The families that fled Tibet with the Dalai Lama

The man in the photograph above is my grandfather Faizullah Baba. Standing left is my grand father’s eldest son, my uncle, Abdullah, age 7, and on the right is Abdullah’s cousin Majid.

During the Tibetan Uprising in 1959, fearing for his life, the Dalai Lama and his advisers fled Tibet with the help of the CIA and were given asylum by the Indian Government. While the world press published stories of strain in Indo-China relationships, very few threw light on the families that followed the Dalai Lama and fled from Tibet to India in the subsequent months.

The Purana Qila Incident

Image and Narrative contributed by Simon Digby, UK My grandfather, George O’Brien, was born in Meerut in 1900. His grandparents had fled Ireland in 1847 to escape the Great Potato Famine. My great great grandfather then joined the British army and the family moved to India. In India, they became part of the Irish diaspora, but […]