Humming for His Holiness

John Sweeney

McLeod Ganj, India

At dusk this serene hill station, where Lord Elgin of marbles fame lies buried, hums like an- electricity sub-station.

The hum comes from perhaps a thousand Tibetans gathered round the prayer wheel at the hub of the village, murmuring 'Om Mani Padme Hum' — Glory to the Jewel in the Lotus Flower. The mainly old and leathery faces are humming for peace, tran- the Lotus Flower. The mainly old and leathery faces are humming for peace, tran- quillity and for the long life of His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who celebrated his 48th birthday on 6 July — or his 592nd if you count his previous 13 incar- nations.

The God-King of Tibet made his home in exile in McLeod Ganj after fleeing the Chinese communist invasion of his country in 1959. From his airy bungalow, overlook- ing the baking plains of the north Punjab and overlooked by the snow-covered western Himalayas, he keeps alive the idea of a free Tibet — the Land the World Forgot.

The Buddhist pope is a jovial, thick-set, crop-headed monk of about five foot ten,

dressed plainly in wine-red robes and 'sensi- ble' shoes. The voice is rich and gravelly, breaking often into extraordinary

thunderclaps of laughter.

His English is fresh and enthusiastic, if a little uncertain. An interpreter, Tendzin

Ch°egYal, sat in on our conversation and occasionally His Holiness would turn to him to supply the right word. The interview began in a stilted fashion, but after a short time the living God erupted into raucous cackles, reminding me rather of Sid James in a Carry On film. Eventually, the interpreter ended my Pazzlement.'His Holiness wants to know why You are wearing a bow-tie but no socks' The embarrassing truth dawned: I was wearing a Robin Day style red-and- whhe-spotted bow-tie but had forgotten to

Pat on socks. This sartorial contradiction had tickled His Holiness's fancy. Happily, the socks joke dissolved the tension and the interview, originally planned for 15 Minutes, went on for well over an hour.

ulle has a lively yet precise mind, and ex- udes an air of cheery goodness strangely

Fred of the late BBC radio gardener Streeter. Like Fred, the Tender Glory, Might in Speech, Excellent Intellect, Ab- solute Wisdom, Holding to the Doctrine,

ocean-Wide Glorious King of the Divinely Elected Celestial Palace of Joy could give a

few TV bores lessons in not being stuffy Pompous.

T:tis Holiness also knows his Buddhism. e late Judge Christmas Humphreys, who w_as. an evangelist for the faith in Britain, said of him: 'He is perhaps the finest expo-

nent of Buddhism in the world. Look within, he teaches, and let each human heart achieve the means of peace within and out- wardly express a love for all that lives.'

It must be infuriating for the Chinese to be faced with such a gentle but implacable foe. Like the Russians in Afghanistan, the Chinese have found Tibet easy to invade but impossible to conquer. Western jour- nalists recently allowed into Tibet report that the Dalai Lama is still widely popular, despite the efforts of the invaders to eradicate Buddhism and its high priest. The official Chinese version of the faith describes it as 'a tranquillising poison used by capitalists to oppress people'. In 1949, there were 3,700 monasteries in Tibet, now there are 13.

The Chinese have admitted past 'ex- cesses' and are trying to win the hearts and minds of the Tibetans without the bully-boy tactics. The new men in Peking would like the Dalai Lama to return home, and so legitimise their colony. But His Holiness is happy to deny the Chinese their wish and remain in McLeod Ganj for the time being, perhaps for another 13 incarnations if need be. 'The enemy is always the best teacher,' he said to me. 'The Chinese are very kind to us, for they teach us patience.'

The Marxist-Leninists in Peking must find this attitude as mystifying as how he became Dalai Lama in the first place. At the age of two he was discovered by lamas in search of the new incarnate after the death of the Great Thirteenth. The little boy correctly identified a rosary, a small drum and a walking stick belonging to his predecessor.Two years later he was taken from his peasant home in eastern Tibet and installed in the fabulous 1,000-room Potala, Palace — higher than St Paul's — in Tibet's capital Lhasa. On the 14th day of the first month of the Iron Dragon Year (1941) he ascended to the Lion Throne. There is a photograph of him, aged six and a half, swaddled in his throne clothes.

The problem that clouded his childhood was how to deflect the ambitions of the empire-builders next door. Appeals to the British Raj, and later to its successor Indian government and the United Nations, fell on deaf ears. The Tibetans were on their own. With splendidly snooty aplomb, the Divine- ly Elected Celestial Palace of Joy booted out the intimidating Chinese mission from Lhasa in 1949. 'We wish to live apart, un- contaminated by the germ of a highly materialistic creed.' But a year later the soldiers of the highly materialistic creed were back with a vengeance.

Han Chinese now outnumber Tibetans 3:2 in Lhasa and the countryside is kept subdued by a 600,000-strong occupation force of the People's Liberation Army. The Chinese have built roads and schools where none existed, and Tibet now boasts a nuclear armoury at Nagchukha, with missiles aimed at India's northern cities.

It is easy — too easy — to romanticise the plight of the Tibetans. The first foreigners who penetrated Tibet were Indian spies of the Raj in the last century. They found a country both backward and savage. Flogg- ings of up to 700 lashes punished minor crimes, adulterers faced the cutting off of ears and the slitting noses, and a popular form of torture was 'stone bonnets' stones were piled on some wretch's head until his eyeballs popped out. Tibet was never Shangri-la.

Even in the 20th century change was as slow-moving as a Himalayan glacier. The present Dalai Lama first saw trains and aeroplanes in 1954, on his first trip outside Tibet. His Holiness is quick to acknowledge how backward Tibet was, and admits that the country was such easy prey to the Chinese because it had turned its back on the world. But he cannot forget what the Chinese have done: monks and nuns forced to make love at gunpoint, so breaking their vows of celibacy; of children made to kill their parents; of widespread famine — the first in Tibet's long history; and the at- tempt to turn by force perhaps the world's most religious people into atheists.

I asked finally what he would like to have been, if he had not been reincarnated as Dalai Lama. There was a silence, and the interpreter shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Then, His Holiness's mouth opened and he roared with glee; it was all right, he was Sid James again.

`Oh, a farmer perhaps, in the little place I was born. Or a physicist — I have always been interested in science. Anything so long as it is not a butcher.'

John Sweeney writes for the Sheffield Mor- ning Telegraph.