His Holiness The Dalai Lama - My Appeal to the World

MY APPEAL TO THE WORLD

In the Name of Humanity

That morning of April 24, 1959, a dense crowd assembled at the entrance of Mussoorie, along the winding road that descends toward Delhi. At the foot of the Himalayas shearing the sky, hundred-year-old oak trees still overshadow this old haven of refreshment for the British Raj officers. Wealthy Indian families had transformed their lodges and cottages into hotels, of which the Savoy, a gothic-style building, was the most illustrious, visited by an international clientele. A few steps away, a new chapter in the worlds history was beginning, with a host who was far from ordinary. Sovereign of the last buddhocracy of our times, invaded by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the Dalai Lama had taken refuge in Birla House, a spacious manor made available by an industrialist who had once financed Mahatma Gandhis campaigns.

India is a country where speculative philosophies have met for millennia, to question the human soul. Still today, it is not uncommon in India to come across women and men who have abandoned the ways of the world to devote themselves to the interior quest: ascetics dressed in space, or sadhus, who inhabit naked the glacial solitudes of the mountains; wise men, or muni, who travel the pilgrimage routes toward the sacred sites and bless the crowds on their way; yogis teaching meditation in their ashrams; and Brahmins who perform the dawn and dusk rituals. Deeply turned toward the spiritual realities, the Indian people welcomed the 23-year-old Dalai Lama with an immense fervor, as the living Buddha returned among them in his native country, 2,500 years after his crossing into nirvana.

As soon as the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibet, fleeing Lhasa occupied by the Chinese army, had crossed the border of the northeastern territories

Since his settling down in Mussoorie, the effervescence had kept growing, and the most extravagant rumors spread. The Indian journalist Mayank Chhaya remembers having heard, as a child, stories that evoked the magical power of the exiled sovereign. It was said that he had mastered perfectly the tantric rituals of the Diamond Vehicle,

In the working-class neighborhoods of Mussoorie, itinerant sellers offered everywhere pictures of the Lama from the roof of the world, with the background of the Potala crowned by a rainbow. Hanging up his portrait at home offered protection against harmful spirits and bad fortune. In fact, the inhabitants of the small town never missed a single opportunity to see the Dalai Lama. Two months after his arrival, he began giving a public speech every Thursday at the Savoy, seated under a hastily improvised canopy in the hotel garden. Many believed that merely having been in his presence would forever close the gates to unfortunate rebirths and give access to the supernal kingdoms of existence.

In 1959, the supreme leader of Tibet met the world, and the world met him. Yet it was a failed meeting. The journalists relegated the illegal occupation of his country by China to the background, in favor of news reports that privileged the exotic and the sensational. The fantasy was fed by religious confusion without foundation, in spite of the denials from the Dalai Lama, who always fought against this type of superstition. For example, in its edition of April 28, 1959, the French magazine Paris-Match exalted the Tibetan Joan of Arc who is said to have miraculously guided the young lama beyond the highest peaks on earth. The magazine compared him to a magician who knew how to engage the protection of good spirits. The matter of Tibets future was, however, becoming urgent. It was a political matter, but myth and incredulity obscured its extent.

That day, April 24, 1959, is of singular importance. The charismatic Indian Prime Minister, who had fought for independence beside Gandhi, went to Mussoorie to officially meet the Dalai Lama. It was their first meeting since the exiled sovereign had obtained political asylum in India.

Nehru saluted the crowd that greeted him with wild applause. In the front row, children screamed at the top of their lungs Chacha NehruZindabad!

These were the preliminaries of a meeting that would last four hours. The two men smiled and gave each other a lengthy handshake in front of the press. They each wore clothes representative of their history. While the Dalai Lama was plainly wrapped in the saffron and crimson robe of the religious of the roof of the world, Nehru wore military clothes, the achkan, a dark jacket with a tangerine collar, and the churidar, light trousers tight around his calves. He was wearing the white cap with a wide headband that the Mahatma had transformed into a rallying symbol among the pro-independence movement. In the person of Nehru was modern India, democratic and liberated from British domination, which welcomed the leader of the Tibetan buddhocracy, driven out by Maoist China. Religious Tibet, cut off for centuries in its splendid isolation, had changed dramatically without transition into the twentieth century, under the communist authority.

The two men were forty-six years apart in age. There were also cultural and philosophical divergences. Nehru, in his sixties, had been toughened through his fierce struggle against colonialism. As he was educated in the United Kingdom and was well accustomed to all the subtleties of British culture and politics, he stated with humor that he was the last British statesman in India. Having been imprisoned several times, he had risked his life for his country, which he had run since 1948. As for the Dalai Lama, he had received a religious education and very advanced training in the sciences of meditation. He confessed that he knew little about the contemporary world. Under the protection of the 1,400-year-old fortification of the Potala, his improvised tutor for secular sciences was the Austrian explorer Heinrich Harrer, who arrived in Lhasa in 1946. For five years he fed the young Dalai Lamas curiosity in history, geography, sciences, and technical know-how. Even though Nehru and the Tibetan leader shared common values, inherited from Buddhist India, their visions of the world would prove largely incompatible. The condescension of the political man was not unknown to the religious one: Nehru thought of me as a young person who needed to be scolded from time to time.

It was inevitable that their personalities would clash. The disagreement broke out on April 24, 1959. Until the last day, in Lhasa, I wanted to preserve peace, declared the Tibetan leader, adding that, above all, he wanted to avoid a bloodbath. His comments triggered Nehrus fury. The Dalai Lama remembers in his memoirs how under the effect of an uncontrolled rage, Nehrus lower lip started to tremble. The experienced statesman set out to give the young sovereign a lesson in politics, claiming that it would be impossible to secure the retreat of the Chinese troops through diplomacy alone. Persuasion was powerless, compared to the strike force Mao Zedong could wield. Let us face facts, said Nehru. One cannot bring heaven to the people in India even if I wish it. The whole world cannot bring freedom to Tibet unless the whole fabric of the Chinese state is destroyed. Only a world war, an atomic war, could perhaps make that possible.

Several motives of discord underlay this encounter, crucial for Tibets future. The Dalai Lama had not ceased to accumulate grievances since his arrival in India. As soon as he had crossed the border from the Tibetan village of Tawang, the religious leader had addressed a telegram to Nehru, officially asking him for political asylum. The Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had answered by announcing the imminent arrival of P. N. Menon, former consul general of India in Lhasa. The Dalai Lama was happy to find someone in the country refuge whom he already knew, and in a moment of great uncertainty.