What about rangzen?

Nearly 600 delegates of exile Tibetans decided to follow the Dalai Lama's long-held moderate approach of the Middle Way after a week-long 'special meeting' that concluded in Dharamsala on 22 November. "There was a unanimous decision of the 15 committees that we should follow the Middle Path," said the speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, Karma Chophel, during the concluding session of the meeting. Despite the potential anticlimax inherent in this decision, however, the reaffirmation did come with a caveat. "We have also decided not to send our envoys for further talks with China," added Deputy Speaker Dolma Gyari. The meeting thus concluded that the Dalai Lama's envoys, which have conducted eight rounds of talks with China since 2002, would not go for further talks until there is an attitude shift in Beijing. It was the failure of these talks that had prompted the Dalai Lama to call for this special meeting in the first place – only the third such event ever to take place.

The meeting had been called to collect opinions of the Tibetan exiles on what future course should be adopted on the Tibetan issue. The meeting provided a platform for exiles to put forward dissenting views, which are rarely stated very loudly in the staid hill station of Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile and home to the Dalai Lama. A week earlier, high on a ridge overlooking the town, at the auditorium of the Tibetan Children's Village school, Prime Minister-in-exile Samdhong Rinpoche carried incense as monks blew horns in a small ceremonial procession marking the beginning of the meeting, during which a portrait of the Dalai Lama was carried to a throne on the stage (see pic). The meeting began with a band playing the Tibetan national anthem, followed by a subsequent one-minute silence to pay homage to those Tibetans who had lost their lives since this past spring. It was, after all, in March of this year that the massive uprising in Tibet refocused international attention not only on the exile community around the world, but more particularly on that community for which the exile community continues to fight – Tibetans within Tibet.