Celebrating the Tibetan Stories Project | "Every Voice Carries a History" | Phase 1 Complete

This Tibetan oral history project was conceived by Dr Manjari Mehta and undertaken by the Doon Buddhist Committee as part of the year-long celebration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday and the Year of Compassion. The initiative, which began in July 2025, involved connecting with elders who, as children and young adults, were forced to flee Tibet in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Through their testimonies, the project seeks to document both their early lives in Tibet and the profound upheavals that compelled them to seek refuge in India. The project arose from an urgent need to preserve these stories—not only for the children of that first generation, who are now in their fifties and sixties, but also for younger generations born and raised in India and increasingly across the world. For many of them, these experiences exist only as fragments of family memory and fading history. Looking ahead, we hope to include English subtitles so that these narratives can reach a wider audience. In particular, we hope they will help Indians better understand the historical circumstances that brought Tibetans into their communities, and foster a deeper appreciation of their resilience and the struggles through which they built their everyday lives. This project would not have been possible without the assistance and support of the Tibetan Settlement Office , Dehradun, Tibetan Homes School, Rajpur and a number of individuals who gave so generously of their time and helped connect us to potential participants: Dawa Norbu,, Kalden Choesang , Tenzin Kunga Luding , Tsering Chozom Luding , Ven. Tenzin Nyingjey for the Tibetan to English translations and ,our cameraman and YouTuber (Teyoun vlog),