Escape into Exile

A perilous journey, a nation's heartbreak— the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet unfolds in his own unforgettable words

- BY His Holiness The Dalai Lama

FROM THE BOOK VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS

BORN IN THE VILLAGE OF TAKSTER in eastern Tibet in 1935, a little boy named Tenzin Gyatso, was identified by a team of monks as the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama of Tibet in 1937. Before long, he was on his way to the Potala palace in distant Lhasa, 100 days away on foot and horseback, in the course of which he was briefly held for ransom by a Chinese warlord. This was the first of several gruelling, dramatic and arguably miraculous journeys that would mark his life and its entanglement with the fate of his country.

The early adventure would also prove to be an ominous portent. Thirteen years later, in 1950, the 15-year-old, still a priest-king-in-training, was formally consecrated and hurriedly installed on the ruler's throne in response to the first incursions of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)—the army of the new communist government of China, which sought to reclaim Beijing's 'suzrerainty' over Tibet, lost when the 13th Dalai Lama expelled Chinese forces from Lhasa in 1912. The continuing advance of the PLA would push the young ruler to flee the Tibetan capital for the first time, seeking shelter in the town of Yatung in the Chumbi valley, near the Indian border.

There was no stopping the Chinese advance and the Dalai Lama was persuaded to return to Lhasa the next year following a meeting with the PLA's General Zhang Jingwu, in which the Tibetans were promised significant autonomy and liberties. Inevitably, however, the massive presence of Chinese troops, and their increasingly heavy-handed administration, provoked resistance from a people accustomed to pastoral liberty, freedom of movement and a deeply religious way of life that was anathema to the increasingly totalitarian Maoist state.