Dalai Lama's emotional reunion with guard who aided flight from... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/03/dalai-lamas-emo...

Dalai Lama's emotional reunion with guard

who aided flight from Tibet
Buddhist leader meets Naren Chandra Das 58 years after he escorted him in India after
his escape from Chinese authorities

The Dalai Lama who has lived in exile ever since eeing Tibet in 1959, was visibly emotional as he embraced Naren Chandra
Das Photograph: Biju Boro/AFP/Getty Images

Michael Safi in Delhi

Monday 3 April 2017 13.05BST

The rst time they met, Indian paramilitary guard Naren Chandra Das was ordered not to
talk to the bespectacled young soldier he was escorting near the Chinese border in a
top-secret mission.

Nearly 60 years later, Das was reunited with the Dalai Lama in an emotional ceremony
that recalled the Buddhist leaders escape from Tibet after a failed uprising against
Chinese authorities.

This time the Dalai Lama had the rst word. Looking at your face, I now realise I must
be very old too, he told Das, 79, at a ceremony on Sunday in the north-eastern city of
Guwahati.

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The ceremony is likely to fuel anger in Beijing over the Dalai Lamas tour of north-east
India, including Arunachal Pradesh, a border state with areas that China regards as its
own territory.

The Dalai Lama said: Looking at your face, I now realise I must
be very old too, on meeting Naren Chandra Das again.
Photograph: Biju Boro/AFP/Getty Images

It has warned India that the tour by the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing calls an anti-China
separatist, will do serious damage to ties between the two Asian powers.

In Guwahati on Sunday the Dalai Lama who denies seeking Tibetan independence
remembered the warm-hearted welcome he received in India after a 13-day trek
through the Himalayas to escape the Chinese army.

The days prior to my arrival in India were lled with tension and the only concern was
safety, but I experienced freedom when I was received warm-heartedly by the people
and ocials and a new chapter began in my life, he said.

The Dalai Lama ed his Lhasa palace in March 1959 when he was 23 after years of
tension between Tibetans and the Chinese government erupted into popular rebellion.

Disguised as a Chinese soldier, he and members of his cabinet slipped out of the palace
and trekked by night through mountains and across the 500-metre (1,640ft)
Brahmaputra river to reach the Indian border.

The Dalai Lama and his escape party cross the Zsagola pass, in
southern Tibet on 21 March 1959, while being pursued by
Chinese military forces. The 23-year-old Dalai Lama is aboard
the white horse. Photograph: HG/Associated Press

Until he appeared in India, some observers feared the Dalai Lama had been among the

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estimated 2,000 people killed when the Chinese crushed the uprising.

India oered him asylum and a home base in the hill town of Dharamsala, where he was
permitted to set up a government-in-exile. About 80,000 Tibetan refugees soon joined
him in the Himalayan town.

China argues the 1959 rebellion was the work of wealthy landowners bent on
maintaining feudal rule, and that its peaceful liberation of the mountainous region has
brought development and prosperity.

The Chinese foreign ministry on Monday reiterated its objection to the Dalai Lamas tour
of the border states, saying it was resolutely opposed to any countrys support and
facilitation for the 14th Dalai groups anti-China separatist activities.

Chinese anger over Indias role in sheltering the Dalai Lama was one of the factors that
led to a brief war between the two countries in 1962. Cross-border incursions by Chinese
troops are regularly reported and border areas of the state are highly militarised.

Like past Indian leaders, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has maintained an ocial
policy of treating the Dalai Lama as an honoured guest in the country, inviting him to
meet the Indian president in December another event that drew Chinese
condemnation.

India and Tibet share close cultural and religious ties and the Dalai Lama has regularly
armed Indias sovereignty over the entirety of Arunachal Pradesh, including areas the
Chinese government labels south Tibet.

Tibet remains under the tight control of the Chinese government and possessing pictures
of the Dalai Lama or his writings is illegal.

On Sunday, the Dalai Lama appeared to whisper something to Das as the pair embraced
during ceremony. Asked afterwards what the Buddhist leader had told him, Das said:
He was happy to see me.

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