1 Apr 2009,
NEW DELHI: Exactly 50 years after he emerged as the god-king of Tibet from behind the mist in India's northeast and entered the country as a political refugee on the run from the Chinese PLA troops, the Dalai Lama went for a a long drive in the Capital on Tuesday, visiting places of worship to pray for "peace and happiness for India and its people'' for hosting the Tibetan leader and the exile community since March 1959.
The Tibetan leader, who was just 24 when he escaped to India after an uprising against the Chinese rule in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet failed, began his day on Tuesday early at 7.45 am with a prayer meeting at Gandhi Smriti on Tees January Marg, where Mahatma Gandhi fell to an assassin's bullets in 1948. In the next five and a half hours, Tenzin Gyatso's motorcade went to seven more places -- Acharya Sushil Muni Ashram, Chilla of Hazarat Nizamudin Aulia, Judah Hyam Synagogue, Gurdwara Rakab Ganj, Sacred Heart Cathedral, Mahabodhi Society of India, and Lakshmi Narayan Temple, where the 14th Dalai Lama led prayers in the company of some eminent Indians and Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama's day-long programme here, which ended with a speech at the Ficci auditorium marked the end of five-day `Thank You, India' festival organized by the bureau of the Dalai Lama in Delhi.
Though it was a long day for the 74-year-old lama who underwent a major surgery last year, the Tibetan leader didn't miss the opportunity to send strong signals to the governments of India, China and other countries with interest in Tibet. During a prayer meeting he called himself a "son of India as Buddhism originated in India''; at a press conference in the afternoon, he praised the "non-sectarian ethos of India''; and during his speech at Ficci, he described Indians as "guru'' and Tibetans as "chelas'', an analogy he has used in the past as well to emphasise the historical ralations between India and Tibet.
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