The 13th Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India long before his successor’s famous escape

In February 1910, the Associated Press flashed a dramatic bulletin: the “Tibetan Pope” had fled Lhasa, narrowly escaping Chinese troops who pursued him all the way to the Tibet-Sikkim border. Thubten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama, then a 34-year-old, was walking a high-stakes geopolitical tightrope. The Qing Dynasty was on its last legs in China, while the British and Russian empires were vying for influence over Tibet.

Describing his escape as “narrow”, the Associated Press reported that the spiritual leader travelled day and night. At a river crossing, Chinese forces caught up with the Tibetan entourage, but his followers fought off the pursuers, buying enough time for the Dalai Lama to cross into British-protected Sikkim. From there, he journeyed to Darjeeling and requested asylum from British authorities.

The situation was a deeply ironic twist of fate. Only three months earlier, the Dalai Lama had returned to Lhasa after six years in exile. That initial flight had been triggered by the British themselves, whose 1904 invasion of Tibet, led by Colonel Francis Younghusband, forced the leader to flee to Mongolia under the influence of the Russian Buryat monk Agvan Dorzhiev.

During his two years in Urga (now Ulaanbaatar), the Dalai Lama hoped the tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, would intervene on Tibet’s behalf. When that did not happen, he pivoted to China. In 1908, he arrived in Peking (now Beijing), meeting Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu shortly before their deaths. The Qing court gave him administrative authority over Tibet, replacing the provisional governors installed after the British invasion.

His return to Lhasa was not without opposition. Monks at the influential Debong (now Drepung) Monastery objected to his restoration, but he enjoyed broad public support. His homecoming began smoothly, and he pardoned locals who had assisted Younghusband’s invasion. However, friction quickly developed with Zhao Erfeng, the powerful Chinese envoy, or Amban, in Lhasa.

A report by the Press Association said the Dalai Lama protested against “the excesses of the Chinese troops on the Szechuan [Sichuan] frontier”, where monasteries had been looted and lamas killed. “This remonstrance brought to a head the whole question of the respective positions of the Amban and the Dalai Lama,” the report said.

The Amban insisted he held ultimate authority because Tibet was a Chinese province, while the Dalai Lama “quoted a letter of authority given to him by the Pekin government”. As the dispute escalated over who had the right to appoint the abbot of the Sera monastery, the Amban launched an armed assault on Lhasa, forcing the Dalai Lama to flee once more.

When news of the escape reached Peking, Prince-Regent Chun decided to depose the Dalai Lama. China’s last emperor, Pu Yi, was just four years old at the time. By April, the Washington Post reported that the Qing imperial edict accused the Dalai Lama of “disobedience, intrigue and refusal to pay tribute”, calling him “one of the worst lamas ever known”.

Colonial asylum

Even before the Dalai Lama crossed into Sikkim, British officials had received advance warning of his approach. In February 1910, the British Trade Agent in the Tibetan town of Yatung informed the Government of India that the Dalai Lama was travelling towards the frontier accompanied by six ministers and some followers. The telegram made no mention that he was fleeing Chinese troops.

Responding to the message, SH Butler, secretary of the Foreign Department, instructed local officials to “show His Holiness every personal courtesy”, while stressing that the visit should be treated as a private one.

Once it became clear that the Dalai Lama was seeking political asylum, plans changed. When he requested a visit to the capital, Calcutta, authorities arranged for him to stay at Hastings House, the historic mansion built by Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of Bengal.

The British wanted to welcome him with pomp. Charles Bell, the Political Officer for Bhutan, Sikkim, and Tibet – who would become a close confidant of the Dalai Lama – pushed for a 21-gun salute. Bell argued that the Dalai Lama was the head of 15 million Buddhists and venerated by 100 million more.

“The Tibetans and the Bhutanese ignore the edict deposing the Dalai Lama,” Butler wrote in a memo. “An incarnation cannot be ‘dis-incarnated’ spiritually.”

The government ultimately settled on a 19-gun salute.

When the Dalai Lama arrived at Sealdah railway station, he received a grand welcome. During his stay in Calcutta, he met the viceroy, the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, and representatives of Buddhist and Jain communities.

Yet British hospitality had limits. While officials extended every courtesy, they remained careful not to annoy China. When planning began for the historic 1911 Delhi Durbar, the coronation celebration for King George V and Queen Mary as emperor and empress of India, the Dalai Lama and another influential lama, the Tashi Lama, asked to attend. The Raj promptly rejected the requests.

“It has been decided that none but Feudatory chiefs in India are to participate in the forthcoming Durbar and we may tell Mr. Bell that he should certainly discourage the Tashi Lama from coming,” the Foreign Department said in a memo in March 1911.

