new forms of living things that are again identified by their morphological appearance. Change is a Natural Phenomenon. Things in Nature change under influence of Time.
Protoplasm or Cytoplasm is the clear, soft, gelatinous living substance found inside all living cells. A most striking characteristic of Protoplasm is its vital property of Nutrition. Nutrition is the power which Protoplasm has of attracting to itself the materials that provide energy and are necessary for its growth and maintenance.
However, the problem of biodiversity is not resolved by Theory of Evolution. Living things change in appearance due to natural process called Growth and Development or due to aging process. Changes in Genetic Code called Mutation does not affect Chemical Composition of Living Matter while it may cause change in form or appearance.But any such observed change in appearance is possible if and only if Living Matter retains its basic chemical composition and behaves as if it is operated by Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle.
Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. Chemical components of living cells such as Bacteria remains same unaffected by Mutations which may change Genetic Code.
All living things exist in nature by consuming other living things or consuming products made by other living things. All living things appear to be varied and yet consist of the same kind of Chemical Compounds. To a great extent, Chemical Elements retain their attributes as if they are imperishable, immutable, and can even said to be immortal. This unchanging nature or Spiritual attribute helps formulation of Fundamental Laws of Matter described by classical Physics and Chemistry. Over billions of years, Living Matter retained its basic Chemical Composition as Chemical Elements and Chemical Compounds governed or operated by imperishable, immutable, and immortal or Spiritual Principle not influenced by time or changes in climate, or other variable external conditions.
Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. The Organic Material called Protoplasm or Cytoplasm exhibits Nature that can neither be created nor destroyed. There is no ‘Evolutionary Change’.
The Organic Material called Protoplasm or Cytoplasm exhibits Nature that can neither be created nor destroyed. Its Nature is not subject to ‘Evolutionary Change’.
Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. This Ray Finned Fish shares the same characteristics found in all Living Things without significant variation in Chemical Components.
In my analysis, Theory of Evolution is fundamentally flawed for its focus on change in morphological appearance does not take into account the Unchanging Nature of Chemical Elements and Chemical Compounds. There is no evolution for the chemical composition of the living matter has essentially remained the same.
Spirituality Science – Concept of Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) and Tree of Life.
Biological Diversity is reflected by the number of Living Animal and Plant species. All of these lifeforms are operated by the same Unchanging Spiritual Principle. I explain Biological Diversity is the product of a creative mechanism that formulates the morphological appearance of living things while they are essentially made up of the same Living Substance. Every living thing fundamentally exists as an Individual with Individuality. There are no two perfectly identical living things. For there is such vast diversity of living things, for purposes of convenience, they may be grouped and classified using principles shared by Taxonomy. Some Forms of Life became extinct over course of time but Life has not perished and Living Matter continues to exist as before. Indeed all varied Forms of Life are formed by the same Chemical Elements.
Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
Illustration for the March 03, 2020 World Wildlife Day campaign under the theme “Sustaining all life on Earth.” Credit: World Wildlife Day/Patrick George.
The incalculable value of wildlife
The animals and plants that live in the wild have an intrinsic value and contribute to the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic aspects of human well-being and to sustainable development.
World Wildlife Day is an opportunity to celebrate the many beautiful and varied forms of wild fauna and flora and to raise awareness of the multitude of benefits that their conservation provides to people. At the same time, the Day reminds us of the urgent need to step up the fight against wildlife crime and human-induced reduction of species, which have wide-ranging economic, environmental and social impacts. Given these various negative effects, Sustainable Development Goal 15 focuses on halting biodiversity loss.
Sustaining all life on Earth
The theme of World Wildlife Day 2020, “Sustaining all life on Earth”, encompasses all wild animal and plant species as a component of biodiversity, as well as the livelihoods of people, especially those who live closest to the nature. This aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals 1, 12, 14 and 15, and their wide-ranging commitments on alleviating poverty, ensuring sustainable use of resources, and on conserving life both on land and below water to halt biodiversity loss.
Earth is home to countless species of fauna and flora – too many to even attempt counting. Historically, we have depended on the constant interplay and interlinkages between all elements of the biosphere for all our needs: the air we breathe, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the materials we need for all purposes. However, unsustainable human activities and overexploitation of the species and natural resources are imperiling the world’s biodiversity. Nearly a quarter of all species are presently at risk of going extinct in the coming decades.
The year 2020, known as “biodiversity super year,” will host several major global events that place biodiversity at the forefront. It provides a unique opportunity to deliver transformative progress for the conservation and sustainable use of the species of wild animals and plants.
Get involved
Share what you’ve learned with your friends and family.
CSpread the word, especially to children and youth. They are the future leaders of wildlife conservation and they deserve a future where we humans live in harmony with wildlife that share the planet with us.
Remember to use the hashtags #WorldWildlifeDay #WWD2020 #SustainingAllLife #Biodiversity2020 #SustainableUse
Video for World Wildlife Day
Let us remind ourselves of our duty to preserve and sustainably use the vast variety of life on the planet. Let us push for a more caring, thoughtful and sustainable relationship with nature. António Guterres
March 03, World Wildlife Day. The principle of unity underlying biodiversity.Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. Lobe-Finned Fish often called ‘Living Fossil’ remains Unchanged over millions of years.Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. Extinct Form of Fish called COELACANTH. Some forms of life became extinct, but life has not perished for Living Matter continues to exist as before.Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. Lobe-Finned Fish continues to live while some forms of Life became extinct during course of time.Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. Lobe-Finned Fish belongs to Order Sarcopterygii. No distinction between Living Things can be made on the basis of their Chemical Components.Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. Lungfish. While individual living things are born and die, Life continues without change in Chemical Components.Spirituality Science – Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle of Living Things. Extinct Form of Lobe-Finned Fish. Individual Living Things experience Birth and Death while Life continues as before with same Chemical Components.
