Dalai Lama's website to go Hindi

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is all set to reach out to Indians in Hindi.

The Hindi version of his official website will be launched Saturday.

"His Holiness (Dalai Lama) often describes himself as 'son of India' and it's only natural that his website (dalailamahindi.com) is made available in Hindi too," Tenzin Taklha, joint secretary at the Dalai Lama's office, told IANS.

"Now Hindi-speaking people will have online access through the Dalai Lama's thoughts and other related news," he said.

Both the English and Hindi websites would be updated simultaneously, Taklha added.

The Dalai Lama's office, based in this town in the Himalayan foothills, launched its official website in English in 2005.

Although not tech-savvy, the 77-year-old globe-trotting monk, revered as a demi-god by his people and followers the world over, has a phenomenal fan following on cyberspace.

A recent post on his website (dalailama.com) quoted the Dalai Lama as saying: "I've had no modern education, so my knowledge compared to yours amounts to zero, but I have observed that many of the problems we face today are of our own creation. Because we created them, we must also have the ability to reduce or overcome them."

The Tibetan spiritual leader has a fan following of 12 million on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.

In 1959, occupying Chinese troops suppressed the Tibetan national uprising in Lhasa and forced the Dalai Lama and his followers into exile in India and neighbouring countries.

Currently, India is home to around 100,000 Tibetans and the government-in-exile, which has never won recognition from any country.