Dalai, dance and disguise: How Tibetan leader hoodwinked China, fled to India

India Today

12 hours ago

"Looking at your face, I now realise I must be very old too... Thank you very much... I'm very very happy to meet such an old member of the Assam Rifles who guarded and escorted me to India 58 years ago," said the 81-year-old emotional and gracious Dalai Lama in 2017. He was meeting 79-year-old Havildar Naren Chandra Das (retired), who in 1959 stood to his attention and saluted the 23-year-old spiritual leader, welcoming him to India. The Dalai Lama, along with family members and aides, had to flee their homeland Tibet, never to return again.The group from Lhasa had just spent two grinding weeks in March 1959, crossing frozen mountain passes, hiding by day, moving by night. But they had always been a step ahead of Chinese patrols.Nine years after the Chinese invasion in 1950, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightened its grip on Tibet, the Dalai Lama, the supreme spiritual authority and head of state of the kingdom, was forced to make the weeks-long Himalayan trek.The decision to leave Tibet was triggered by an "invitation" from a local CCP functionary for a dance show, asking the Tibetan leader to attend. The catch? No guards allowed. To many in his circle, it wasn't an invitation, but a trap. And so, on the night of March 17, 1959, a simple, urgent message was whispered, "Go! Go! Tonight".That night, the 23-year-old leader, who would otherwise don maroon robes, sneaked out of his summer palace and disguised himself as an obscure soldier.It's been over six decades since, but he acknowledges the strange reality of it. "I am a refugee. But I enjoy freedom in India," the Dalai Lama has asserted on several occasions.Even after 75 years of annexing Tibet, China has kept tightening its grip on the region and Tibetan Buddhism.Questions loom over the successor of the Dalai Lama, who will turn 90 on July 6.On the Dalai Lama's 90th birth anniversary, we look at his trek to India, which was one of the most daring high-profile escapes of the 20th century. It's about a young spiritual leader dodging bullets and betrayal, tracing mountain paths into the unknown. It's also about the political turbulence in Tibet that pushed him to the edge.It is also the story of the Dalai Lama's exile, memory, and the long shadow of 1959 that still hangs over the political, religious, and cultural lives of the millions of Tibetans, some of whom followed the Dalai Lama, leaving back their homeland to call India their home.FREEDOM PROMISED, FREEDOM LOST; CHINA TAKES CONTROL OF TIBETBy the late 1950s, Tibet was simmering.The Seventeen Point Agreement signed in 1951, under duress, had guaranteed religious autonomy to the Tibetan people under Chinese control. The deal came just two years after Mao Zedong's Communist forces defeated the Kuomintang (KMT) in China's civil war and established the People's Republic of China in 1949.Autonomy was an illusion.An "attack on Tibet and its religion" had been foretold by none other than the 13th Dalai Lama himself, the predecessor of the present one. It was during his lifetime that a young Tenzin Gyatso (born as Lhamo Thandop) was recognised as the next spiritual leader as the 14th Dalai Lama."It may happen that here in Tibet, religion and government will be attacked both from without and from within. Unless we guard our own country, it will now happen that the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lamas, the Father and the Son, and all the revered holders of the Faith, will disappear and become nameless. Monks and their monasteries will be destroyed. The rule of law will be weakened," the 13th Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying by The Tibet Journal of 2008.
The 14th Dalai Lama at age four at Kumbum Monastery in Amdo, Eastern Tibet (L). Born in 1935, the 14th Dalai Lama was formally recognised in 1940 at the age of four as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama (R). (Image: Office of the Dalai Lama/Tibet Museum)
The "autonomy", in reality, was the sight of Chinese soldiers roaming freely in Lhasa, the seizure of monastic lands, and the steady erosion of the Dalai Lama's authority to govern.For nine years after the Chinese intrusion, the Dalai Lama tried to broker a compromise. But all in vain.By 1959, whispers of resistance had turned to loud protests.The people of Tibet were afraid. Afraid that their spiritual leader would be abducted or might even be killed.And then came the infamous March invitation.Lhasa was surrounded by PLA troops, tanks and artillery.On the same day, the CCP commander in Lhasa asked the Dalai Lama to attend a dance show at their military headquarters, without his bodyguards or entourage. That was the tipping point.Thousands of Tibetans flooded the streets, forming a human barricade around Lahsa's Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace. The Potala Palace, atop Lhasa's Red Hill, served as the seat in winter. It was more of a formal seat of power and spiritual authority of the Dalai Lama.After the invitation by the CCP leader, debates raged within the palace walls. The state oracle was consulted, not once, but thrice. The answer was clear: "Leave. Now".DALAI LAMA LEAVES LHASA AT NIGHT TO TREK TO INDIAOn the foggy night of March 17, the Dalai Lama disguised himself in a soldier's uniform.With his mother, siblings, tutors, and a handful of loyal officials, he slipped out through the back gate of Norbulingka under the cover of darkness."A few minutes before 10 o'clock in the evening, His Holiness, disguised as an ordinary soldier, slipped past the massive throng of people along with a small escort and proceeded towards the Kyichu river (the city's south), where he was joined by the rest of his entourage, including some members of his immediate family.The Chinese army had surrounded Lhasa. The group had to avoid checkpoints, stick to narrow mountain trails, and travel mostly at night to evade detection.
