People & Histories
10–31 March 1959; Dharamsala from 1960

The 1959 uprising and the flight into exile

Fearing for the Dalai Lama's safety, crowds surround his palace in Lhasa; the uprising is crushed, the Dalai Lama escapes to India, and tens of thousands of Tibetans follow him into exile.

  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
  • Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama — Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, HarperCollins (1990)
  • The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama — Melvyn C. Goldstein, University of California Press (1997)
  • Tibetan Demographic Survey 2009 — Planning Commission, Central Tibetan Administration (2010)
  • A Poisoned Arrow: The Secret Report of the 10th Panchen Lama — The 10th Panchen Lama, Tibet Information Network (1997)

Debated by historians uprisingrefugeestraumamigrationstatehood

By 1959 eastern Tibet had been in revolt for three years. Khampa and Amdowa fighters, organised from 1958 as the Chushi Gangdruk (“Four Rivers, Six Ranges”) resistance, had retreated into central Tibet, and refugees crowded into Lhasa with stories of bombed monasteries and public “struggle sessions” against lamas.

  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
  • The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama — Melvyn C. Goldstein, University of California Press (1997)

10 March

When the Dalai Lama was invited to attend a performance at a Chinese military camp, and reportedly told to come without his usual bodyguards, rumours spread that he would be abducted. On 10 March 1959, thousands of Lhasa residents surrounded the Norbulingka, his summer palace, to protect him. Over the following days, crowds declared Tibet’s independence and the standoff hardened.

  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
  • Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama — Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, HarperCollins (1990)

Escape

On the night of 17 March, disguised as a soldier, the twenty-three-year-old Dalai Lama slipped out of the palace and set off across the mountains with family members and officials, protected by resistance fighters. Three days later Chinese artillery shelled the Norbulingka and fighting broke out across Lhasa; the uprising was crushed within days, with very heavy Tibetan casualties, in the thousands. On 31 March the Dalai Lama crossed into India, where Nehru granted him asylum.

  • Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama — Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, HarperCollins (1990)
  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
  • The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama — Melvyn C. Goldstein, University of California Press (1997)

Exile

Around 80,000 Tibetans followed him over the following months, many dying of heat and disease in Indian transit camps. In 1960 the Dalai Lama settled in Dharamsala, a former British hill station in Himachal Pradesh, where he set up a government in exile, now the Central Tibetan Administration. India gave land for agricultural settlements, especially in Karnataka, and Tibetans founded schools, rebuilt the great monasteries of Sera, Drepung and Ganden in the south, and preserved their arts and texts.

  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
  • Tibetan Demographic Survey 2009 — Planning Commission, Central Tibetan Administration (2010)
  • Dalai Lama XIV — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Switzerland admitted Tibetan refugees from the early 1960s, and later communities grew in the United States, Canada and Europe.
  • Tibetan Demographic Survey 2009 — Planning Commission, Central Tibetan Administration (2010)

Inside Tibet

In Tibet, the Ganden Phodrang was dissolved and “democratic reform” swept through: estates were confiscated and redistributed, monasteries emptied, and tens of thousands of people imprisoned. The years that followed overlapped with the famine of the Great Leap Forward. In 1962 the 10th Panchen Lama, who had stayed, sent Mao a long, secret petition describing mass arrests, starvation and the destruction of religion; he was soon purged and imprisoned.

  • A Poisoned Arrow: The Secret Report of the 10th Panchen Lama — The 10th Panchen Lama, Tibet Information Network (1997)
  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
The Tibet Autonomous Region was formally established in 1965.
  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)

The two halves of the Tibetan nation, in exile and at home, have lived apart ever since.

How it's seen
Tibetan view

A national uprising of the Tibetan people against Chinese occupation, after years of broken promises and brutal "reforms" in Kham and Amdo. Thousands were killed in Lhasa, and the Dalai Lama had to flee to save his life and his people's cause.

  • Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama — Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, HarperCollins (1990)
  • Tibetan Nation: A History of Tibetan Nationalism and Sino-Tibetan Relations — Warren W. Smith Jr., Westview Press (1996)

PRC view

An armed rebellion by the reactionary upper classes, backed by foreign forces, to preserve serfdom. Its defeat allowed "democratic reform" and the emancipation of a million serfs; since 2009, 28 March has been marked in Tibet as "Serfs' Emancipation Day".

  • Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity — State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China (2021)

Historians

The revolt grew from the armed resistance in Kham and Amdo, where reforms had been imposed by force, and drew in Lhasa's population out of fear for the Dalai Lama. The CIA gave limited support to Tibetan guerrillas from 1957. The scale of the crackdown that followed across Tibet is documented in the Panchen Lama's 1962 petition.

  • The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
  • The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama — Melvyn C. Goldstein, University of California Press (1997)
  • A Poisoned Arrow: The Secret Report of the 10th Panchen Lama — The 10th Panchen Lama, Tibet Information Network (1997)

Why it matters today

Tibetans

10 March is Tibetan Uprising Day, marked every year by exiles worldwide. The flight created the Tibetan diaspora and its government in Dharamsala; for Tibetans inside China, the Dalai Lama's absence is a wound that has lasted their whole lives.