For many years, Tibetans constructed a capital-in-exile in Dharamshala in India, they usually despatched their youngsters to a college based by the Dalai Lama. However their numbers are actually lowering.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
When the Dalai Lama fled Chinese language-controlled Tibet, he ultimately got here to the Indian city of Dharamshala. For many years, Tibetan refugees adopted him there. NPR’s Diaa Hadid experiences that that’s altering.
TENZIN NORDEL: (Vocalizing).
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Music instructor Tenzin Nordel leads youngsters by a Tibetan tune in a classroom overlooking an alpine forest.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in non-English language).
HADID: That is how the Tibetan Kids’s Village teaches college students their language, tradition and religion in a spot vastly totally different from their homeland.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HADID: Right here, theater youngsters follow Tibetan operas.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in non-English language).
HADID: They put on Tibetan garments, even whereas they shoot hoops.
(CHEERING)
HADID: The Dalai Lama arrange the Tibetan Kids’s Village along with his sisters after he fled to Dharamshala amid a failed rebellion in opposition to China’s rule greater than 60 years in the past. The varsity expanded as hundreds of Tibetans adopted the Dalai Lama. Then there have been folks like Tindup Galpo.
TINDUP GALPO: My father and me crossed the Himalayas.
HADID: Galpo guesses he was 7 when his father left him on the faculty after which returned to Chinese language-ruled Tibet. He hasn’t seen his father since. He was raised by his academics, who additionally supervise the varsity’s boarding homes. Now Galpo is a schoolteacher and…
GALPO: After class, I am a father of 32 youngsters.
HADID: He works on the boarding faculty that raised him, serving to youngsters with their homework, studying, bedtimes, at the least for now.
GALPO: The whole lot is – I do not know (laughter).
HADID: Altering.
GALPO: Altering.
HADID: The Tibetan Kids’s Village is shrinking. The varsity has capability for about 9,000 youngsters throughout India. Solely about half that quantity attend. That is partly as a result of Tibetans are having fewer youngsters today. And China has hardened its borders dramatically up to now 20 years, so fewer youngsters have reached Dharamshala. One one that did make it throughout is 27-year-old Namkyi. She solely goes by one identify.
NAMKYI: (Talking Tibetan).
HADID: She’d been attempting for 9 years to discover a method to flee ever since she was launched from a three-year jail sentence, she says, for brandishing an image of the Dalai Lama.
NAMKYI: (Talking Tibetan).
HADID: However since reaching Dharamshala final yr, Namkyi says she’s been noticing the change.
NAMKYI: (Talking Tibetan).
HADID: Her good friend Sonam (ph) interprets. He additionally solely goes by one identify.
SONAM: These in India, like, lots of them are migrating to the West.
HADID: Migrating to the West. The Tibetan government-in-exile estimates there have been about 100,000 Tibetans in India. That quantity started falling as migration to the West stepped up within the ’90s. Now India hosts about 70,000 Tibetans and about the identical quantity dwell in Europe, the U.S. and Australia. Sonam, who’s translating for Namkyi, describes it like…
SONAM: It is like throwing rice in a cotton area.
HADID: Like throwing rice in a cotton area, the place it is scattered, the place it would not belong, the place it will not flourish as a result of, he says, the establishments that maintain Tibetan id alive are right here in Dharamshala.
On the Kids’s Village, a few of the brightest youngsters are searching for the exits, like Gawa. He is 15 and a minor, so we aren’t utilizing his full identify. We met on the faculty library. He speaks 4 languages.
GAWA: French, Hindi, English and Tibetan.
HADID: And he loves Lana Del Rey.
GAWA: The tune that goes like, expensive Lord, once I get to heaven, please let me convey my man.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL”)
LANA DEL RAY: (Singing) Expensive Lord, once I get to heaven, please let me convey my man.
HADID: Gawa loves poetry however figures he is received a greater future as a physician. He is vying for a scholarship to review within the U.Ok.
GAWA: There’s extra alternatives. There’s the whole lot.
HADID: This westward drift comes at a precarious time. The Dalai Lama turned 90 in July. Beijing insists it is going to choose the subsequent Dalai Lama, in opposition to the desires of the Dalai Lama and Tibetans.
LOBSANG SANGAY: That is our most unstable interval.
HADID: Lobsang Sangay is the previous head of the Tibetan government-in-exile. He says Tibetans have been heartened when President Trump, throughout his first administration, signed into legislation an act that sanctions Chinese language officers who intervene in Tibetan non secular issues. However in Trump’s second administration, the secretary of State, Marco Rubio, halted some $12 million of help earmarked to Tibetan exiles within the spring. He then restored simply over half of it. Amid these worries that many Tibetans specific about this second, Sangay says Tibetans cling to a easy reality.
SANGAY: Our job is straightforward. That’s, we have now to outlive.
HADID: So long as we survive, he says, Tibetans may have the chance to satisfy this altering second.
Diaa Hadid, NPR Information, Dharamshala.
(SOUNDBITE OF RED HOUSE PAINTERS SONG, “MEDICINE BOTTLE”)
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