Tibet is being cloned in a tiny part of South India
A strong winter noonday sun, a disciplined sea of bowing monks in red, and policemen everywhere. Then amidst the uneven sound of the bronze trumpets called dhung chens, and bustling officials clad in chubas, the Dalai Lama arrives in a cavalcade of cars to this remote part of Karnataka in South India.
This is the Doeguling settlement (population 12,000) in Uttar Kanara district, one of five Tibetan refugee settlements spread around Karnataka. Even on ordinary days when the Dalai Lama doesn't come visiting, this 3000-acre settlement looks typically Tibetan, but for the terrain and the climate. Women in Tibetan attire wait for taxis to ferry them to Mundgod town or to another of Doeguling's ten camps. Little monasteries dot the landscape. A cluster of whitewashed buildings with a playing field has a board: Tibetan Central School.
Tibetans have been in Karnataka since 1960. Once refugees began pouring into India following the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1959, Jawaharlal Nehru asked Indian states to take them in. Karnataka was one of the 10 states that responded positively, and gave the largest tract of land: 13,000-odd acres in the settlements located in Kodagu, Chamrajanagar and Uttar Kanara districts.