When the Dalai broke his silence in Mussoorie

With the Dalai lama’s eightieth birthday just around the corner (on July 6), it would be interesting to talk about the historic year in his life when he stayed in this hill station before leaving for Dharamsala. During this stay in Mussoorie, fifty six years ago, the Dalai lama held his first Press conference after he came to India. It was at this historic Press conference that he broke his silence on Tibet.

The end of the month of April in the year 1960 witnessed a landmark event in the history of the Tibetan Government in exile in India as it was on April 29, 1960 that the young Dalai lama left Mussoorie for Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh with eighty officials of the Government in-exile. Mussoorie became Dalai lama’s first home in India when he arrived here around April 20, 1959.

The 23-year-old Dalai fled Tibet in March 1959 and reached Mussoorie where he began staying at the Birla House in Happy Valley which had been requisitioned for his use by the Indian Government. His mother was with him, besides some others from his household.His officials lived close to Birla House. In his autobiography, “Freedom in Exile”, the Dalai lama has described this one-year stay here as “A Desperate Year”. The year included several meetings with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The first was on April 24, 1959, at Mussoorie.

“We talked for over four hours, assisted by a single interpreter…I began to realise that the Prime Minister found himself in an extremely delicate and embarrassing position,” writes the Dalai in his autobiography. “In the Indian Parliament, another tense debate on the Tibetan question had followed the news of my escape from lhasa.”

He also writes that he began to get the impression that Nehru thought of him as a “young person who needed to be scolded from time to time.”On June 20, the Dalai lama broke his silence and held a Press conference in Mussoorie which was attended by 130 reporters from several countries. The Dalai lama stated: “The ultimate Chinese aim with regard to Tibet, as far as I can make out, seems to attempt the extermination of religion and culture and even the absorption of the Tibetan race...Besides the civilian and military personnel already in Tibet, five million Chinese settlers have arrived in eastern and north-eastern Tso, in addition to which four million Chinese settlers are planned to be sent to U and Sung provinces of Central Tibet. Many Tibetans have been deported, thereby resulting in the complete absorption of these Tibetans as a race, which is being undertaken by the Chinese.” 

In his autobiography, he writes “There was no interference from Delhi over how I and the growing number of Tibetans conducted our lives. I had begun to give weekly audiences in the grounds of Birla House. This gave me the opportunity to meet a variety of people and tell them about the real situation in Tibet.”

It was around the end of the year 1959 that the Dalai lama came to know of the Indian Government’s plans to move him to permanent accommodation at Dharamsala. “I found Dharamsala on the map and discovered that it was another hill station like Mussoorie, but in a considerably more remote location. I requested that I be allowed to send a Tibetan Government official to Dharamsala to see whether it was really suitable for our needs.”

The Tibetan official who was sent came back after a week and announced that “Dharamsala water is better than Mussoorie milk,” and preparations began to move camp to Dharamsala.It was on April 29, 1960 that Dalai left Mussoorie for Dharamsala. Today, there are several families who still live in the Happy Valley whose ancestors came along to Mussoorie with Dalai lama. At the Tibetan Homes Foundation in the Happy Valley, paintings of Dalai sitting with Nehru can be seen by the visitors.

The Dalai lama went to Delhi from Mussoorie to meet Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Jayaprakash Narayan. It was in the spring of 1960 that the Government in exile was shifted to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh.However, Mussoorie, the “Queen of Hills”, will always be proud of the fact that it was the Tibetan spiritual leader’s first home in India and memories of his year-long stay can be felt in the atmosphere of the area where he and his followers resided. Families of those Tibetans who stayed on here and did not leave for Dharamsala with him are always ready to share a tale or two about the year when the Dalai and the Government in-exile were in Mussoorie’s Happy Valley.