The Dalai Lama's 1959 escape route from Lhasa to India took him through Chushul, Lhoka, the Kyichu Valley, crossing the Himalayas and entering India at Khenzimane in Tawang sector in today's Arunachal Pradesh, and finally reaching safety in Tezpur, Assam. (Image: Office of the Dalai Lama)
Every night, they walked. Every day, they hid. Food was scarce. The terrain was unforgiving. The weather, worse. But they pressed on — across the Kyichu river, through high-altitude valleys, past monasteries and rebel camps.Later, rumours spread among Tibetans that the Dalai Lama "had been screened from Red planes (Cold War-era name for Communist aircraft) by mist and low clouds conjured up by the prayers of Buddhist holy men", TIME's 1959 cover story noted about the escape.Once, as the Dalai Lama would later recall, a Chinese reconnaissance plane flew overhead. The group froze, terrified. But the plane moved on.For two weeks after his escape, as the Dalai Lama remained out of sight, people around the world feared that he might have been killed, according to the BBC.THE MOMENT DALAI LAMA SET FOOT IN INDIAOn March 26, the group reached Lhuntse Dzong, a few miles from the Indian border.Meanwhile, in Maryland, USA, a phone rang. John Greaney, an officer with the CIA's Tibet Task Force, picked it up. The message was short: "OpIm", shorthand for Operation Imperative, a covert US intelligence operation supporting Tibetan resistance against Communist China's rule.Greaney immediately sent a cable to New Delhi, seeking permission for asylum from the feeling group.In New Delhi, the cable was placed before Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.Despite warnings of retaliation from Beijing and rupturing the fragile ties, Nehru soon acted decisively.He ordered the Assam Rifles to move to the border post at Chutangmu near Tawang in the Centrally-administered North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), and prepare to receive the Dalai Lama and the other Tibetan refugees.By March 31, the Dalai Lama and his entourage crossed into India through the Khenzimane Pass.At a tiny post near the McMahon Line, an Indian jawan stood at attention.Havildar Naren Chandra Das of the Assam Rifles watched as a weary, cloaked figure approached. That man, unknown to most Indians then, was the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
In 2017, the Dalai Lama had an emotional reunion with Naren Chandra Das, the last surviving Assam Rifles soldier from the team that escorted him into India in 1959. (Image: Assam Rifles/X)
The welcome and the gesture that must have restored a sense of safety and freedom for him and his followers after days of peril.It was a moment loaded with meaning for India. Behind the gesture were decades of diplomacy, centuries of civilisational values and ties, and India's commitment to shelter those fleeing persecution. Das and the other Assam Rifles personnel escorted him and his entourage to Tawang, where they were given rest, food, and medical care.As he set foot in India, the Dalai Lama was handed a telegram from Nehru. The message was that the Tibetan spiritual leader was welcome to stay in India."When I revisit the Tawang area, I am reminded of the freedom that I experienced for the first time [in 1959]. That was the beginning of a new chapter in my life," the Associated Press news agency quoted the Dalai Lama as saying.Later in 2017, when the Dalai Lama met Havildar Das once again, then a 79-year-old veteran, the spiritual leader thanked the Indian soldier. The two men smiled.For the next few months, he stayed in Mussoorie, acclimatising to a new world. Then, he moved to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, which became the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile.Since 1959, the geopolitical situation has changed, but not much for the Tibet issue. It remains unsettled.The Chinese government insists that it will control the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Even today, a single photograph of the Dalai Lama is enough to land someone in jail in parts of China. The current Dalai Lama, who will be 90 on July 6, has said he may not reincarnate at all, or if he does, it won't be within "Chinese-occupied Tibet".In exile, the Indian Tibetan community has kept its culture alive, in monasteries, schools, and institutions scattered across the nation and the world. India, meanwhile, walks a diplomatic tightrope. Time had passed. But the situation has remained unchanged, and frozen in time, just as it was more than 60 years ago when the Dalai Lama, in the disguise of a soldier, trekked into India.- EndsTune In
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