Nine Lives(67)

“In fact, I think we did do him a service just by running, though that wasn’t really our intention. For the Chinese patrols followed us, perhaps thinking His Holiness was with us. Many of the people I was with were shot dead. The planes were out searching for us. We hid during the day and travelled only at night, and even then the Chinese sent up flares, and shelled anyone they could see.

“When we got higher we found ourselves trudging through heavy snow. By that time we were reduced to eating the donkeys that had died—we had nothing else—and the snowfall was very heavy. There was nowhere to shelter, and it was very cold. We lost so many on the way, zigzagging through the shells in thick snow red with blood. We were frozen, and our feet and hands were numb and senseless. By the end we were reduced to just six people, half-walking, half-sleeping.

“After ten or fifteen days of this we finally reached the Indian border. Only then did we hear that our Precious Jewel, the Dalai Lama, had escaped. But we also heard there what had happened in Lhasa—that the Potala and Norbulingka Palaces had been shelled, and that thousands had died when the Chinese sent their tanks into the Jokhang Temple.

“In my heart I knew that we must get our country back, and if I had to learn to fight to do so, then so be it. This had happened before, at the time of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, when the Chinese invaded for the first time, and after a while those who fled returned, and the Chinese went back to their own country. I never guessed it would take so long this time. Not only me; most Tibetans thought that in a year or two we would be back.”

I asked: “Did what happen damage your faith? Did you wonder how it could happen that such a catastrophe could overtake Tibet?”

“On the contrary,” said Passang, “I gained more faith. How else could we have survived, despite the entire PLA following us? I wore amulets with religious texts to guard my life and when the bullets came, they just travelled right past me. On one occasion, when we were being shelled at night, a shell landed very close to me. For a moment in the sudden blinding light I thought I saw the protector goddess, Palden Lhamo. Though the shell landed only a few feet away from us, no one was hurt. So, no, my faith was not affected. I felt completely protected.

“We Buddhists believe in karma, and in cause and effect. An action has consequences; we are the consequences of our acts. Perhaps because there was a time in the seventh century when we Tibetans invaded China and tortured the Chinese, so we are suffering this torture now. It is our turn to suffer for what we did in previous lives.”



For a while Passang waited at the border, to see if the resistance needed him, and he could return.

“We had a plan to return to Tsona, which we had heard was still free,” he said. “We thought that we’d fight the Chinese from there. But we had no food and no bullets. We thought that we’d give it a go, that someone must come and support us, and that they’d give us some supplies. We waited for two weeks, but nothing came and no one was there to organise us into a fighting force. We hesitated to enter India. We were scared that we had lost our country, and were angry that we couldn’t go back and fight. Eventually there was no alternative: it was starvation that forced us across the border. But when we decided to cross, we did so only because we thought it the most likely way for us to be able to continue the fight for the dharma.”

In time, the Indian government gave the refugees places to stay, and was especially generous to those who had joined the resistance: Passang was lodged with other members of the Chu-zhi Gang-drung in an old British bungalow. It was only in the months that followed, when so many former monks and fighters were forced to join Indian road gangs in order to eat and survive, that the full implication of what had happened sank in.

“It felt awful,” said Passang. “It was the lowest point in my life. At night we would talk about how everything was over. We had lost our country. We were in exile, dependent on others, with no will or right to do what we wanted. We hoped that someone would arm and help us, so that we could recapture Tibet, but nothing happened. Our only hope was in following His Holiness.”

In time the refugees were divided up, and Passang was sent to the new Tibetan settlement that was created at Bylakuppe in the forests of Karnataka in southern India. Here Passang was taught to make carpets and handicrafts, and for two years he lived by selling these. It was not destitution; but it certainly seemed a dead end.

However, the fortunes of the Tibetan resistance changed radically two years later, in 1962. When China attacked Indian positions in Aksai Chin in the brief 1962 Sino-Indian war, seizing the disputed border region linking Kashmir and Tibet, it left Nehru’s policy of appeasement of China in tatters. It was realised in India that the Tibetan refugees contained a large body of potential troops who would willingly fight against China and who were, moreover, accustomed to fighting at high altitude. Recruiters were sent to the Tibetan refugee settlements, and Passang was among those who were enlisted in the Indian army.