By Mridu Khullar
A visit to McLeod Ganj where Tibetans have found refuge and a new beginning.
Walking down the busy Temple Road each morning, I’m greeted with familiar faces — monks going to or coming from their daily walks around the temple, shop owners setting up makeshift stalls on the side of the street, tourists sipping their morning tea in small cafés and children on their way to school.
So normal is the daily life of the people in McLeod Ganj (also known as Upper Dharamshala), that it’s easy to forget that this quaint town in the Himalayas is at the center of a freedom struggle.
In 1950, Tibet was occupied by China, and while the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in northern Indian views the current rule in Tibet as “colonial and illegitimate,” the Chinese government maintains that Tibet has been an indivisible part of China for the past 700 years.
When the Tibetan leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled into exile nine years after the occupation, the Indian government offered him asylum in Dharamshala. Since then, thousands of Tibetans have secretly crossed the Chinese border and trekked over the Himalayas into this community of exile to join their leader.
Approximately 2,000 Tibetans are said to arrive at the Reception Center for Tibetan refugees in McLeod Ganj each year. Once here, they’re given health treatment and the option to go to school, learn new skills and become active members of the community. Children, who form the bulk of the new arrivals, are sent to one of the many Tibetan Children’s Village schools throughout the country, where they are provided with free education, meals and daily supplies until they graduate.
One thing, however, remains missing for these refugees: a nationality. For most people, having a nation to call their own or being able to get a passport is as normal as having a name. But for the Tibetans in India, there is no nationality. There is no passport. They are permanent refugees. And a yellow piece of paper is their identity.
Struggle, compassion and understanding
When I first arrive in McLeod Ganj, I find myself overwhelmed by the amount of social and political contradictions. Several people insist that Tibet has always been a part of China and Tibetan independence is a non-issue because Tibetans inside Tibet don’t even want autonomy. Yet I hear story after story of courage and struggle, of people risking their lives to cross borders and trek for days in extreme conditions to get to India.
And while the stories share the same common thread, they couldn’t be more dissimilar. Each individual has differing aspirations and has faced different challenges that led them here.
Take for example, Yeshi Wangmo. The nun spent nine years as a political prisoner before being released in 2001 and coming to India. Wangmo, 36, wants to get proper health care to erase the scars of the past decade.
There is also 18-year-old Dawa Tsering, a student who ran away from a life of hopelessness and poverty. She wants to learn English and get an education so she can make a better life for herself.
Then I meet Tenzin, a 20-something woman, who arrived from Tibet in 1998 and has spent the past decade trying to build a better life by learning Hindi and English and helping out at her cousin’s store. Although her parents are still in Tibet, one of her brothers has been able to move to New York, and Tenzin hopes that one day she will be able to obtain a Chinese passport and join him in the United States.
“For me, it’s no longer an issue of the Chinese versus the Tibetans. I have several Chinese friends back home who understand my situation and who I continue to be in touch with via e-mail,” Tenzin says. “I don’t agree with the Chinese government’s policies, but most Chinese people are wonderful.”
She has left behind a family, walked miles in freezing temperatures with no food or water. She has risked her life to get here. Yet in her heart, there is still compassion.
Reports say that the destruction of 6,000 monasteries in Tibet has led to a decline in the practice of Buddhism. But, as one wise man tells me, “Culture doesn’t live in monasteries; it lives inside the hearts of people.” Tenzin and people like her continue to be proof of that.
They are faces of Tibet in exile, a community that accepts the old and embodies the new. One that even while dreaming of a free Tibet, has learned to move on.
………
A monk and two nuns sitting in front of me are making fun of each other’s broken English and laughing constantly as they tell us about the prayer rituals they just finished.
Just like the single ray of sunlight that illuminates this room through a small crack in the ceiling, these Tibetans have lit up every dark corner of their arduous lives by creating small outlets of hope. When they’re not reading mantras or performing pujas, they’re learning English, cooking for new friends and opening their homes and hearts to new possibilities.
