Tibetans Host a Heartfelt Thank You to Mother India
By Terry Reis Kennedy
“Jai Bharat!” shouted Mr. Kunga Dorjee, chief representative of the south-zone office of the Tibetan Government in Exile in Bangalore. He had just finished conducting the inaugural function of a recent three-day event commemorating 50 years of Tibetans living as refugees in India.
Hundreds gathered at Chitra Kala Parishad function center in Bangalore on the 22nd of November to join the inaugural festivities. Though the speeches were generally positive and conducted with grace, it was impossible not to remember the dark days that had brought thousands of Tibetans to the sanctuary of Mother India.—days of torture, imprisonment, and mass murder conducted by the Chinese communist administration under Chairman Mao Tse Tung during the takeover and occupation of the independent country of Tibet—dark days that are still continuing in the land known universally as The Rooftop of the World.
But no one spoke of the continuing acts of barbarism, the ethnic cleansing, and the absence of religious freedom in the country of holy lakes and mountain gods. Instead, it was a day full of smiles, handshakes, and much bowing while the songs of birds in the trees, and the fragrance of plumeria blossoms wafted through the air. The sun was as bright as the one on the flag of Tibet. Beautiful young Tibetan women in colorful native dresses moved like dazzling flowers through the crowds. The speakers told of the peace that comes with living in the free country that India is. But the old Tibetans with tear lines etched on their cheeks and malas entwined in their work-worn hands stood as silent testimony to their blood-drenched homeland, to their ancestors and to their families still trapped behind the Ice Curtain.
People from the five Tibetan Settlements in Karnataka, one-third of the Tibetan population in India, were present. Monks, nuns, farmers, along with V.I.P.s, and Mrs. Kesang Y. Takla, Honorable Minister of the Department of Information and International Relations for the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharmasala, were joined by their loving supporters: Indians, Greeks, Germans, other Europeans, Iranians and a lone journalist from the United States. All had come together to celebrate the occasion, and to remember the great kindness of India at the time of Prime Minister J. Nehru—letting the Tibetans who were escaping Chairman Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” come rushing across the border into the sacred heart of Mother India.
With divine synchronicity, perhaps, at the time of the opening event, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was attending a Gandhi-focused event outside of Delhi. The 74-year-old Tibetan leader and Nobel laureate told the audience at the international conference of the Hind Swaraj Centenary Commemoration that he was a son of India because Tibetan Buddhist culture and Buddha are from India. “India is the land of religious harmony,” he said. “So many different communities live together there, practicing such diverse religious traditions.
“My body is Tibet, but my mind is India.” He told a New Delhi TV reporter.
And then as if hearing the very words of the Chief Guest, Shri. N.L. Narendra Babu, member of the Legislative Assembly, Karnataka State who stood at the Bangalore dais chastising U.S. President Obama for not putting an end to the continuing oppression of Tibetans in Tibet today, His Holiness said to the Gandhi lovers up in Surajkund, “Obama is not soft on China; he just has a different style.”
A different style, a new way, this is what is happening right now. Obviously, the old ways no longer compute. Love, not hate, is the reigning emotion. Referring to the future of Tibet, Mrs. Kesang Y. Takla said, “The truth shall prevail. It always does.”
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Ms. Terry Reis Kennedy is a poet, journalist, and Tibetologist living in India.
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