The Dalai Lama followed this with a request to meet the viceroy in Calcutta before travelling to Britain to petition King George V to intervene in Tibet. The response was firm. “He was informed that it would not be convenient for His Excellency [the viceroy] to receive him then and that, while there was no wish to place any restriction on his freedom of movement, it was necessary to warn him that no useful purpose would be served by his proceeding to England and no assistance could be given to him in this respect,” the Foreign Department said in an August 1911 memo.

The memorandum added that the king “was unable to interfere between him and his suzerain”, confirming that Great Britain recognised Chinese suzerainty over Tibet.

Undeterred, the Dalai Lama made yet another appeal. He proposed a non-political meeting with King George V and Viceroy Lord Hardinge II when they travelled to Calcutta after the Delhi Durbar. Officials remained unconvinced. The Foreign Department doubted that any audience would remain non-political. “The Lama is so full of grievances against the Chinese that it is difficult to think that, if granted an interview, he will not wish to discuss political matters,” the department wrote.

The department said there were reports suggesting the Dalai Lama was inciting Tibetans to revolt against Chinese rule, leading British officials to conclude that “any semblance of sympathy or encouragement – in which light the visits are sure to be regarded – should be avoided”.

Russian connection

Despite his disappointing experience in Mongolia, the Dalai Lama still had the option of seeking help from the tsar through his association with the Buryat monk, Dorzhiev. This prospect made the British uneasy. While the Dalai Lama lived in Darjeeling and Kalimpong, colonial officials tried to minimise his contact with Russian visitors. At the time, Buddhist pilgrims from Russia’s Asian territories were permitted to travel into Tibet, but the same privilege was denied to Russians from the European part of the empire.

Although the Dalai Lama devoted much of his exile to religious activities, he also received foreign visitors – with the approval of the British authorities. His most notable Russian visitor was Fyodor Shcherbatsky, a renowned Sanskrit and Buddhism scholar at the University of St Petersburg.

Shcherbatsky, who travelled to India at Dorzhiev’s urging, had chaired a committee that established a Buddhist temple in the Russian imperial capital. The British kept his movements under close watch. Bell personally accompanied the scholar when he called on the Dalai Lama. “I accompanied Professor Shcherbatsky in his call on the Dalai Lama yesterday and interpreted for him, as though proficient in classical Tibetan, he is unable to converse,” Bell wrote in a memorandum.

Shcherbatsky carried a letter in Tibetan from Dorzhiev explaining that the professor had travelled to India in search of Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts and hoped eventually to “proceed to Lhasa”. The professor met the Tibetan leader multiple times, and on each occasion, a government escort, doubling up as an interpreter, was present. No political matters were raised.

Dorzhiev, meanwhile, continued to lobby Tsar Nicholas II to intervene in Tibet, although his efforts came to nothing. The monk had envisioned a pan-Buddhist empire in Central Asia under Russian protection. Ironically, some historians argue, it was the British discovery of these grandiose, impractical designs years earlier that had triggered Younghusband’s 1904 invasion of Tibet, a military campaign still euphemistically referred to in some history books as an “expedition”.

Return home

The political landscape changed dramatically in October 1911. An armed uprising in Wuchang (today part of Wuhan) sparked a revolution that spread across China, bringing the imperial rule to an end. In February 1912, the Qing dynasty collapsed after 268 years in power and the six-year-old Emperor Puyi abdicated.

The upheaval quickly reached Tibet. Chinese troops stationed in Lhasa mutinied, ending Qing authority in the region. As the old empire disintegrated and the Republic of China emerged, the Dalai Lama saw an opportunity to return home.

In April 1912, newspapers around the world reported that he had begun his journey back to Lhasa. The Guardian said that the British minister in Peking had presented a note to the Chinese government urging it “to not interfere with Tibet in its domestic affairs and should restrict the exercise of its suzerainty to advising the Tibetans on foreign policy by means of a Resident in Lhasa”.

The Dalai Lama crossed from Sikkim into Tibet in June 1912 but delayed his return to the capital until the last of the Chinese troops had departed. He finally re-entered Lhasa in January 1913 and would remain there until his death in 1933 at the age of 57.

Nearly four decades later, Tibet’s political landscape changed once again. In 1951, the Tibetan government signed the Seventeen Point Agreement with the Central People’s Government of China, under which Tibet agreed to “return to the big family of the People’s Republic of China”. The 14th Dalai Lama later maintained that the agreement was signed under duress, something Beijing denied.

Eight years later, following an uprising in Tibet in March 1959, which Beijing describes as the “Tibetan Armed Rebellion”, the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India. He has lived in the country ever since.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His latest book, Colombo: Port of Call, has been published by Penguin Random House.