Brother of the Dalai Lama and envoy who led talks on the exiled leader’s possible return to Tibet with the Chinese government.

-by The Guardians

The life of Gyalo Thondup, who has died aged 97, was transformed after one of his younger brothers, Lhamo Thondup, was identified by senior Tibetan monks as the reincarnation of the great 13th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who in 1912 had declared Tibet’s independence. In 1940, the boy was installed as the 14th Dalai Lama.

At once, they were catapulted to being the leading family in the country, swapping their farmhouse for a mansion in the city of Lhasa, where Gyalo attended a private school for the children of aristocrats. In 1942, aged 14, he was sent to Nanjing, China.

This led to his meeting the president of what was still the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, who regarded the young Tibetan as the ideal person to liaise between himself and the Dalai Lama as soon as the latter came of age.

It was a policy of the nationalists – no less than of the communists – that Tibet should be reunited with the motherland. In his 2015 autobiography, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong, Thondup recounted how he had been a frequent houseguest of the president and his wife, who came to treat him “as a son”.

Not long after the communists came to power in 1949, they moved troops into Tibet. Thondup – who had by now separated from a Tibetan wife and married the daughter of a high-ranking officer in the nationalist navy – soon fled to Kalimpong, West Bengal, where there was already a large community of Tibetan exiles. During the winter of 1949-50, the Dalai Lama left Lhasa for southern Tibet, with a view to possibly seeking asylum in India. Click here to read more.