Dalai Lama Timeline

The Dalai Lama is acknowledged as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He heads the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharmsala, India.

Timeline:
1935: He was born on 6 July in Quinghai. He was the 5th of 16 children. His parents were farmers.
1937: He was proclaimed the reincarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso.
1940: He was taken to the Potala Palace in Lhasa where he was officially installed as the spiritual leader of Tibet.
1941: He began his monastic education.
1950: On October 24, China invaded Tibet. Around 1.2 million Tibetans died in the fighting and many monastical and cultural sites were destroyed. On November 17, the Dalai Lama assumed full political power.
1954: In September he and the 10th Panchen Lama went to Beijing to attend the first session of the first National People’s Congress. They met Mao Zedong.
1959: There was a major uprising among the Tibetan population. The Dalai Lama fled to Tawang, India in March. He met the Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru and urged India to pressure China into giving Tibet an autonomous government. He set up the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharmsala, India.
1963: He created a democratic constitution based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A Tibetan parliament-in-exile was elected by the Tibetan refugees spread all over the world, and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile was similarly elected by the Tibetan parliament.
1973: He met Pope Paul VI.
1980: He met Pope John Paul II.
1987: At the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington, D.C, he proposed a Five-Point Peace Plan regarding the future status of Tibet. The plan called for Tibet to become a ‘zone of peace’ and for the end of migration by ethnic Han Chinese into Tibet. It urged ‘respect for fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms’ and ‘the end of the Chinese use of Tibet for nuclear weapons production, testing, and disposal.’ Finally, it called for 'earnest negotiations' on the future of Tibet.
1989: He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to free his homeland from Chinese rule using nonviolent means.
1995: In September he toured the US , gave informal talks and urged the US government to press China’s leaders to grant autonomy to Tibet.
1998: He acknowledged that he received financial assisstance from the US government in the 1960’s.
2001: He met President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and members of Congress about the status of Tibet.
2005: He celebrated his seventieth birthday.
2006: He met the Chief Rabbi of Israel. The Parliament of Canada voted to make The Dalai Lama an honarary citizen of Canada. The United States Congress awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal.
2007: He visited Australia. He met the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
2008: There was unrest in Tibet. He called for calm and deplored Chinese violence. He recognized the McMahon Line as per the 1914 Simla agreement signed by Tibetan and British representatives.