This site was initially designed to tell the stories of the Mongols who, escaping the spread of Communism, fled to India around the mid 20th century. They lived in India for some years and later, mostly immigrated to different places worldwide. It was also our aim to include the stories of other Mongols who had similar experiences no matter if they blonged to the Mongoliancommunity in India. Now, we would like to expand the content of the site. Stories of any Mongolian, no matterfrom which part of the ethno-geographical, greater Mongolia, left home for various reasons, and lived in foreignlands could be presented here.
For various reasons, some of the information that we have collected might be incomplete or even inaccurate, while it has already become impossible to collected some others. We believe that there are many more people whose stories we never came to know. Hope our readers can help us in completing this site. Please write to us and tell us the stories of people that you know of. We would appreciate your help very much.
An introduction to the Mongolian community in India
The Mongolian community which existed in Kalimpong, India, from the 1950s to the 1970s, was almost a continuationas well as a much smaller version of the Mongolian community in pre-Communist Tibet, especially in Lhasa.
Contacts between the Mongols and Tibet is said to be started from Chinggis Khan‘s time. Although Buddhism used to flourish in Mongolia during the reign of Chinggis Khan, and even more while his grandson Khubilai Khan was in power, "the good time did not last for long". Thus the meeting of Altan Khan and Sonam Gyatso in 1578 became the real beginning of Buddhism in all parts of greater Mongolia. Sonam Gyatso was a head of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism and was later recognized as the third Dalai Lama. In fact, the title "Dalai Lama" was given for the very first time to Sonam Gyatso at the above mentioned meeting. From then onwards, it became a title for the highest ranking figure in Gelukpa school. Some Mongols started becoming Buddhist monks and come to study in Tibet. Many others traveled back and forth between Tibet and Mongolia, as pilgrims and merchants.
There were always special communities of Mongol monks wherever there were larger Buddhist institutions in Tibet. In some important monasteries in Tibet, some sections such as mitsans and so on were specially established for Buddhist students from all over the greater Mongolia.
This gradually became a tradition, at least in some of the major institutions in Tibet, such as Kumbum, Labrang, Dre-pung, Sera and Ganden, and many more. India and Tibet were considered among the Mongols as "burhanii-oron", meaning "the land of the Buddha". Thus the Mongol pilgrims who come to Tibet would mostly further extend their journey into the holy sites in India, along with Tibetan pilgrims.
The Chinese nationalist revolution in 1911 overthrew the alien rule of the Manchurian Empire that had taken over China, along with Mongolia, Tibet and part of Turkestan, for several centuries. Seeing this as a chance also to gain their own freedom from the Manchurians, part of Mongolia (or so-called "Outer" Mongolia) declaredindependence. The political status of Inner Mongolia remained unclear. The communist victory both in Russia and the independent Mongolia forced many Mongols to become refugees. Refugees from Buryatia in east Siberia and the independent Mongolia escaped into Inner Mongolia, where Communists had not yet gained the victory. On the other side, in Russia, some Kalmyk Mongols fled into Europe. However, starting in the 1940s, especially after the Communist takeover of Inner Mongolia, even more Mongols had to flee home again and go to Tibet. According to sources, in the 1950s, Lhasa was full with refugees from Mongolia. Meanwhile, the Mongols who were already studying in Tibet prior to Communism had no way to return home. Tibet could not become, however, a destination for most of these Mongol refugees. Having more personal experiences with Communists than Tibetans had, they started further escaping into Nepal and India even before the Communist Chinese started advancing into Tibet. For Instance, Oirad Torgud aristocrat MinjuurWang was living in Nepal with his family before the 1950s. Those who remained in Tibet eventually arrived in India in 1959, along with the Tibetan refugees following the 14th Dalai Lama.
Darjeeling and Kalimpong, in today's West Bengal state of India, are located on a former trading route that connected Himalayan regions such as Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and India. Because of this, the region was once an important trading center. Kalimpong also became an academic center as a number of foremost scholars of Himalayan culture from all over the world were residing there. There were some Tibetans living in Darjeeling and Kalimpong even before the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Some few Mongols were also there. After 1959, many Tibetan refugees settled down either in Darjeeling or in Kalimpong. Most of the Mongols who accompanied Tibetans to India had settled down in Kalimpong. These Mongols mostly were monks, but later some of them got married, and gradually formed a special community of Mongols.
There were some very talented scholars among them as well as some high-ranking lamas, religious leaders and noble families. Mongolian scholars such as Da-Lama, Rigzin Wangpo, Geshe Wanggyal, Geshe Kaldan, Geshe Agwang Nima, Lama Chimpa, and many more, were playing important roles in the academic activities in Kalimpong. For instance, Lama Chimpa assisted Russian scholar Dr. George Roerich in compiling a large Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary. Some Mongols were invited to teach at famous Indian institutions such as Benares Hindu University in Varanasi, the International Academy of Indian Culture in both New Delhi and Nagpur, and Delhi University. Those Mongols who remained monks lived in Tibetan monasteries elsewhere. For instance, Mongol monks had done important works during the restoration of Dre-pung Gomang, one of the most important Tibetan monasteries, in southern India.
Something also worth mentioning about the Mongol community in India is that they gave great importance to the education of their next generations. For example, Tohtoh, who later immigrated to the US and became one of the founders of the Mongol-American Cultural Association, was a brilliant student of the Central School for Tibetans in Mussorie. Burinbayar, presently a translator to the President of Mongolia, also graduated from an English school in Mussorie. Some families were purely Mongol, such as Gyatso's, Kyanrab's and Dharmabazar's. Many others, such as Lama Chimpa's, Kelsang Lhundup's and Sherab Gyatso's were mixture of Mongol and Tibetan.
Following the Indo-Sino border conflicts in 1962, the Kalimpong Mongolian community was forcefibly moved, by the Indian government, to Mussorie Tibetan settlement in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. Later in the 1960s and 70s, some of them gradually immigrated to the West, mainly the US. Also in 1970s, some Mongols who originally came from the Halh Mongol region were allowed to return to the country following the visit of Tsedenbal, the then Mongolian leader, to India. Among those who immigrated to the West from India were some great figures, such as Geshe Wangyal and Dilowa Khutugtu in the US, and Geshe Agwang Nima in the Netherlands. They made great efforts in bringing Tibetan Buddhism into the Western world, as well as establishing Tibetan Buddhist monasteries for the first time in the West. These Mongols also helped the Tibetans in start immigrating to the West.
