The Himalayan suburb of McLeod Ganj wearing an air of festivity and contemplation on a day celebrating the life, enlightenment and teachings of the Buddha.
Last year a day before Wesak I went to Dharamsala, a town in the far north of India situated at the foothills of the Himalayas.
Wesak or Buddha Purnima as it is called in the land of his birth commemorates the buddhahood or enlightenment of Siddharta Gautama on a full moon day under a fig tree two thousand five hundred and fifty years ago – almost six centuries before Jesus was born.
Once a domain of the semi-nomadic goat-herding Gaddi tribal people, the area now known as Dharamsala was annexed by the British in 1848. Enchanted by its English weather and scenery, the colonial newcomers constructed a cantonment for their Gurkha soldiers and established headquarters there for the surrounding district of Kangra.
Dharamsala soon developed into a popular hill station, attracting people of position and power including the Viceroy of India, the Earl of Elgin who on a visit in 1863 died of a heart attack while swinging across a river on a rope. He is buried in St John in the Wilderness, a small stone church just outside town.
With its heady mix of Himalayan hill tribes, Tibetan exiles and western truth and thrill seekers Dharamsala is a fascinating place for political science studies, photography and people watching.Despite its conspicuous Tibetan Buddhist population the majority (70%) of people in Dharamsala are from the indigenous Hindu ethnic groups including the Gaddis and Gujjars
High altitude fashion: Himalayan Couture strung up and on display by the roadside
The name Dharamsala came from a religious term in Sanskrit loosely translated as “sanctuary”. It is an appropriate and prophetic name as Dharamsala has become a shelter of sorts for generations of disquieted humans running away from something somewhere.
The refuge seekers included Raj-era Englishmen escaping from India’s heat; Tibetans from Chinese persecution; post-conscription Israeli youths from troubles and tensions in the Middle East; and legions of spiritual tourists of every nationality from society’s contaminating influence and stress.
Perhaps I too was seeking something, tired and anguished by the condition of my then ailing late father. I was drawn to Dharamsala by stories I had heard and news I had read about the hardships and yearnings of its exiled Tibetan community and by the happy and peaceful teachings of their deeply revered leader Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.
I got there just as the sun started to sink slowly behind the stately stands of cedar trees around McLeod Ganj, the town’s upper suburb perched scenically on the slopes of the Dhauladhar Mountains.
With its meditative monasteries, noodle and dumpling shops and high-cheeked sunbronzed faces garbed in maroon robes, McLeod Ganj exudes so much in the manner of Tibet they nostalgically nicknamed it “Little Lhasa”.
Tibetans in Dharamsala are not as harmonious and homogenous as they appear. The community is divided by the region they come from and between the descendants of the refugees who came with the Dalai Lama in 1959 and newcomers who arrived after.A proud patrician face of a Tibetan elder in resplendent red tunicvegetable vendor near the Dalai Lama TempleColourful souvenir scarves for sale in a shop in McLeod Ganj.Noon crowds coming out of the Main Temple after listening to a speech by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Today’s young foreigners are as drawn to Dharamsala as their predecessors. Large number of Israeli youths fresh from compulsory military service now make the nearby Himalayan villages their second home. Peaceful natural environment, acceptance by the locals, cheap costs of living, and availability of marijuana have been cited as reasons.The image many still perceive of IndiaWoman making pan fried momo, the town’s Tibetan street food of choice
There are today around 100,000 Tibetans in India where their status is one of long-term guests of the country and not refugees. Rather than keeping their future in a limbo many young and educated Tibetans are migrating to the west. Such emigration plus the mere trickling of new arrivals from Tibet are the reasons for a potentially falling population.A slow walk to the hippies hamlet of Dharamkot just 4km from McLeod Ganj
Although without citizenship rights, Tibetans have contributed greatly to the economy of Dharamsala. Their six-decade presence in India has further enhanced the country’s reputation as an accepting, welcoming and freedom-loving civilisational nation.
Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives in Dharamsala. Like Palestine and Taiwan, the Tibet question is emotionally-charged and politically divisive. Chinese view is that Tibet is historically a part of China and that the military invasion in 1950 was to liberate the Tibetan people from medieval subjugation by a slave-owning feudal theocracy.
Kerk Boon Leng Photographs & Notes 