Tibetan Uprising

In 1959, Tenpa, the son of semi-nomadic farmers from Kham Dege, Tibet, heard of the danger to the His Holiness the Dalai Lama and left his home in the dead of night to travel to Lhasa. He never saw his mother again and twenty-five years passed before he reunited with his father in Karnataka, India. He rode two nights and one day on horseback to Lhasa. “I went to defend His Holiness and all the Tibetans there.”

Upon reaching the city, Tenpa joined Chushi Gangdruk (”four rivers six ranges”), the group of freedom fighters named after the four river gorges and six mountain ranges that cross the Tibetan region of Kham where the anti-Chinese revolt started. A few days after Tenpa’s arrival, the Dalai Lama fled into exile. In the days that followed, Tenpa witnessed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attacking Tibetan demonstrators with machine gun fire and tank shelling from the two mountains overlooking the city. According to Chinese sources, the PLA killed 86,000 Tibetans during the invasion. Tenpa witnessed many Tibetans drowning in the river or mud trying to escape. He fled to a resistance camp being formed at Meldrogongkar between Dekung country and Reting. About one thousand Tibetans from all walks of life met there: soldiers, old men, monks and teenagers. With limited resources, they were determined to fight.

Within a few days of the massacre at Norbulingka, the PLA attacked their camp from across the Kyichu River with machine guns and dropped bombs out of helicopters. With their ammunition soon exhausted, Tenpa and his fellow resistance fighters had no choice but to flee, leaving 600 dead comrades behind. The fighters split into smaller groups to evade the helicopters, and they decided to escape into Nepal via Mount Kailash. Nomads sometimes gave them food but mostly they ate the roots of wild grasses. The journey took them over a month but luckily they did not lose any of their thirty companions.

In Kalimpong, West Bengal, in the northeast of India, Tenpa and many of his fellow freedom fighter met Andruk Gompo Tashi, the leader of the Chushi Gangdruk. He told the fighters that they must work to survive. Tenpa joined a road making crew in Manali, Himachal Pradesh, making only 1.25 rupees per day.

In 1962, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile asked Tibetans to move to Karnataka. Tenpa took the free train ride south and started working an acre of land to grow vegetables with his new wife. He prospered and was able to buy cattle to milk. Tenpa had six sons, five daughters and still worked on the farm until the age of 74, when he joined the March to Tibet.

Tenpa already participated in the 1995 march from Dharamsala to Delhi that was supposed to go onto Tibet. When he heard about the March to Tibet from the regional Tibetan Youth Congress, he didn’t ask his wife or children. Tenpa decided he was going and nobody could change his mind or tell him he was too old. When Tenpa was arrested at Dehra in the Kangra Valley, along with 100 fellow marchers, he said, “I felt that now I am going to Tibet because now the issue has spread. I was excited to see Tibet under the spotlight.” Aside from asthma flare-ups and occasional knee problems, he feels great.

Tenpa’s message to his people: “We have no freedom and we are living under the Chinese rule. It is the duty of every Tibetan to fight for Tibet’s freedom and not give up hope.”