By Tsering Tashi
LONDON, July 6 – The 68th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama that falls today was celebrated here in London yesterday with colourful Tibetan traditional songs and dances that won appreciative applause from the audience who filled the Westminster Cathedral Hall and its balcony. The afternoon’s programme concluded with Tibetans and others in the audience taking part en masse in ‘gorshey’ (Tibetan circle dance) amidst outbursts of friendly laughter on realising or seeing every wrong step taken by gorshey first-timers.
Speaking on the occasion, Mrs. Kesang Y. Takla, Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama for Northern Europe at the London Office of Tibet, said that since the age of 16 when he also had to shoulder the temporal responsibility, His Holiness has been doing all he could to peacefully resolve the issue of Tibet through dialogue with the Chinese authorities. She said that all over the world people campaign and fight to get democratic rights from their leaders but that the Tibetan people were fortunate to have a very special leader in His Holiness who is promoting more democracy.
The Tibetan community members, many of whom had come from outside London, prayed on stage for the long life of their spiritual and temporal leader after prostrating and placing scarves before a portrait of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who in 1989 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for leading the non-violent Tibetan struggle for freedom from China.
An appreciative audience thoroughly enjoyed the cultural song and dance performances staged by the Tibetan Community Dance Group lead by the community’s elected Culture Secretary, Tsering Passang. The appearance on the stage of traditionally dressed junior Tibetan dancers ranging from age 4 to 11 apparently delighted the audience who responded with spontaneous applause and continued to clap throughout the children’s song-dance performance titled, “Tse-Thang Gang-la” (On the playground).
The programme that included singing of the Tibetan national anthem was jointly organised by the Office of Tibet, the Tibet Society and the Tibetan Community in Britain. Mr. Chonpel Tsering, the re-elected secretary of the community, very ably conducted it.
