Dalai Lama celebrates 78th birthday

Thousands of Tibetan exiles in India and across the world participated in the 78th birthday celebrations of His Holiness the Dalai Lama with special celebrations also being held in Dharamsala.
Thousands of monks and Tibetans-in-exile in India and abroad participated in prayers seeking long life for their spiritual leader who two years back relinquished his role as temporal and political head of Tibetans.
In his brief address in Tibetan at Bylakuppe in Karnataka, the Dalai Lama expressed his gratitude for the government and the people of India for the hospitality they have extended to the exiled Tibetans for over 50 years.

"People should embrace love and promote world peace through compassion," the Dalai Lama said in Bylakuppe.
Addressing about 40,000 Tibetan refugees who left Tibet to relocate to India, the Dalai Lama said that his generation could only pray as it had no place to call home after being forced to quit their Himalayan abode following the Chinese invasion in 1959.
Special prayers were also held at the hilltop Tsuglagkhang temple close to the official palace of the Dalai Lama at McLeodganj near Dharamsala where hundreds assembled braving heavy rains.

Born on July 6, 1935 at Taktser hamlet in northeastern Tibet, the Dalai Lama was recognised at the age of two as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama Thubten Gyatso.

He fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his non-violent campaign for democracy and freedom in his homeland.
The Dalai Lama has been following a "middle-path" policy that seeks "greater autonomy" for Tibetans rather than complete independence.