After 58 Years, Dalai Lama Meets Assam Rifles Soldier Who Helped Him Escape Tibet 

After 58 Years, Dalai Lama Meets Assam Rifles Soldier Who Helped Him Escape Tibet 

In 1959 when the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, he treaded the hostile Himalayas with a caravan consisting of soldiers and countrymen who dexterously guided the Tibetan spiritual leader to India. One of them was a young soldier belonging to the Assam Rifles, a jawan named Naren Chandra Das who met the Dalai Lama during a recent session in Guwahati, Assam.

The Dalai Lama was visibly emotional when he thanked the retired soldier who held his hand amicably. “Thank you very much…. I am very very happy to meet such an old member of the Assam Rifles who guarded and escorted me to India 58 years ago,” he said.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, not a stranger to harmless quips, said to Das: “Looking at your face, I now realise I must be very old too.”

Chandra Das, who had joined the Indian force in 1957, was called in to escort the Dalai Lama out of Tibet just two years later when the Chinese invasion of Tibet took place. Now 76-years-old, Das recalled the time when he was chosen to escort the Tibetan leader. “Guards of Assam Rifles Platoon no. 9 had brought the Dalai Lama from Zuthangbo and handed him over to five of us at Shakti. We brought him to Lungla from where he was escorted on his onward journey to Tawang by another group of guards,” he said.

Asked about whether conversations had transpired during the brief journey, Das said that he was not allowed to talk or interact with the Dalai Lama.

Das was presented with a silk shawl and expressed how overwhelmed he was by the Dalai Lama’s embrace.

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5 responses to “After 58 Years, Dalai Lama Meets Assam Rifles Soldier Who Helped Him Escape Tibet ”

  1. Claudia Wilde Avatar

    We have the story of who brought his belongings over the border. This book is endorsed by his Holiness. https://www.amazon.com/Toppled-World-Susan-Murphy/dp/1945805803

  2. fakruddin kejriwal Avatar
    fakruddin kejriwal

    tibet belongs to bharat. dalai lama must create khalsa like panth in tibetans in dharmshala, donate one child from each family to create an armed group to take back tibet. kajruddin, delhi slum ka malik must be HALALed while starting this movement.

  3. Free Xinjiang' Avatar
    Free Xinjiang’

    Not one mention of WHY he had to flee Tibet, it was because of communist China’s anti-religious legislation – The SAME legislation that exists today, and just like the Tibetan people, CHINA now persecutes, tortures, and imprisons the Xinjiang’s Uyghurs.

    So why do our Governments insist on doing business with a tyranical communist dictatorship like China?

    1. Michael Collins Avatar
      Michael Collins

      Who else is going to make our iPhones?

    2. Simran Avatar
      Simran

      Loved the story

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