In this excerpt from ‘Voice for the Voiceless,’ which tells the full story of his 75-year struggle with China to save Tibet and its people, the Dalai Lama recounts how he fled home
On my way back to Lhasa from Gangtok, I stopped in many places trying to reassure my countrymen only to receive increasingly disquieting reports. I arrived in the capital on April 1, 1957, knowing that the situation was slipping out of control— due to the Chinese government’s actions and from my own inability to have any meaningful influence. By midsummer, it had become clear that virtually everything I had been told by Zhou himself and by him on behalf of Mao had been falsehood and dissimulation. There continued to be open conflict in Kham and Amdo (eastern and northeastern Tibet).
The People’s Liberation Army showed no restraint— bombing more towns and committing such atrocities that I found difficult to believe for their levels of depravity but were later confirmed by the International Commission of Jurists in 1959: forced sterilization, crucifixion, vivisection, disemboweling, dismemberment, beheading, burning, beating to death, burying alive, dragging people behind galloping horses, hanging them upside down, and other horrors. Thousands more refugees from Kham and Amdo fled to Lhasa and camped outside the city.
Through 1958 and early 1959, the situation worsened further, with growing numbers joining an active Tibetan resistance that came to be based in southern Tibet, called the Volunteer Force for the Protection of the Faith (tensung danglang magmi), led by the energetic leader Adruk Gompo Tashi. To defuse tension, I had several meetings with the People’s Liberation Army’s senior-most generals in Lhasa, including especially General Tan Guansan, the head of the Chinese military in Tibet, known for his bad temper.
Through these generals, the Chinese government insisted that the Tibetan government use our own Tibetan soldiers against the Tibetan guerrillas. It was unthinkable to send Tibetan troops against our own people, especially when they were fighting to safeguard our land and culture. At the same time, I received an intimation from the Americans that if I solicited assistance for the resistance movement, they would provide it. Of course, as a student of the Buddha and a deep admirer of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence philosophy, I could not imagine myself making such a request.
Part of me at the time, I must admit, admired the guerrilla fighters. They were brave Tibetans who were putting their lives at risk for the sake of our nation and Buddhist faith. I also knew that many of them saw themselves as fighting out of loyalty to me as the Dalai Lama. I wondered what advice Mahatma Gandhi would have given me in this charged situation. Would he have condoned violence here? I could not believe that he would. Practically speaking too, I was convinced that using force against the Chinese would be not only useless but actually suicidal. It would give the Chinese army the perfect excuse to crush Tibetans with maximum force.
In the midst of all this, I was preparing for my final Geshe Lharam exams, scheduled at the Great Prayer Festival of 1959. February 22, 1959, when I formally sat for my examination debates at the great Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, was a rare break from the incessant and challenging politics. The day I completed my formal Geshe debates was, perhaps, the happiest day of my life. It was the culmination of a series of debates I had participated in at the “three great seats of learning”— Sera, Drepung, and Ganden— the three largest monastic universities of the Geluk school in central Tibet, all established at the beginning of the fifteenth century. I was both excited and nervous about the debates at Tibet’s great centers of learning. Later I found out that those who had been chosen to question me at these debates too were quite nervous, if not more so than me!
Following my final Geshe exams in Lhasa, over the next two weeks the crisis in the country reached a boiling point. The people’s anxiety about my own safety and the presence of Chinese troops in Lhasa led to an explosive situation in the capital. With so many people gathered in one place— several thousand Tibetans from other parts of Tibet in addition to the local residents— and with such a large number of People’s Liberation Army soldiers stationed in the city, there was a pervasive sense of nervousness and unease. Many felt something untoward was about to happen.
On March 10, I was supposed to attend a cultural show at the Chinese garrison in Lhasa, with the worrisome suggestion that my body guards should not accompany me. Word had gotten out, and thousands of people crowded the city to prevent me from leaving my residence at Norbulingka. The crowd grew through the day, with people shouting anti- Chinese slogans and saying that they would not allow the Dalai Lama to leave. It was soon out of control and became a massive popular uprising.
Over the next few days, the situation became increasingly tense and chaotic with the crowd refusing to disperse. On the twelfth, thousands of Tibetan women took to the streets and assembled in front of the Potala Palace. They burned the Chinese flag, as well as photos and effigies of Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Zhu De, and shouted, “Tibet has always been free! Tibet for the Tibetans! Long live the Dalai Lama! Long live Gaden Phodrang,” the last being the name of the Tibetan government under the Dalai Lamas. The leader of this women’s protest, Gurteng Kunsang, and some of her colleagues would be later executed by firing squad. On March 14, I met with approximately seventy representatives chosen by the people in the hope that I could help defuse the situation.
However, tension kept building, with the Tibetan crowds growing day by day. From the tenth to the seventeenth of March, the Chinese army remained in its barracks while I exchanged messages with the short- tempered General Tan Guansan, which may have helped to buy time. My last letter to him was on March 16. It might also have been the case that the Chinese army was awaiting instructions from Beijing. We had information that they were planning to attack the crowd and shell the Norbulingka Palace. Within my own immediate circle, many were urging me to seriously consider leaving Lhasa for the time being. But I kept hoping that if we could find a way to reassure the mass of ordinary Tibetans gathered outside who were worried about my safety, we could somehow defuse the situation and avert an immediate explosion.
On the seventeenth, around 4 p.m., two heavy mortars landed just outside the north side of the Norbulingka, which, fortunately, did not cause any harm. Everyone thought that an attack was imminent. Earlier on that day, the State Oracle Nechung, in a trance, had in fact urged me to leave, saying, “Leave! Leave! Go tonight!” This instruction was consistent with the outcome of a few divinations I had performed myself on the question of whether to stay or leave.
So the landing of those two mortars came as a reinforcement of what the State Oracle had instructed me to do—namely, to leave immediately. Not only was my own life in danger, but the lives of thousands of my people now seemed certain to be lost as well. With everyone around me urging the path of escape as well, I took the decision to flee Lhasa.
(Excerpted from Voice for the Voiceless by Dalai Lama with permission from HarperCollins India)
