The Month of Buddha

A column of army trucks last week roared into the big bamboo-and-thatch camp that had been hastily built at Misa-mari in the jungles of Assam. The tailgates were dropped and out stepped 92 Tibetans, ranging in age from nine to 70, the advance party of 10,000 refugees fleeing the Red oppressors of their homeland.

Lama's Gold. Many of them had been footslogging for almost two months. There were 15 lamas from the great monasteries of Sera, Ganden and Drepung, "the three pillars of lamaism." A young man of 18, wearing a purple cassock over a yellow shirt and knee-high boots, was the In carnate Lama of Sera monastery, whose predecessor 22 years ago had led the group of monks who found the present Dalai Lama near Lake Koko Nor (TIME, April 20). He had fled Lhasa three days after the March 17 escape of the Dalai Lama. Smiling ruefully, he explained that he had been forced to abandon his monastery's treasure to the Red Chinese and displayed his total personal wealth: two gold-capped fountain pens and a gold wristwatch.

In its flight across Tibet, the Sera Lama's party had picked up other bands of refugees. There had been a brush with a Red Chinese patrol, but they escaped under fire, protected by their 25 guards --who were required to hand over their antiquated guns to Indian troops as they crossed the border. Only one of the party --a monk from Ganden--was wounded; he had been struck in the head by bullets from a strafing Red plane.

The change of climate from the mountain valleys of Tibet to the steaming Assam jungle affected the Tibetans more than had their forced march, and they were plagued by leeches, mosquitoes and dimdam flies. After bathing in a nearby river and while their heavy clothes were sprayed with DDT and soaked in disinfectant, the refugees were ludicrously garbed in outsized bush shirts and trousers. On receipt of frantic orders from New Delhi, the Indian camp commandant refused newsmen any chance for further interviews, explained blandly: "Some misguided people may be mixed up with the refugees, and it may make matters confusing for you if you speak to them."

Barbed Wire & Police. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Nehru was still, in the interests of peace and quiet, trying to deaden the impact of what was going on in Tibet. But he gently ridiculed Red China's claims that the refugees were all "upper-strata reactionaries," by pointing out that it was "obvious" that among 10,000 refugees "a large number must represent the common man of Tibet." He insisted the Dalai Lama had perfect freedom in India "to say or do what he likes, to go back to Tibet, to remain here or to go anywhere else." What about the barbed wire and officious police who made any approach to the God-King impossible? The police, smiled Nehru, as if it were not his responsibility, "have a way of throwing their weight about." The only orders given them have been "to be careful about the Dalai Lama's security."

At Birla House in Mussoorie, the Dalai Lama appeared to take Nehru at his word. He held his first darshan, or public audience, for 700 visitors, including Western tourists. He sent a message to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek thanking him for the support given the Tibetan rebels by the Nationalist Chinese government. At week's end he appealed to Buddhists the world over to honor the month of Lord Buddha's birth by praying for the "thousands" of Tibetans who died in the revolt and for those "still suffering mental and physical agony" in their Red-run homeland.

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