The Dalai Lama kicked off a 'Thank India' campaign yesterday to express the Tibetan government-in-exile's gratitude to New Delhi for providing a home to an estimated 135,000 exiles.
Addressing ethnic Tibetans in the Sera Mey Buddhist monastery near Bylakuppe in Karnataka, he said: 'India's moral and material support has proved invaluable for nearly half a century.' Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Tibet's failed uprising against Beijing and his flight to India, he described the host nation as a 'true friend that has always stood by us'.
In a speech to coincide with Tibetan New Year, he also expressed hope for a 'gradual resolution of Tibet's just causes' and urged followers not to desert the path of non-violence 'until the Tibetan people are freed from oppression and torture'.
About the situation in Tibet, the Dalai Lama said: 'Just as we had suspected, the strike-hard campaign has been relaunched and there is a heavy presence of armed security and military forces in most of the cities in Tibet ... authorities can now indulge in an unprecedented and unimaginable clampdown.'
The Dalai Lama and Geshe Thupten Phelgye, a member of the parliament-in-exile, said the southern state of Karnataka enjoyed a special place in the hearts of Tibetan exiles as it was the first to welcome refugees who poured into India in March 1959.
Initially, about 80,000 Tibetans followed the Dalai Lama when he escaped to India in 1959 following China's annexation of the region. At the request of prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Karnataka, then known as Mysore, allotted 1,200 hectares in 1961 for the first Tibetan settlement, Lugsung Samdupling. Two more settlements, Rabgayling and Dhondenling, in Karnataka's Hunsur and Kollegal regions, were founded in the 1960s.