Last year, Norbu Jorden ran away to New Delhi to set himself on fire. Driven by accounts of other self-immolations by Tibetans — there have been 112 deaths since 2009 — the 20-year-old student concluded that this was the only way he could contribute to Tibet’s struggle for freedom from China. Jorden did not succeed: before he could engulf himself in flames, police in the capital intervened and eventually sent him back to Dharamsala in northern India, the sanctuary for Tibetans fleeing Beijing’s hard-line rule of their homeland. Now Jorden is expressing his dissent differently. On a Wednesday in late March, he was one of hundreds of young Tibetans kitted out in traditional robes and singing boisterously at a school in Dharamsala. The event was part of a weekly peaceful protest called Lhakar — “White Wednesday” in Tibetan — which takes place in the city where the Dalai Lama set up his exiled administration in 1959. “I wanted to do something to be a part of our freedom struggle, and [self-immolation] was the only way I knew,” says Jorden. “When I came back to school and was introduced to Lhakar, I realized this was a better way.”
In recent years, young Tibetans-in-exile have found in Lhakar an alternative to the gruesome and desperate act of self-immolation. Lhakar is a movement inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence and noncooperation to rid India of British colonialism. In the 1980s, when Lhasa erupted in violence against Chinese rule and the authorities subsequently clamped down on the region, many in China’s Tibetan areas continued to secretly visit temples on Wednesdays, the day the Dalai Lama is believed to have been born, to pray for him. But in 2008, when the Chinese authorities started cracking down on religious activities associated with the Dalai Lama, Tibetans devised the subtler Lhakar. For the past five years, Tibetans, both in China’s Tibetan regions and in exile, have reasserted their cultural identity through thinking, talking, eating and buying Tibetan once a week. Full story..
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In recent years, young Tibetans-in-exile have found in Lhakar an alternative to the gruesome and desperate act of self-immolation. Lhakar is a movement inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence and noncooperation to rid India of British colonialism. In the 1980s, when Lhasa erupted in violence against Chinese rule and the authorities subsequently clamped down on the region, many in China’s Tibetan areas continued to secretly visit temples on Wednesdays, the day the Dalai Lama is believed to have been born, to pray for him. But in 2008, when the Chinese authorities started cracking down on religious activities associated with the Dalai Lama, Tibetans devised the subtler Lhakar. For the past five years, Tibetans, both in China’s Tibetan regions and in exile, have reasserted their cultural identity through thinking, talking, eating and buying Tibetan once a week. Full story..
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