Word: thondop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Still, in conversations with the young activists during a break in today's proceedings, it was hard not to notice their disappointment. As the delegates' working groups presented their reports publicly, it quickly became clear that those supporting independence were still a small minority - about 20%, according to Thondop's own estimate. "People who speak for independence, there are not many," says Tsundu, whose red headband and fiery rhetoric has made him a minor celebrity among the activists here. He complained that the meeting itself was weighted toward the old guard, because most of the invitees were formally elected...
...Dalai Lama's nephew, the eldest son of the Tibetan spiritual leader's eldest brother, Thondop, now 56, has already led an extraordinary life. He was born in Calcutta, where his father, a political leader in the Tibetan government, had been posted. He went to the elite St. Stephen's College in New Delhi, got an MBA in the United States, ran a family business for several years in New York City, and then returned to India in 1977 to serve as his uncle's special assistant. Two years later, he went to Beijing for Tibet's first negotiations with...
...Dalai Lama. Thirty years of negotiation have been fruitless, he says, and China has not made any effort to acknowledge the demands of the Tibetan people for autonomy. "There is a generation's difference between my father and myself," he says. His father is an old-school diplomat, while Thondop isn't shy about openly criticizing the current Chinese leadership. He calls them "a bunch of cheats and liars" for denying that Deng was willing to put everything on the table except independence in those first negotiations. "I just can't forgive them," Thondop says. "We Tibetans will never...
...this week's summit of Tibetan exiles, Thondop, a member of Tibet's "royal family", as one young admirer described him, has become a symbol of a generational shift among Tibetans toward support of a free Tibet. "He was there in the beginning," says Tenzin Tsundu, a pro-independence activist. "To hear his voice say that, it's a very emotional thing...
...Thondop says he understands the impatience and ambivalence. But he counsels for the long view. "Do not think of what you're going to get right here," he says. "What you may get now may not be good enough for future generations...