DISCOVERY OF CHEMICAL STRUCTURE OF DNA – FEBRUARY 28, 1953
Discovery of Chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953. “Life is Knowledge in Action.”
DNA is found mostly in the cell nucleus, but another type of nucleic acid, RNA, is common in the cytoplasm. Watson and Crick proposed that RNA must copy the DNA message in the nucleus and carry it out to the cytoplasm, where proteins are synthesized. Crick also predicted the existence of an “adaptor” molecule that reads the genetic code and selects the appropriate amino acids to add to a growing polypeptide chain. This proposed flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA to protein became known as the “Central Dogma.”
As it turned out, several types of RNA are involved in the utilization of genetic information. In the nucleus, the DNA code is “transcribed,” or copied, into a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule. In the cytoplasm, the mRNA code is “translated” into amino acids. Translation is orchestrated at the ribosome — itself partly composed of RNA — with transfer RNA playing the role of adaptor.
The Discovery of Chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953.Discovery of DNA Chemical Structure on February 28, 1953 by Cambridge University Scientists James Watson and Frances Crick. “Life is Knowledge in Action.”
On this day, February 28, 1953, James Watson and Frances Crick announced their discovery of chemical structure of DNA. It is important to recognize DNA molecules as source of biological information, genetic information, or innate knowledge that enables living cells to perform a variety of guided, sequential, purposeful, and goal-oriented ‘immanent’ actions. It helps me to define term ‘Life’ as, “Life is Knowledge in Action.”
The Discovery of the Chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953.
However, DNA molecules do not acquire energy from an external source. Cytoplasm or Protoplasm has power called ‘Nutrition’ with which it attracts matter found in external environment of cell. For this reason, Viruses that are basically constituted by DNA or RNA molecules are not capable of independent existence and their living functions such as replication demand assistance from a living host cell.
WHO AM I? This question must be answered by applying a reasoning process to Inferential Knowledge about Cell Structure(ANATOMY) and Cell Functions(PHYSIOLOGY). Life is defined as “Knowledge in Action.” February 28. My Musings on the Discovery of the Chemical Structure of Dna.
DNA is an important biomolecule for it directs protein synthesis and yet it does not qualify as the vital, animating principle found in all living organisms.
Animal cells contain three main regions: plasma membrane, nucleus, and cytoplasm. The nucleus is a cell’s central organelle, which contains the cell’s DNA. The cytoplasm is composed of two parts, the cytosol and organelles. Cytosol, the jelly-like substance within the cell, provides the fluid medium necessary for biochemical reactions. An organelle (“little organ”) is one of several different types of membrane-enclosed bodies in the cell, each performing a unique function. Just as the various bodily organs work together in harmony to perform all of a human’s functions, the many different cellular organelles work together to keep the cell healthy and performing all of its important functions.
In my analysis, I use the term ‘Spiritual’ to describe the harmonious interactions between the plasma membrane, nucleus, cytoplasm, and the various intracellular organelles in the performance of various living functions. These harmonious interactions are possible on account of the ‘Spiritual’ Nature of the Corporeal Substance or the Living Matter called Protoplasm or Cytoplasm.
The artistic depiction of the Double-Helix structure of the DNA molecule. The DNA molecule always exhibits individualistic variation in its behavior. In other words, with a natural, or synthetic genome, two living entities will always exist as Individuals with Individuality. Life as such is a created phenomenon, with or without patent, no individual, or corporation has the ability to transgress this fundamental Law of Nature.
On February 28th many historical events occurred. These events are recapped by Russell Mitchell in this video clip from “This Day in History”. The discovery of DNA by James Watson and Frances Crick being a major one for the scientific community. Not only was DNA discovered on this day, but the Republican Party was founded in Wisconsin. The well-known album Thriller by Michael Jackson won eight Emmy awards as well.
1953
Watson and Crick discover chemical structure of DNA
On this day in 1953, Cambridge University scientists James D. Watson and Frances H.C. Crick announce that they have determined the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes. Though DNA–short for deoxyribonucleic acid–was discovered in 1869, its crucial role in determining genetic inheritance wasn’t demonstrated until 1943. In the early 1950s, Watson and Crick were only two of many scientists working on figuring out the structure of DNA. California chemist Linus Pauling suggested an incorrect model at the beginning of 1953, prompting Watson and Crick to try and beat Pauling at his own game. On the morning of February 28, they determined that the structure of DNA was a double-helix polymer, or a spiral of two DNA strands, each containing a long chain of monomer nucleotides, wound around each other. According to their findings, DNA replicated itself by separating into individual strands, each of which became the template for a new double helix. In his best-selling book, The Double Helix (1968), Watson later claimed that Crick announced the discovery by walking into the nearby Eagle Pub and blurting out that “we had found the secret of life.” The truth wasn’t that far off, as Watson and Crick had solved a fundamental mystery of science–how it was possible for genetic instructions to be held inside organisms and passed from generation to generation. Watson and Crick’s solution was formally announced on April 25, 1953, following its publication in that month’s issue of Nature magazine. The article revolutionized the study of biology and medicine. Among the developments that followed directly from it were pre-natal screening for disease genes; genetically engineered foods; the ability to identify human remains; the rational design of treatments for diseases such as AIDS; and the accurate testing of physical evidence in order to convict or exonerate criminals. Crick and Watson later had a falling-out over Watson’s book, which Crick felt misrepresented their collaboration and betrayed their friendship. A larger controversy arose over the use Watson and Crick made of research done by another DNA researcher, Rosalind Franklin, whose colleague Maurice Wilkins showed her X-ray photographic work to Watson just before he and Crick made their famous discovery. When Crick and Watson won the Nobel Prize in 1962, they shared it with Wilkins. Franklin, who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer and was thus ineligible for the award, never learned of the role her photos played in the historic scientific breakthrough.
