Tibetan Refugees in India: the Case of Bylakuppe in Karnataka

Tibet lies at the center of Asia, with an area of 2.5 million square kilometers. The earth’s highest mountains, a vast arid plateau and great river valleys make up the physical homeland of 6 million Tibetans. It has an average altitude of 13,000 feet above sea level. The status of Tibet has been a subject of contention and polemics in one form or another for well over a century. The core of the conflict has been the positions held by Tibet and China in this regard. The heart of China’s position has remained steady that Tibet is an inalienable part of it (Elliot: 2004). The Chinese invasion on Tibet begun during 1949 (CTA), it was on 10th March 1959, an anti-Chinese and anti-Communist popular revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which had been under the reign of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1951. The authorities in Beijing kept the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Tibet on the defensive for ten days, but on 20 March they ordered the army to crush the rebellion (Chen: 2006).