Dalai Turns 75, Huge Crowds Assemble in Dharamsala for Birthday Celebration
As spiritual leader and Nobel laureate the Dalai Lama turns 75 today, thousands of Tibetan exiles attended his birthday celebrations Dharamsala, said media reports.
Huge mob started gathering at the Tsuglagkhang temple since morning to join the birthday celebrations, reports said.
“Special prayer sessions were held for the well-being and long life of the Dalai Lama,” Thubten Samphel, a spokesperson for the government-in-exile, was quoted as saying by IANS.
“His Holiness attended the prayers and blessed his followers from 9 am to 11 am The 17th Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorjee, also attended the function,” he was quoted as saying.
The hilltop Tsuglagkhang temple is close to the official palace of the Dalai Lama at McLeodganj.
A group of Chinese from Australia greeted the Nobel Laureate on the occasion and the Kashag (Tibetan cabinet) prayed for the Dalai Lama’s long life, said reports.
Born July 6, 1935, to a farming family in a small hamlet in Taktser in Amdo province in northeastern Tibet, the two-year-old child, earlier named Lhamo Dhondup, was recognized as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, in 1937.
He fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, basing his Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala.
The Dalai Lama has favoured ‘greater autonomy’ for Tibetans rather than complete independence.
Though he has expressed his willingness to go back to Tibet and resolve the complicated Tibetan issue by agreeing to an autonomous Tibetan set-up under Chinese control, Beijing has shown no inclination to oblige him.
Chinese leaders have, in fact, called him a ‘splittist’ – one who wants Tibet to secede from China.
(Based on internet reports)
