Advocating Middle-Way in Shimla and Dholanji
Wednesday, 25 July 2007, 3:20 p.m.
Dharamshala: As per a three-year plan for creating mass awareness on the Middle-Way Approach as the best means for peaceably resolving the Sino-Tibetan issue, an hour-long documentary film on the Middle-Way was screened last Sunday before a capacity crowd at the hall of Kusumpti Tibetan settlement in Shimla, followed in turn by a feisty question-answer session with Additional Secretary of the Department of Information and International Relation’s Dawa Tsering.
Out of nearly 1500 Tibetans scattered in about six hamlets in various rim areas of the state capital town, several hundreds had converged at the settlement despite an overcast weather and intermittent downpour. A long stretch of people had hunkered down on the flights of stairs leading to the top floor of the four-storey building of Tibetan Welfare Office, where the prayer hall with limited seating stood packed to the brim.
Pleased with the heavy turnout, Tibetan Welfare Officer Ngawang Yonten urged the people to avail this opportunity in deepening their grasp of the Middle-Way Approach and dispelling all the misconceptions and misgivings floating within the community, during the question-answer session after the screening of the documentary film. The question-answer session lasted for another two hours.
During the afternoon session at the same hall, some 150 senior students of the Central School for Tibetans of Chotta Shimla interacted with the additional secretary for about an hour, after the screening of the film.
The venue for the next day was the newly-built library of Menri Ling Bonpo Monastery at Dholanji, where Additional Secretary Dawa Tsering, who is also the head of Chinese section of DIIR, spoke to over two hundred monks, settlers and senior students of the local Tibetan high school in the course of two days.
