By Azera Rahman, IANS,
New Delhi : Some fled Tibet as children 50 years ago, some were born here. Yet what binds the Tibetan community in exile – despite being well-entrenched in the ebb and flow of life in the Indian capital – is a yearning to go back home to the ‘Roof of the World’.
Their calendars are marked with anniversaries of Tibetan uprising moments – with Tuesday (March 10) marking 50 years since their people revolted against Chinese occupation and many left their homeland to become outsiders.
“We are definitely anxious. While we have settled in our lives in India, our hearts still yearn to go back to our homeland. Fifty years is too long in one’s life to stay in exile� you have a home here, but you can’t forget that you are still an outsider,” Pema Norbu, a 60-year-old who manages a small restaurant in Majnu-ka-Tila – the Tibetan settlement in north Delhi, told IANS.
Norbu was all of 10 when she along with her mother escaped to India after the uprising against China began in 1959. Like many other families that lost their family members during that time, her father and two-year-old brother got left behind.
Her mother is no more, and Norbu doesn’t know what happened to her father and sibling back home.
“It was a long time back. I vaguely remember my father’s face. In a way, I am more an Indian than a Tibetan as I have grown up and lived most of my life here! But I still pine to go back to Tibet and see it once before I die,” she said.
Nestling close to the hustle and bustle of the interstate bus terminal in north Delhi here lies the quiet little settlement of Tibetans living in exile in the Indian capital.
Walk through its narrow zig-zag lanes lined on both sides with shops selling clothes and other goods and tiny restaurants — and one can literally breathe Tibet in it.
Pasted across the walls of the neighbourhood are posters talking of imprisoned Tibetans suffering in jails thousands of miles away and the yellow, blue and red Tibetan flags.
Go to any home, shop or eating joint, and you will see a constantly lit lamp in front of a smiling picture of the Tibetan spiritual and temporal head, the 14th Dalai Lama, who too lives in exile in the Indian town of Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh.
Some Tibetans also draw inspiration from India’s struggle for freedom from British rule.
Tenzin Lekshay of the Tibetan Solidarity Committee said while the community is definitely getting restless, they haven’t lost hope. “Compared to India’s struggle for freedom, our struggle is still young,” Lekshay told IANS with a smile.
“We Tibetans are a very optimistic community. It would be wrong to say that we have not had our moments of disillusionment. But when His Holiness the Dalai Lama sends his message that we should not lose hope, we don’t.
“We have immense faith in him. We know that the struggle may go on for a longer time and may be more difficult… at the end, freedom will prevail,” he said.
India is home to 100,000 of the 140,000 Tibetans living in exile worldwide. Most of the younger Tibetans have been born here, but their passion for the freedom struggle is still fierce.
“I have never seen Tibet in real life. I was born and brought up here, but still my passion to see my homeland is no less than someone who actually escaped from Tibet five decades back,” said Ronny Norbu, a 25-year-old, managing an accessories store in the colony.
According to Lekshay, the community did not celebrate their new year this time.
“We follow the lunar calendar and according to that, our new year was on Feb 25. But this time we did not celebrate on that day. Instead we had prayer services and candle light procession for those who lost their lives in the freedom struggle,” he said.
“Also, this year we have a number of anniversaries of moments of our struggle. For instance, it’s the 20th anniversary of Tibetan protests crushed under the Chinese president Hu Jintao. Then last year we had protests starting from March against the Beijing Olympics.
“All of these events have made the Chinese insecure about themselves and therefore they have this aggressive attitude. And we will not give up till the end,” Lekshay added.
The Tibetan community in Delhi will stage a procession Tuesday from Rajghat to Parliament Street in observance of the completion of 50 years of their uprising and living in exile here.