Discovery of Chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953. Thanks to Rosalind Franklin for her contribution. “Life is Knowledge in Action.”Discovery of Chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953. Thanks to Scientist Rosalind Franklin and the photographs she provided. “Life is Knowledge in Action.”The Discovery of the Chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953. The role of DNA in Protein Synthesis.Discovery of Chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953. DNA provides the range of information used in Protein Synthesis by living organisms. “Life is Knowledge in Action.”Discovery of chemical Structure of DNA on February 28, 1953. DNA is source of biological or genetic information used in directing Protein Synthesis. “Life is Knowledge in Action.”
Chakrata Karma. My Life Journey From Freedom in Chakrata to Slavery in the United States. Tenzin Gyatso(b. 1935), the 14th Dalai Lama’s Enthronement Ceremony on 22 February, 1940. Dalai Lama is the Supreme Ruler of Tibet.
I use the phrase “CHAKRATA KARMA” to account for my Life Journey from Freedom in Chakrata to Slavery in the United States. I am a Refugee. But, who is my Refuge?
Chakrata Karma. My Life Journey From Freedom in Chakrata to Slavery in the United States. The 14th Dalai Lama sitting on the throne in this photo image of 1956-57 while Tibet came under Communist China’s military occupation during 1950. With military assistance from the United States and India, Tibetans had revolted against the Communists and the Dalai Lama fled into exile when the massive Tibetan Uprising failed during March 1959.
The Dalai Lama lives in India. We clearly know that India was unwilling to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama during his first visit to India in May 1956. In March 1959, the Dalai Lama could escape from Tibet to live in Exile in India as the United States gave the firm assurance to India to act without any fear of China’s military power to retaliate against India’s decision to grant the political asylum.
Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22-Vikas Regiment
Tibetans Mark 80th Anniversary of Dalai Lama Enthronement
By VOA NewsFebruary 21, 2020 08:09 PM
Chakrata Karma. My Life Journey From Freedom in Chakrata to Slavery in the United States.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is celebrating the 80th anniversary of his enthronement Saturday.
The 14th Dalai Lama, who was born Lhamo Thondup, was just a toddler when he was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor. Tibetan Buddhists believe that senior Buddhist monks can after death choose to be reborn in the body of a child.
The Dalai Lama was enthroned as Tibet’s most important spiritual leader on Feb. 22, 1940, at the age of 4.
Since then, he has been a spiritual leader to Tibetans, strongly advocating nonviolence and winning a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his efforts to bring about an autonomous Tibet.
Born in Tibet in 1935, the 85-year-old spiritual leader has spent most of his life in neighboring India. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and now lives in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, where his supporters run a government-in-exile.
The Dalai Lama said he is seeking greater autonomy for his remote mountain homeland and not independence, while China accuses him of being a dangerous separatist. China has used its influence on the world stage to urge international leaders not to meet with the spiritual leader.
In April 2019, the Dalai Lama was admitted to the hospital in the Indian capital of New Delhi with a chest infection and has since reduced his public audiences. However, aides said he is doing well.
The question of the next Dalai Lama’s reincarnation has political implications. China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lama’s successor, as a legacy inherited from China’s emperors.
However, the Dalai Lama’s own website said that a person who reincarnates has “sole legitimate authority” over where the rebirth takes place and how the reincarnation is recognized.
The Dalai Lama himself has made several statements about his next rebirth, saying he might choose not to be reincarnated at all, and also saying that if he does choose to take rebirth, it will be in a free country.
CHAKRATA KARMA. MY LIFE JOURNEY FROM FREEDOM IN CHAKRATA TO SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES. THE SPIRITS OF SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE ARE SHARING THIS PHOTO ILLEGALLY OBTAINED BY A CHINESE SPY. THE PHOTO WAS TAKEN AT CHAKRATA ON 03 JUNE, 1972 WHILE HIS HOLINESS THE 14th DALAI LAMA WAS PRESENTED A GUARD OF HONOR BY MAJOR GENERAL SUJAN SINGH UBAN, AVSM, INSPECTOR GENERAL, SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE. MY INDIAN ARMY CAREER BEGAN AT THIS LOCATION AND I WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY IN THE OCCUPIED LAND OF TIBET.
The Dalai Lama is a Foreign Title. Tibet’s Freedom is won not through the barrel of a Foreign Service Rifle but by a Foreign Prophecy. The Apocalypse of Apostle John. The Book of REVELATION is the only Hope for Tibet’s Future.
In my analysis, the 14th Dalai Lama has not shared his insight or prophecy about the future of Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism as a religion could be obsessed with Prophecy but the prophetic prediction about the future of Tibet remains unknown.
The Dalai Lama is a foreign title. For that reason, I examine the foreign prophetic traditions to predict the resolution of ‘The Great Tibet Problem’. I ask my readers to reflect upon the prophecy shared by Apostle John in Chapter 18 of the Book of REVELATION.
