NEW DELHI, India, July 5 (Reuter) - Tibet's god-king, the Dalai Lama, arrived in New Delhi Monday for celebrations to mark his 60th birthday, which organizers insisted would be non-political and have no bearing on India-China ties.
Monks in traditional maroon robes heralded the Dalai Lama's arrival at the hotel where he will be staying with a fanfare of brass-tipped Tibetan wooden horns. The hotel lobby was lined with singing men, women and children in Tibetan clothes, jewelry and hats, carrying white silk scarves to welcome their leader, as monks holding burning incense sticks chanted a prayer. As the Dalai Lama walked through the lobby, shortly after arriving from his home in exile in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala, he bowed deeply and touched the scarves in blessing.
Tibetan teen-ager Ango, 16, turned around with tears in her eyes after he passed. "I'm so happy, this is the second time I have seen him," she said. Ango is part of a second generation of Tibetans who followed their leader into exile in India in 1959, after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
The exiled Tibetans have been vociferous in demonstrating their anger at Chinese rule of their homeland, but Lakhan Lal Mehrotra, a retired senior Indian diplomat and an organizer of the celebrations, told a news conference, "It will have no bearing whatsoever on relations between India and China. "His holiness made it very clear he was happy to discuss only spirituality."
Relations between the two Asian giants, who fought a brief border war in 1962, have begun to warm in recent years. The Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent campaign to win autonomy for the region, is closely watched by Beijing.
The Dalai Lama's birthday July 6 is being commemorated by three days of seminars and cultural programs, including a Buddhist invocation by monks and a tree-planting ceremony. Mehrotra said Nobel laureates were among several world figures who would take part in the seminars. "The program was drafted very carefully in consultation with his holiness," Mehrotra said. "It is his wish that this program should be academic and spirtually oriented."
