1959 Tibetan Uprising: Revolt in Lhasa and the Dalai Lama's Exile

The 1959 Tibetan Uprising was a revolt against Chinese rule that broke out in Lhasa on 10 March 1959. Fearing that the 14th Dalai Lama would be detained, thousands of Tibetans surrounded his summer palace; a week later he fled into exile in India, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) crushed the rising in the city. The uprising ended the system under which Tibet’s traditional government had coexisted with Chinese rule since 1951, and 10 March is still marked by Tibetans in exile as Tibetan Uprising Day.

Background

After the fall of the Qing dynasty, the 13th Dalai Lama ruled Tibet as a de facto independent state from 1913, although China never accepted this. Britain, whose Younghusband expedition had reached Lhasa in 1904, kept close contacts with the Tibetan government.

In October 1950 the PLA defeated Tibetan forces at Chamdo during the Chinese annexation of Tibet. In May 1951 Tibetan delegates in Beijing signed the Seventeen Point Agreement, which accepted Chinese sovereignty while promising that the Dalai Lama’s government and Tibet’s religion and social system would not be changed. Chinese troops entered Lhasa later that year.

The arrangement applied mainly to central Tibet. In the eastern Tibetan regions of Kham and Amdo, which lay inside the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai and others, the authorities pushed ahead with land reform and collectivisation from the mid-1950s. Armed revolt broke out there in 1956, and thousands of refugees fled west to Lhasa. In 1958 Tibetan resistance groups formed the Chushi Gangdruk (“Four Rivers, Six Ranges”) guerrilla force, which received some covert support from the American CIA.

The uprising in Lhasa

In early March 1959 the Dalai Lama, then 23, was invited to attend a theatrical performance at the Chinese military headquarters in Lhasa. Rumours spread that he was to be taken without his usual bodyguards and perhaps abducted. On 10 March thousands of Lhasa residents, often estimated at around 30,000, gathered around the Norbulingka to prevent him from leaving. A Tibetan official seen as collaborating with the Chinese was killed by the crowd.

Over the following days Tibetan leaders and the crowd denounced the Seventeen Point Agreement and declared Tibet’s independence, and women held a large demonstration in Lhasa on 12 March. Barricades went up as both sides prepared for fighting. The Dalai Lama exchanged letters with the Chinese commander, Tan Guansan, while trying to calm the situation.

On 17 March two shells landed near the Norbulingka. That night the Dalai Lama left the palace disguised as a soldier and, with his family and senior officials, began a journey south across the Himalayas. On 20 March, before his escape was widely known, the PLA began shelling the Norbulingka and other strongholds. Within about three days resistance in Lhasa was crushed, including at the Potala Palace, the Jokhang temple and the Chakpori medical college.

Flight into exile

The Dalai Lama’s party, protected by guerrillas, travelled for about two weeks through the mountains. On 31 March 1959 they crossed into India, where Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru granted asylum. In April, at Tezpur in Assam, the Dalai Lama issued a statement rejecting the Seventeen Point Agreement as imposed under duress. He set up his government-in-exile, first in Mussoorie and from 1960 in Dharamsala.

Tens of thousands of Tibetans followed him over the next few years into India, Nepal and Bhutan. India provided land for refugee settlements, especially in Karnataka in the south, and the exiles founded schools, monasteries and cultural institutions to preserve Tibetan language and religion.

Consequences

China dissolved the traditional Tibetan government in March 1959 and placed the region under a preparatory committee with the Panchen Lama as acting chairman. Monasteries were closed or emptied, land was redistributed and many thousands of Tibetans were imprisoned. The death toll remains uncertain, and estimates differ widely; Chinese military records cited by exiles speak of about 87,000 enemy fighters “eliminated” in central Tibet by 1960.

The uprising worsened relations between China and India, which had sheltered the Dalai Lama, and contributed to the tensions behind the Sino-Indian War of 1962. The UN General Assembly passed resolutions on Tibet in 1959, 1961 and 1965. The Tibet Autonomous Region was formally established in 1965. In 1989 the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Timeline

• 1950, October: The PLA defeats Tibetan forces at Chamdo.
• 1951, 23 May: The Seventeen Point Agreement is signed in Beijing.
• 1956: Revolt breaks out in Kham and Amdo.
• 1959, 10 March: Crowds surround the Norbulingka; the uprising begins.
• 1959, 17 March: The Dalai Lama escapes from Lhasa at night.
• 1959, 20–23 March: The PLA shells the Norbulingka and crushes resistance in Lhasa.
• 1959, 31 March: The Dalai Lama crosses into India.
• 1960: The Tibetan government-in-exile moves to Dharamsala.

Why it matters

The 1959 uprising ended Tibet’s limited autonomy under the 1951 agreement and created a Tibetan diaspora led by the Dalai Lama. It turned the Tibet question into an enduring international issue and shaped relations between China and India.