The Dalai Lama is a Foreign Title. Tibet’s Freedom is not won through the Barrel of a Foreign Service Rifle but by Foreign Prophecy. The prophetic prediction of Prophet Isaiah.
Tibet’s Freedom is not won through the Barrel of a Foreign Service Rifle but by the Prophecy shared by Prophet Isaiah (ISAIAH 47:10 &11).
Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22-Vikas Regiment
The Dalai Lama is a foreign title. A Foreign Prophecy and not the Power of a Foreign Service Rifle wins Tibet’s Freedom or the Deliverance from Occupation.
Who Is the Dalai Lama?
The Dalai Lama is a Foreign Title. Tibet’s Freedom is not won through the Barrel of a Foreign Service Rifle. Alexander Norman first met the Dalai Lama 30 years ago. The two have collaborated on several books.Credit…E.A. Norman
By Donald S. Lopez
THE DALAI LAMA An Extraordinary Life By Alexander Norman
“Dalai Lama” is a foreign title. Tibetans refer to him with names like “Precious Protector,” “Wish-Fulfilling Jewel” and “the Presence.” The divide between the Tibetan Buddhist world — which often has included China and Mongolia — and the world beyond has rarely been of particular consequence to the Dalai Lamas, until this one, the 14th, who is the first to spend most of his life in exile; he fled to India in 1959 and has not returned. His biographer, facing the usual problems of recounting the life of a figure still living (the Dalai Lama will be 85 this year), is also faced with the dilemma of describing his life on the world stage (which has been fairly well documented) and his life inside the world of Tibetan Buddhism (which has not). This is the challenge that Alexander Norman, a longtime associate of the Dalai Lama, takes up in his new biography.
Who is the Dalai Lama? Tibet is unique in the Buddhist world for its system of “incarnate lamas,” the idea being that advanced spiritual masters are able to choose the place for their next rebirth, returning to the world in lifetime after lifetime to teach the dharma. There were many such lineages of lamas in Tibet, and the Dalai Lama was just one of them until 1642. It was then that the fifth Dalai Lama was placed on the throne of Tibet by a Mongol khan, his successors becoming at least the titular head of state. The current incarnation took over the government in 1950 at age 15 when the People’s Liberation Army crossed into eastern Tibet.
Like the authors of other biographies of the current Dalai Lama, Norman does not read or speak Tibetan. However, he has the advantage of being able to use histories published over the past two decades that draw on Tibetan and Chinese sources, none more important than the four volumes by Melvyn C. Goldstein, which provide 2,700 pages on the period from 1913 to 1959. Norman puts these to good use, as well as recently published books about the Dalai Lama’s two tutors, making this biography the most detailed and accurate to date.
The Dalai Lama is a Foreign Title. Tibet’s Freedom is won not through the Barrel of a Foreign Service Rifle but by a Foreign Prophecy.
“The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life” is strongest on the early period, starting, wisely, not with the 14th Dalai Lama, but the 13th (1876-1933), who faced so many of the challenges that his successor would inherit and who left a chillingly prescient prophecy of what lay ahead for his country. Norman makes clear that “old Tibet” was no Shangri-La, describing the corruption and intrigue of the Tibetan court and the sclerosis that the 13th and the young 14th tried, and failed, to cure.
The book contains a number of errors, most of the minor variety, especially concerning the admittedly arcane world of Tibetan Buddhism; the Dalai Lama did not debate about colors — a topic for novice monks — during his examination for the highest monastic degree. Throughout, however, the biography is judicious on topics that often inspire hyperbole and mystification. For example, the Dalai Lama has navigated the modern world while consulting on all matters of import with oracles possessed by wrathful deities. Norman’s description of a crisis over which deity to propitiate, a crisis that began with the thirteenth and continues to the present day, is impressive in its clarity.
He also reveals the Dalai Lama to be a sophisticated thinker and consummate scholar, one whose feet remain firmly on the ground, a trait often obscured by his broken English. In keeping with a religion so obsessed with prophecy, the book, written in an engaging prose, ends with an insightful prediction of the legacy of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and a cleareyed assessment of the challenges that the fifteenth will face.
Donald S. Lopez is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. His forthcoming book is “Buddha Takes the Mound: Enlightenment in 9 Innings.”
THE DALAI LAMA An Extraordinary Life By Alexander Norman 410 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $30.
The Dalai Lama is a Foreign Title. Tibet’s Freedom is not won through the Barrel of a Foreign Service Rifle but by a Foreign Prophecy. The US President Richard Nixon Visits China during the last week of February 1972.. The Week My Life Doomed.
The history of Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22: The Celebration of 2500th Anniversary of the birth of Gautama Buddha(Buddha Jayanti) in New Delhi on May 24, 1956 displays the historical connection between India, and Tibet. Prime Minister Nehru, President Rajendra Prasad, the 14th Dalai Lama, and the 10th Panchen Lama, Rinpoche are seen in this photo image. Because of Gautama Buddha, India, and Tibet are natural allies. But, the complex, political, and military relationship developed as a reaction to People’s Republic of China’s invasion of Tibet in 1950.
In my analysis of the Dalai Lama’s first visit to India in 1956, I want to inform my readers about the beginning of the Tibetan Resistance Movement in 1949 with the assistance and assurances given by the United States. India pursued a course of action after consulting both Tibet and the United States. The massive Tibetan Uprising in March 1959 failed as it did not involve the direct participation of the US or the Indian armed forces. The military capabilities of China were grossly underestimated and China could easily overwhelm the Tibetan Resistance. Both the United States and India had to concede their mistake and both worked together to grant political asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959.
Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Special Frontier Force-Establishment No. 22-Vikas Regiment
CHAKRATA KARMA. THE DALAI LAMA’S FIRST VISIT TO INDIA IN 1956. THE HISTORY OF THE US-INDIA-TIBET RELATIONS : LIFE IN EXILE .
Untold stories from the Dalai Lama’s first India visit
This excerpt from the new authoritative biography of the Tibetan leader reveals little-known facets of his life—including a vivid account of his first visit to India on Jawaharlal Nehru’s invitation
Following Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s intervention in 1956, Chairman of the Communist Party of China Mao Zedong had executed a U-turn on the proposed trip to India, and the Dalai Lama was informed that he would be permitted to go after all. Although Mao took the precaution of scheduling two consecutive visits to India by the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai during the time the Dalai Lama was to be in the country, the Chinese made the further decision not to send a large delegation to accompany the Precious Protector. As Deng Xiaoping—later to emerge as Mao’s successor—wrote, this was to be “a test” for the Dalai Lama. Mao meanwhile spoke candidly of the risks this entailed at a meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee: “It must be anticipated that the Dalai Lama may not come back, and that in addition, he may abuse us every day, making allegations such as ‘the Communists have invaded Tibet,’ and that he may go so far as to declare the ‘independence of Tibet.’ ” Yet the prospect held no terror for Mao: “Shall I feel aggrieved at the desertion of one Dalai? Not at all…What harm will his departure do to us? None whatsoever. He can’t do more than curse us.”
Traveling overland by car via Shigatse, where he joined up with the Panchen Lama, the Precious Protector spent a short time at Dromo, the Tibetan border town he had last seen in 1951, before continuing the journey on horseback, up the steep track that led to the Nathu Pass, before it plunged down into Sikkim on the other side. The carcasses of mules that had “probably perished from exhaustion” and “clusters of sinister-looking vultures” hopping among them that were a perennial feature of the Tibetan trade routes might have served as a prophetic warning of the fate that was to befall Tibet.
CHAKRATA KARMA. THE DALAI LAMA’S FIRST VISIT TO INDIA. The Dalai Lama (centre) with the two tutors, Ling Rinpoché (left) and Trijang Rinpoché. India, 1956. Photo courtesy: The Office of H E Kyabje Ling Rinpoché
India was a revelation, however. “People,” the Dalai Lama immediately saw, “expressed their real feelings and did not just say what they thought they ought to say.” The arrangements were, from his perspective, rather chaotic compared with the regimentation in China, but the enthusiasm of the people won him over. Everywhere he went, he was greeted by huge crowds of well-wishers, many of whom had traveled long distances just to get a glimpse of him.
From the Indian point of view, the Tibetan delegation was something of a revelation too. The task of hosting them “was not made easier by the fact that the Lamas’ followers were explosively sensitive to the smallest niceties of protocol and were ready to draw daggers at the merest suspicion of a slight,” according to one Indian official. Another challenge was the Indians’ awareness that any “accident” that might befall the Dalai Lama would be hugely advantageous to the Chinese—a mishap that would be relatively easy to arrange and then to lay at the door of the Indian government. His security was thus a constant source of anxiety, exacerbated by the tumultuous enthusiasm shown for the Tibetan leader whenever he appeared in public. A glimpse of this can be seen in the newsreels shot during his visit and in the recollections of some of those delegated to look after him.
CHAKRATA KARMA. THE DALAI LAMA’S FIRST VISIT TO INDIA. One of the earliest known images of the 14th Dalai Lama, Kumbum Monastery, 1939. Photo courtesy: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University
Describing an occasion when he escorted the Panchen Lama to his quarters in Gangtok, Nari Rustomji (a government official) wrote: “We had hardly passed the Palace gates before a crowd that seemed like the entire population of Sikkim lunged madly forward, man, woman and child, with arms vainly outstretched, for a touch of the vehicle we were travelling in. I seriously feared our station wagon would be overturned, but there was no remedy as the police, themselves devout Buddhists, were too overawed by the Presence [a common epithet used by Tibetans both for the Dalai and the Panchen Lamas] to dream of controlling the crowds. Coins, currency notes, ceremonial scarves, amulets came whirring through the windows…until at last we were compelled to close them in self-defence. Our security arrangements might have served well enough for common or garden mortals, but certainly not for the Living God, whose only protection now was his own divinity.”
With respect to the two lamas’ personalities, Rustomji, himself a Parsi, recalled his impressions in his autobiography: “I have often been asked whether I was ever aware of supernatural forces emanating from the Lamas’ presence. I have to confess that, for all the eager and excited anticipation of their divine immanence, they remained, for me, two very charming and sensible young men, of gentle and considerate manner, inquiring and vigorous mind and irresistibly attractive personality.”
CHAKRATA KARMA. THE DALAI LAMA’S FIRST VISIT TO INDIA. The Dalai Lama An Extraordinary Life.
This attractiveness was, he also noted, not lost on some of their young female devotees, perhaps inspired by folk memories of the dissolute Sixth Dalai Lama. “It was,” he wrote, “evident from the homely talk” of some of his Sikkimese friends that “there were many in Lhasa who were as carried away by the youthful charm of the Lamas as by their divinity, and they told us tales of some of their more passionate young friends whose secret purpose in seeking the Dalai Lama’s blessing was that they might be nearer the object of desire…Could it really be, wondered the belles of Lhasa, that the Dalai Lama could be utterly immune to feminine allure? It was a challenge to Venus which provoked them to higher endeavours. The Panchen, too, was not without his admirers. And wicked gossip whispered that the chinks in his armour were already showing through.”