Foreign visitors and Tibetan monks walking down roads together, shopping together and eating together is a common sight here. They exchange few words but many precious moments as they get to know about each other’s cultures and lives. When they arrive in Dharamshala, many of these monks and nuns are keen on entering the monasteries in India but prefer to first learn the language and spend some time getting acquainted with the cultures and customs of this new face of Tibet.
Their life here is not easy. Although some of their income comes from the prayers and rituals they perform for the locals, most comes in the form of donations from foreigners who have traveled through the community. This monk tells me that with the $15 he receives each month from his American sponsor, he has created a makeshift wooden floor and bought curtains for a room that before was nothing more than a dirt floor and four barren walls.
………
Up a long winding road from McLeod Ganj is the Tibetan Children’s Village of Dharamshala, home to thousands of children, some recent arrivals from Tibet, some from other refugee families in the area.
The Tibetan Children’s Village schools – there are several branches – were set up to provide a home and education for orphan children who have lost their families during journeys from Tibet to India. Families of several children are created who share living spaces and help out the matron, called the “mother,” with daily chores and household work when they are not at school, where they are taught in English and Tibetan. There are also the babies here, some as young as 2 weeks old, who have been smuggled out of Tibet by parents with hope for a better life.
We walk down to the school one hot summer afternoon and join in a game of football. Behind us, students in a small classroom are reciting their afternoon prayers. The children seem happy here.
Romance in exile
Behind me in a small cyber café sits a tall 20-something Tibetan man cooing into the phone. He’s talking to his American girlfriend who he met a couple of months ago while she was passing through town.
The soft whispers turn to frustrated sighs, and I almost jump in my seat as those turn to full-blown shouting. “I don’t care!” he screams. “I don’t care which country I have to get into. All I know is that I’m going back to Tibet, and I need a foreign passport for that. Do you understand now? You can’t come here. There’s nothing here. Nothing!”
I’m trying to pretend I can’t hear him. But it’s pointless. I’m very interested.
Like everything else in exile, love comes with its own set of problems. Dharamshala, a tourist destination, attracts a large number of foreign visitors, several of whom have short flings with Tibetans and leave them broken-hearted. In fact, in a certain tea shop that I visit daily, there are diaries full of angst — visitors to the shop have opened up their souls on to these pages. Foreigners also sometimes leave here disillusioned, finding that the Tibetan they’ve dated or possibly married was only after a quick visa or foreign citizenship.
For a sad minute, I’m convinced that the man behind me is one of those Tibetans.
There’s another face to marriages in exile — contract marriages. Selfless foreigners who’ve been touched by the difficulties of these Tibetans sometimes offer to marry them in order to enable them to get citizenship. This allows the Tibetans to get valid passports, move abroad and maybe even go back to Tibet to meet the families they’ve left behind.
When I leave the café, the Tibetan man is singing a song in broken English for the woman on the phone. I smile. But in my head, I can still hear him saying, “That yellow piece of paper is my identity … and it’s not enough.”
This, I realize, is what it means to be nationless.
The future
In a small restaurant in a bustling part of town, I meet the man with the red bandana.
Tenzin Tsundue, a political activist, writer and the face of the Tibetan youth has captured the attention of many for his outspoken criticism of the Dalai Lama’s middle-of-the-road approach. Tsundue’s signature red bandana, which he has vowed not to take off until Tibet is a free country, is a constant reminder of his life’s purpose.
I ask him a question that seems to plague many here and around the globe: “Is the Tibetan youth getting militant?”
“No,” Tsundue says. “The values of the non-violent struggle are very important to us and today we are hopeful that the vision of a peaceful free Tibet is possible.”
But, he adds, if tomorrow the Dalai Lama isn’t there to guide the youth and the situation continues to deteriorate, that loss of hope may serve as a catalyst for violence. “Some members of the Tibetan youth may feel that now there is no hope, that everything is finished. Then they may think that if I’m not getting a free Tibet, I won’t allow China to have it either.”
With that, he says, the last story of non-violence would end.
“This cause is not just the struggle of 6 million Tibetans,” Tsundue says repeatedly. “It is the cause of the health and the spirit of the world. If the world wants non-violence to survive, if the world wants reassurance of non-violence as a possible means to find solutions to social-political issues, then it must support Tibet.”
