Dharamshala, 2nd January: According to his former regiment, the last surviving member of a tiny squad of Indian soldiers who followed the Dalai Lama as he fled Tibet in 1959 has died at the age of 85. After a 13-day walk through the Himalayas dressed as a soldier to avoid detection by Chinese troops, the Tibetan spiritual leader landed in India as a young monk. Naren Chandra Das died on Monday at his home in Assam, a state in northeastern India.
Naren Chandra Das, who had just completed his training with the Assam Rifles, the Indian Army’s oldest paramilitary organization, was only 22 years old at the time. On March 31, 1959, he escorted His Holiness to Lumla in India’s northeastern province of Arunachal Pradesh with six other troops.
Das revealed how the soldiers went across the rugged territory as the Dalai Lama rode his horse in an interview with local media last year. As they brought His Holiness to safety, the retired soldier recalled how his troop was not allowed to speak to him.
In 2017, the two had an emotional reunion for the first time in nearly 60 years. Das was invited to Dharamsala a year later when the Dalai Lama had established a Tibetan government-in-exile(CTA) with the assent of New Delhi. “Looking at your face, I now realize I must be very old too,” Das was told by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Das stated, “I went with my family and he hugged me there. He had also given me a memento. I shall never forget my meeting”.
Reference –Agence France-Presse
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