But while the Panchen Lama’s susceptibility to female charms struck Rustomji, he noted that, though the Dalai Lama “had a delightful sense of fun…there was something not of this world, ethereal and ageless, in [his] expression that moved me all the more deeply.”
From the moment he set foot in the country until the day he left, eleven weeks later, the question at the forefront of the Dalai Lama’s mind was whether to return to Tibet, or was now the moment to seek asylum abroad? There were strong feelings in both directions among those closest to him. In favor of staying in India were his older brothers Gyalo Thondup and Jigme Norbu—the first already based in India, the second having flown in specially from America. Sitting up with them until midnight, the Dalai Lama recalled, “Their views really shook me.” Phala, too, the Lord Chamberlain, together with one of the former tsit tsab (chief ministers), took a similar line. On the other side were the four members of the Kashag and, less vociferously, the two tutors, while the representatives of the Three Seats were firmly in favor of returning to Tibet. Also of importance was the opinion of the people of Tibet, who could be assumed to favor his return. For them to be without the Dalai Lama was to be bereaved.
From Sikkim, the Precious Protector flew to Delhi, where his first engagement was to lay flowers and a kathag (a white silk scarf) at Rajghat, in honor of Mahatma Gandhi, whose memorial stands there. The experience affected him profoundly. “It was a calm and beautiful spot,” he later wrote, “and I felt very grateful to be there, the guest of a people like mine who had endured foreign domination.”
The next few days in Delhi were occupied with official receptions at which he was greeted by almost every dignitary in the capital. Not only was the Dalai Lama still nominally a head of state, but also the Tibetan leader was something more than a mere political figure. For many Indians he was an avatar, a holy man without compare. Though they did not share his religion, they nonetheless eagerly sought darshan of him: a blessing and a glimpse of the divine.
CHAKRATA KARMA. THE DALAI LAMA’S FIRST VISIT TO INDIA. The Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, 2018. He has lived in India for over 60 years now. Photo courtesy: Office of his Holiness The Dalai Lama
While he was in Delhi, the Dalai Lama met with Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier, who was en route to a number of other Asian countries. As the Dalai Lama wrote in his autobiography, he found Zhou “as full of charm, smiles and deceit as ever.” Besides telling the Tibetan leader of Mao’s recent decision to delay reforms indefinitely in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Zhou assured him that if the Dalai Lama would care to accompany him back to Beijing, Chairman Mao would be glad to see the Precious Protector again and to allay in person any fears he might have. As for Gyalo Thondup and Jigme Norbu (both of whom Zhou clearly suspected of agitating for the Dalai Lama to seek asylum abroad), should they happen to be short of funds, the Chinese embassy would be happy to supply the Dalai Lama with money to give them—though it would be better if he did not disclose its source. This last was a strange remark. For all his guile, it is clear that Zhou was a less astute judge of character than his adversary.
Notwithstanding Zhou’s assurance that there would be no reforms in the Tibet Autonomous Region, it left untouched the question of what was to happen in Kham and Amdo. The violent struggle now firmly under way there was certain to continue.
From Delhi, the Precious Protector traveled to Bodh Gaya, where, to his delight, he was able to spend several days conducting ceremonies at this, the most sacred of all Buddhist pilgrimage sites. A speech he made at this time is remarkable for its prescience. Noting that in one of the sutras, or scriptures, there is a prophecy made by the Buddha that 2,500 years after his parinirvana—or passing beyond suffering—the dharma would flourish in the land of the red-faced people, he explained that some held this to refer to its spread in Tibet, “but one scholar has interpreted otherwise. According to him the prediction refers to Europe.” What the Dalai Lama could not have imagined at the time was that it would be he, more than anyone else, who would bring this about. Instead, his attention was focused when, on the last day of his stay at Bodh Gaya, unexpected news came that Zhou would be returning to Delhi the following day and sought an urgent meeting with the Tibetan leader.
CHAKRATA KARMA. THE DALAI LAMA’S FIRST VISIT TO INDIA. The Dalai Lama in a photograph from April 1959, the year he received asylum in India. Photo: Getty Images
At once the Dalai Lama sent a message to one of the young Tibetan government officials who had remained behind in Delhi. He was to leave immediately for the northeastern hill town of Kalimpong, where he was to discharge the medium of the Nechung oracle from his Scottish mission hospital bed, where he was being treated for arthritis, and bring him to Delhi the very next day. This was a tall order, given the distances involved and the as yet underdeveloped state of regional air links. Nonetheless, in spite of delays necessitating some frantic negotiation with airline officials and a frosty reception from the other passengers when they finally took their seats two hours after the scheduled departure, the Nechung medium and his two attendants successfully made it back to Delhi on time. It subsequently emerged that his advice was that the Precious Protector should now seek asylum.
Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama himself had fared less well. Arriving in Delhi by train earlier that evening, he had been hijacked by the Chinese ambassador. Without informing his Indian counterparts, the ambassador met the Dalai Lama at the train station and escorted him to his own car, which drove directly to the Chinese embassy. Meanwhile the rest of the Tibetan entourage took their seats in cars provided by the Indian government. The Tibetans arrived back at Hyderabad House, where they were quartered, aghast to find that they had mislaid their precious cargo. Only after frantic telephoning was the Dalai Lama finally located and retrieved from the Chinese embassy, where he had already had the first of what was to be several meetings with Zhou Enlai. It was a stunning diplomatic coup on the part of the Chinese.
