God-King in Exile

Under a leaden sky last week. 50 impatient newsmen gathered at the small outpost called Foothills on the border of Assam state and the North-East Frontier Agency. A light drizzle fell on a detail of the small-statured soldiers of the Assam Rifles. A knot of Indian government officials shifted position in the muddy street as they awaited the appearance of Tibet's Dalai Lama, who had now been more than a month on the trail--14 days in making his escape from the pursuing Red Chinese in Tibet (TIME, April 20), and a more leisurely 18 days of pushing through the Himalayan jungles of India's northeast frontier.

Green Carpet. The rumble of motors was heard up the valley. The Assam Rifles came smartly to attention, and newsmen and photographers scrambled to positions in the muck as a caravan of jeeps and trucks came into sight. In the van was a station wagon that pulled up in the muddy street before a carpet of 35 green tarpaulin ground sheets leading to a thatch-roofed rest cottage.

Out of the station wagon stepped the 23-year-old Dalai Lama, God-King of Tibet, wearing a beatific smile but sniffling slightly from a head cold. His eyes were bright and warm behind orange-rimmed glasses, and he wore the simple russet gown of a high lama, with no special marks of rank. Surrounded by his mother, brother and sister and by Cabinet ministers and officials, the Dalai Lama smiled and nodded as he moved slowly by the news photographers.

Tibetan aides gave further details of the flight from Lhasa. As relations with Red China worsened, food stocks were prepared for a quick journey, and part of the fabulous Potala treasure was crated for mountain transport. On the morning of March 17, as tension rose in Lhasa, officials filtered from the palace in small groups, ostensibly to visit other monasteries. That night, dressed in the robe of a poor monk and without his customary glasses, the Dalai Lama left the palace as if taking a stroll, but he was shadowed by bodyguards. His mother and brother departed even earlier, by a different route, and rendezvoused with the main party outside the city.

To alert villages ahead of them to prepare horses, yaks, porters and guides, the Dalai Lama depended on Tibet's famed arrow message service, a primitive but effective system under which messages tied to arrows are shot across rivers and deep ravines along key routes. Arrow messages, couriers on mountain ponies, native runners brought word that the Red Chinese had sealed off all the passes into Sikkim and cut the rope and bamboo bridges leading into Bhutan. The only escape route left open was the one the Dalai Lama took, over the rough trails to Towang on the Indian border.

Sympathetic Concern. While the Dalai Lama posed for pictures at Foothills, the Red Chinese, who had let him slip through their fingers, tried to explain matters at the National People's Congress assembled in Peking. The new puppet ruler of Tibet, the 22-year-old Panchen Lama, had promised full support to the Red army's crushing of the rebellion and expressed "great sympathy and concern" for his friend, the Dalai Lama, "who has been abducted by the rebellious elements." Red China's Premier Chou En-lai unctuously declared that "although the Dalai Lama has been abducted to India by the rebels, we still hope he will be able to free himself and return to the motherland."

On the day of his arrival at Foothills, the Dalai Lama demolished this feeble Red legend. At the tea planters' town of Tezpur, he stated "categorically," in the third-person style expected of a god, that he left Lhasa and Tibet and came to India "of his own will and not under duress," and said that his "quite arduous" escape was only possible "due to the loyalty and affectionate support of his Tibetan people." In unemotional language (he was pledged not to embarrass his Indian hosts) he bluntly accused the Red Chinese of destroying a large number of monasteries, killing lamas and forcing monks and officials into labor camps. He had left Lhasa in fear of his own life, said the Dalai Lama, when the Communists opened fire on his Norbulingka palace with mortar shells.

After having given the lie to the Reds' noisy protestations of good faith, the Dalai Lama appeared before a sweltering crowd of 10,000 Buddhists and, standing beneath a golden umbrella, gave them his blessing. Then, with his retinue, the Dalai Lama boarded an air-conditioned railway coach to go to the former British hill station of Mussoorie, where he will take up his residence in exile and "rest and reflect on recent events" in his crushed and suffering homeland.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.