Enter the Dragon: Chinese Invasion
of Tibet continues....

The place was always crowded with pack mules and ponies, and Bengalis, Tibetans, Bhutanese, Nepalis, Marwaris, and Chinese too- lots of money changed hands in Kalimpong. And lots of information. If you had money to begin with, you could make a lot of money in Kalimpong very quickly.

In 1956 some members of Gompo Tashi’s family were already in Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Two of his nephews, Kalsang and Wangdu, were there and Kalsang made contact with the CIA in Kolkata (Calcutta). Two groups of young men from Kham were carefully selected, and it was arranged that one group would go to Taiwan, where the Nationalist KMT government was an enemy of the Chinese Communists, and another group would star in India.

By coincidence, the Dalai Lama was also arriving in India at the same time, along with the Panchen Lama, at the Government of India’s invitation, having very reluctantly been given permission by the Chinese administration in Lhasa. His two older brothers, Taktser Rimpoche, the former abbot of Kumbum monastery in Amdo, and Gyalo Thondup, had also arrived in India. Unknown at that stage to Gompo Tashi Adrugtsang, Gyalo Thondup had separately already made contact with the CIA in Kolkata soon after the Chinese occupation of Lhasa, in either 1951 or 1952.

The Lord Chamberlain, Phala Thupten Woden, who was the advisor to the Dalai Lama and officially controlled all access to him, was made aware of this and was sympathetic, but he deliberately did not inform the Dalai Lama because of the sensitiveness of the issue, as well as the position of the Dalai Lama.

To be continued...