These encounters with Zhou surrounded a critical meeting with Nehru at which the Precious Protector sought to determine the prime minister’s attitude toward a formal request for asylum. The Indian leader made clear his determination not to make any commitments that would harm India’s relationship with China. Indeed, so fully was his mind made up that he barely attended to what the Precious Protector had to say: “At first he listened and nodded politely. But…after a while he appeared to lose concentration as if he were about to [fall asleep].” The Dalai Lama explained that he had done all in his power to make the relationship with China work, but that he was now beginning to think it might be better to remain in India rather than return to Tibet. This evidently brought Nehru to his senses. He understood what the Tibetan was saying, he assured him, “but you must realise…that India cannot support you.” His advice was rather that the Dalai Lama should hold the Chinese to the terms of the Seventeen Point Agreement and speak out forcefully when they failed to do so.
At his subsequent meetings with Zhou, the Dalai Lama gave no indication that he was considering applying for political asylum. Indeed, the (Chinese) transcripts of the meetings have him dutifully speaking in the first-person plural when referring to Chinese government policy in Tibet. Yet it is clear also that the Chinese premier was well aware that the Tibetan leader had been making inquiries. He cautioned the Dalai Lama that, if he stayed in India, he would be in political exile. “At first when you say something bad against us as strongly as possible, you will get some money. The second and third time, when you do not have much to say against us, you will get small sums of money, and in the end they will not have money to give you.”
The opposing voices of the Nechung oracle and the Chinese premier were deeply unsettling, and when he left Delhi a few days later in the company of the Panchen Lama for a month-long tour of the country, the Dalai Lama was still in a quandary.
His schedule over the next few weeks consisted of visits to various important Buddhist pilgrimage sites, interspersed with sightseeing trips to several cities including Bombay, Calcutta, Bangalore, and Mysore. These visits to places connected with the founder of Buddhism had a profound impact on the Dalai Lama—none more so than at Vulture Peak in northeastern India, where the Buddha is believed to have preached the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, for the first time. Here—possibly in prophetic anticipation of the thousands of monks he was himself to ordain over subsequent decades—the Dalai Lama enjoyed a vision during a meditation of monks reciting the Wisdom Mantra: “Om Ga-te Ga-te, Paraga-te, Bodhi Svaha.”
The visits to India’s industrial centers were of less interest. In news footage shot during this part of the visit, we see the Dalai Lama being shown around an industrial engineering project. He adjusts repeatedly an obviously uncomfortable workman’s safety helmet, and it is clear he is not enjoying the experience….
Doubtless the Indians’ intentions were to show the Tibetans that China had nothing on them in terms of material progress, but what impressed the Dalai Lama most was the enthusiasm of the people for their young democracy. The viewer of the contemporary footage is struck by the self-confidence of the crowds that attended the Precious Protector’s every public appearance. (Pilgrims could travel at half price on the railways.) On each arrival, the Dalai Lama is garlanded and presented with bouquets of flowers as the press fight for photographs and crowds cheer. In contrast, faithful Tibetans stand meekly patient in hope of catching a glimpse of the Precious One. Yet it is also instructive to look at the demeanor of the Dalai Lama himself. The pressure he felt himself under is palpable. At the Dehra Dun Military Academy he sits, evidently somewhat reluctantly, next to a copiously beribboned general, doubtless comparing the military might on display with what he had seen in China. As the presidential steam train lent to him for his journey draws slowly away from the station, he can be seen smiling and waving somewhat awkwardly in unfamiliar Western style. Following a visit to the Taj Mahal, he takes his place uncertainly behind Nehru on an elephant’s back. At the Air Force Academy he follows a more obviously eager Panchen Lama in taking a turn sitting in a training aircraft. In Calcutta he is taken to watch—without very much enthusiasm—the horseracing at the anachronistically named Royal Calcutta Turf Club. It is a relief to see him riding a miniature train with a delight exceeded only by that of the Panchen Lama, who altogether forgets the dignity of his office, veritably whooping with joy. One has a sense that here is a young man embattled, overburdened even, yet also someone determined to do his best whatever the circumstances.
The India trip ended, as it had begun, in Kalimpong. The Dalai Lama took up residence in the very same house as that occupied by the Great Thirteenth in 1911, following his own flight to exile in India when the Chinese sent an army into Lhasa. As it had long been, the town was a nest of spies (to use Nehru’s own words). To add to its febrile atmosphere was the presence of hundreds of refugees, mainly from Kham, desperate for the Dalai Lama to call them to arms. Prominent among these refugees was Gyalo Thondup, who had by now come to terms with John Hoskins, the twenty-nine-year-old head of the CIA’s Far East Division. America was by now very interested in Tibet as a way to cause trouble for the Chinese Communists. Hoskins, who was based at America’s Calcutta consulate, did not have a very favorable first impression of GT. “There was a lot of submissiveness rather than dynamism,” he noted. Yet in spite of this poor initial impression, Washington decided the CIA should support the training, equipping, and insertion of an initial eight (later reduced to six) Tibetan agents. Hoskins gave Gyalo Thondup the task of recruiting the men, and he in turn involved his elder brother, Jigme Norbu. The six recruits were all Khampas, of whom four were ex-monks, one of these former ecclesiastics an especially fiery character by the name of Wangdu, who in his youth had shot a man dead for that age-old crime of “disrespect.” The agency’s estimation of GT changed over time. When eventually the CIA program came to an end, its then operations director requested that Gyalo Thondup “please arrange for your next incarnation to be Prime Minister of a country where we can do more to help you!,” noting that he had been extraordinarily successful in obtaining both material and political support from the United States.
