When the announcement was made that President Obama would not meet the Dalai Lama on the latter’s trip to the USA last month, the disappointment in the Tibetan world was palpable. I felt a little better after seeing this AFP headline “West Appeasing China on Tibet, says PM-in-exile”[Wednesday, September 16, 2009 17:43]. The report also …
The Jewel in the Ballot Box
In 1949, Lhalu, the Governor-General of Kham, arranged to speak to the Dalai Lama’s tutor, Trichang Rimpoche, at Lhasa over the radio. Robert Ford, the Tibetan government radio operator at Chamdo, wrote in his book, Captured In Tibet, that he wondered what the protocol would be for this somewhat unique situation.
Waiting for Mangtso II
I am not saying that personalities don’t matter in politics. I am all for finding an honest and competent person to be the prime minister of our exile government. But first of all we have to put in place that one indispensable (but missing) institution in our incomplete democratic set-up, the lack of which makes the role of our current Kalon Tripa resemble that of a chanzoe (manager) of a monastery or labrang, and not the prime minister of a democratic nation.
Waiting for Mangtso
I started pecking out this piece over a month ago in the garden of Nalanda Koti, my old bungalow in McLeod Ganj. On this particular visit to India I was struck by how the issue of the 2011 Kalon Tripa elections, and additionally the “20 Questions” on Prime Minister Samdong Rimpoche’s resignation, somehow elbowed their way into every conversation…
Some Memories of the Great Lotsawa, Gedun Chophel
I’m leaving tomorrow for India with my family. My older daughter will join the TCV Cultural Camp for a month and my younger daughter will be in the Yongling Day School. I’ll keep you all posted on any interesting development that might come up in our exile capital. In the meantime I have posted an …
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Titanic II
I read this morning that the last living survivor of the Titanic sinking of 1912, Millvina Dean, who was 9 weeks at the time, had died at age 97. I have some “Titanic” related memories of my own but they only go back a decade and have nothing to do with that great ocean liner.
From Darkness to Dawn
On November 1st 1728, in a meadow on the banks of the Bamari canal, a short distance south-west of the Potala, seventeen Tibetans were put to death by executioners of the Manchu expeditionary force.
Searching for Old Tibet
About a year ago I was driving my two girls (Namkha and Namtso) to school, early one morning, when the languid voice of Salman Rushdie drifted over on National Public Radio. He was being interviewed about his novel, Shalimar the Clown, which is set in Kashmir. Rushdie’s grandparents, on his mother’s side, were born and …
Elliot Sperling on “Serf Emancipation Day”
I think I could not do better than round off the discussion on “Serf Emancipation Day” with the insightful yet refreshingly matter-of-fact observations of Elliot Sperling on the subject. Professor Sperling studied under the late Taktser Rimpoche and is now the director of the Tibetan Studies program at Indiana University’s department of Central Eurasian Studies …
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