By Tripti Lahiri
NEW DELHI, July 28 – It took four decades for Tibetan refugees to build homes and make a small corner of this city their own but if a New Delhi court order is implemented the world they built will be shattered.
The community was notified by a city works department on June 9 of the plans to evict them in order to make road and other improvements. The Tibetans have appealed against demolition and the next hearing is on August 10.
“Since I heard the news day and night I cannot sleep,” said 58-year-old Achoo, counting prayer beads as she sat on the steps of her three-floor house in the heart of the city’s little Tibet.
Achoo, who gave only one name, came to New Delhi when she was eight and says she worked like her parents did before her as a “coolie” on roads and rail tracks across India, scrimping and saving to build a home.
Later she supported herself by selling chang, homebrewed rice beer, until the Tibetans’ exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, offered chang brewers cash payments to stop.
Achoo finally had the money to add the third floor five years ago, for her daughter and her husband to live in, 19 years after the house was first built.
“With great difficulty I built it. If I lose it now I won’t be able to build it again in 100 years,” she said, recalling a promise made by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, decades ago.
“Nehru himself told us ‘Till you get freedom you can live here’,” Achoo said.
Under Nehru, India welcomed thousands of Tibetan refugees after 1950, when Chinese forces occupied Tibet, saying it was liberating the Himalayan outpost from feudal oppression.
The Dalai Lama fled after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and established a government-in-exile in Dharamsala. Today 140,000 Tibetan exiles are estimated to live in India.
Little Tibet, in the north of Delhi, is home to some 6,000 Tibetans and goes by several names, including Tibet Camp, Samye-Ling — after a famous monastery — and Chang Town.
It is mostly commonly known as Majnu-ka-Tila, after a nearby village which was on the outskirts of the city when Tibetans moved here as India and China went to war briefly in 1962.
“This has become a very important place for Tibetans,” said welfare officer Lakhpa Tsering, local representative for the exile government. “This is their transit stop. Many foreigners also come here. In the guidebooks it is mentioned.”
On a rainy July day, buses coming down from the hills of Dharamsala let off backpacking westerners on the main road that leads into the neighborhood.
But although Tibetans were settled in the area by the Indian government, they never had legal title to the land. And now the city wants the land back.
On one side the neighborhood stretches to the polluted Yamuna river banks, which the court has ordered the city to clear.
On the other side runs a main road that the city wants to widen from six to eight lanes.
City officials have said they will not evict the Tibetans without giving them land elsewhere. But nothing has been said about paying them for the cost of rebuilding.
Old-timers say that even if they get land elsewhere, they will never be able to replace the homes and businesses set up through years of hard work.
“If it breaks, it will be the end,” said Pema Khango, 68, who came to India in 1959 with no money in his pocket.
“We worked very hard. We sold my wife’s ornaments, the valuable ones,” said Khango, who now has a garment shop and a two-floor home painted peach on the outside.
“In all these years India has treated us well. Don’t make us sad now.”
