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In a first-person excerpt from Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exiled Tibet, Tibetan writer Tsering Namgyal Khortsa recalls joining a protest in the Dharamsala area and reflects on how exile reshapes the meaning of home. The piece, published by Scroll.in on December 17, 2024, is literary nonfiction: its march scene and historical details are Khortsa’s account and framing, not a newly reported or independently verified report.
The protest Khortsa remembers
Khortsa recounts hearing of a Tibetan protest and joining its march. In his account, the gathering responded to China’s announcement that it would execute without trial Tenzing Delek Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama, and Lobsang Dhondup, a layperson, whom authorities accused of involvement in a bombing in Sichuan Province. The excerpt presents this as the announcement that prompted the demonstration; it does not independently establish the allegation or the circumstances described.
He describes the march beginning in McLeodganj and proceeding toward Gangchen Kyishong, which he identifies as the site of the government-in-exile secretariats, before continuing toward Kacheri. Nuns and female students lead, men follow, and protesters carry Tibetan flags and anti-Chinese placards while raising slogans in Hindi and English. Khortsa portrays the demonstration as peaceful dissent.
Why Dharamsala matters in the account
The setting is more than a backdrop. Khortsa presents Dharamsala as both a destination associated with the Dalai Lama and a center of Tibetan life in exile. The excerpt moves between the march, local history, infrastructure, visitors and the geography of the Indian Himalayas to show how these different realities coexist in one place.
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He writes that the Dalai Lama made McLeodganj his home in exile and that the headquarters of the exiled government moved there from Mussoorie in 1960. Those details are part of Khortsa’s account in the excerpt, rather than independently corroborated claims here.
“Exiled Tibet” as a way of understanding home
Khortsa’s central idea is that Dharamsala holds both a remembered or imagined homeland and the lived place where Tibetans have made homes in exile. He calls the result “Exiled Tibet,” describing a distinctive identity formed where those homes meet. It is a literary interpretation, not a formal institutional label or a claim that exile has erased the difference between Tibet and life in India.
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That framing links the protest to the larger reflection. The march expresses dissent over events affecting Tibetans, while the town’s everyday life gives the community a place from which to sustain connections, memory and a sense of belonging. The excerpt’s emphasis is on that lived relationship between political struggle and home, not on a comprehensive account of Tibetan politics today.
Historical details and how to read them
The excerpt also invokes the region’s past. Khortsa writes that the Chinese monk pilgrim Hsuan Tsang recorded fifty monasteries and around 2,000 monks in the Kangra Valley in 635 AD. He says a severe earthquake in 1905 changed Dharamsala and gives its magnitude as 7.8 on the surface-wave magnitude scale, with more than 20,000 deaths. These are figures reported in the excerpt; they should be read as the author’s historical account, not as independently verified totals.
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- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
About the excerpt
The passage is by Tsering Namgyal Khortsa and appeared on Scroll.in on December 17, 2024, with permission from his book Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exiled Tibet. Its value lies in the author’s first-person recollection and literary perspective on protest, place and exile. It should not be mistaken for a current news update or an independent investigation of the political and historical claims it recounts. Read the excerpt on Scroll.in.
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