It is certain that by now the Dalai Lama knew something of the CIA’s interest in supporting a resistance movement in Tibet. But Washington had not been unequivocal in championing the Tibetan cause, having failed in recent communications to make clear that it would back a resolution at the United Nations calling for Tibetan independence. Nor was it certain that the United States would recognize a Tibetan government in exile. Had Washington’s assurances been more explicit, it seems possible the Dalai Lama would have ignored the majority of his advisers, who favored returning, risked Nehru’s ire, and formally requested asylum. But in the absence of such assurances, the Tibetan leader remained uncertain.
The India trip ended, as it had begun, in Kalimpong. The Dalai Lama took up residence in the very same house as that occupied by the Great Thirteenth in 1911, following his own flight to exile in India when the Chinese sent an army into Lhasa. As it had long been, the town was a nest of spies (to use Nehru’s own words). To add to its febrile atmosphere was the presence of hundreds of refugees, mainly from Kham, desperate for the Dalai Lama to call them to arms. Prominent among these refugees was Gyalo Thondup, who had by now come to terms with John Hoskins, the twenty-nine-year-old head of the CIA’s Far East Division. America was by now very interested in Tibet as a way to cause trouble for the Chinese Communists. Hoskins, who was based at America’s Calcutta consulate, did not have a very favorable first impression of GT. “There was a lot of submissiveness rather than dynamism,” he noted. Yet in spite of this poor initial impression, Washington decided the CIA should support the training, equipping, and insertion of an initial eight (later reduced to six) Tibetan agents. Hoskins gave Gyalo Thondup the task of recruiting the men, and he in turn involved his elder brother, Jigme Norbu. The six recruits were all Khampas, of whom four were ex-monks, one of these former ecclesiastics an especially fiery character by the name of Wangdu, who in his youth had shot a man dead for that age-old crime of “disrespect.” The agency’s estimation of GT changed over time. When eventually the CIA program came to an end, its then operations director requested that Gyalo Thondup “please arrange for your next incarnation to be Prime Minister of a country where we can do more to help you!,” noting that he had been extraordinarily successful in obtaining both material and political support from the United States.
It is certain that by now the Dalai Lama knew something of the CIA’s interest in supporting a resistance movement in Tibet. But Washington had not been unequivocal in championing the Tibetan cause, having failed in recent communications to make clear that it would back a resolution at the United Nations calling for Tibetan independence. Nor was it certain that the United States would recognize a Tibetan government in exile. Had Washington’s assurances been more explicit, it seems possible the Dalai Lama would have ignored the majority of his advisers, who favored returning, risked Nehru’s ire, and formally requested asylum. But in the absence of such assurances, the Tibetan leader remained uncertain.
The India trip ended, as it had begun, in Kalimpong. The Dalai Lama took up residence in the very same house as that occupied by the Great Thirteenth in 1911, following his own flight to exile in India when the Chinese sent an army into Lhasa. As it had long been, the town was a nest of spies (to use Nehru’s own words). To add to its febrile atmosphere was the presence of hundreds of refugees, mainly from Kham, desperate for the Dalai Lama to call them to arms. Prominent among these refugees was Gyalo Thondup, who had by now come to terms with John Hoskins, the twenty-nine-year-old head of the CIA’s Far East Division. America was by now very interested in Tibet as a way to cause trouble for the Chinese Communists. Hoskins, who was based at America’s Calcutta consulate, did not have a very favorable first impression of GT. “There was a lot of submissiveness rather than dynamism,” he noted. Yet in spite of this poor initial impression, Washington decided the CIA should support the training, equipping, and insertion of an initial eight (later reduced to six) Tibetan agents. Hoskins gave Gyalo Thondup the task of recruiting the men, and he in turn involved his elder brother, Jigme Norbu. The six recruits were all Khampas, of whom four were ex-monks, one of these former ecclesiastics an especially fiery character by the name of Wangdu, who in his youth had shot a man dead for that age-old crime of “disrespect.” The agency’s estimation of GT changed over time. When eventually the CIA program came to an end, its then operations director requested that Gyalo Thondup “please arrange for your next incarnation to be Prime Minister of a country where we can do more to help you!,” noting that he had been extraordinarily successful in obtaining both material and political support from the United States.
It is certain that by now the Dalai Lama knew something of the CIA’s interest in supporting a resistance movement in Tibet. But Washington had not been unequivocal in championing the Tibetan cause, having failed in recent communications to make clear that it would back a resolution at the United Nations calling for Tibetan independence. Nor was it certain that the United States would recognize a Tibetan government in exile. Had Washington’s assurances been more explicit, it seems possible the Dalai Lama would have ignored the majority of his advisers, who favored returning, risked Nehru’s ire, and formally requested asylum. But in the absence of such assurances, the Tibetan leader remained uncertain.
Edited excerpts from The Dalai Lama—An Extraordinary Life, forthcoming from HarperCollins India. The writer Alexander Norman has collaborated with the Dalai Lama on several best-selling books, including the autobiography, Freedom In Exile.
Chakrata Karma. The Dalai Lama’s first visit to India in 1956. The Tibetan Resistance Movement since 1949.
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