Tsundue Represents Tibet at an International Conference

At the recently concluded Katha Asia International Utsav 2006 held in New Delhi, Tibet was represented by Tibetan writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue. He was invited by the organizer Katha for its six day multi-level art and culture festival based on the theme of city stories this year.

Kathat Utsav, organized this year at the India Habitat Centre, was marked by an International writers conference, where Tibet was represented by Tsundue and at one such reading session Tsundue sat with Ma Yuan the representative of People’s Republic of China and XU Xi of Hong Kong and shared stories of exile life and some of his poetry too.

This year’s Katha literary conference took cue from a similar event that happened at the initiative of first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru when he organized the Asian Relations Conference of 1947. At that time, along with many Asian countries, Tibet was represented by a delegation sent by the then government of Independent Tibet.

The six day Katha Utsav saw participation from over 1200 students from 110 colleges, more than 2500 school children and parents took party in the children carnival, The Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dixit hosted a tea for the international writers at her residence, a six-day film festival also saw films on Tibet too, celebrated film personalities like Javed Akhtar and Shaym Bengal took part in it. Noted writers like Dilip Chitre, Ashok Vajpaye, Kiran Nagarkar, Ashish Nandy were also participants there. Issues like translation, arrival of new languages, and challenges before the developing Afro-Asian countries in the eye of the globalization were discussed.

The festival got kick started on the 8th Jan and went on till the 12th Jan. Having represented Tibet at these international platforms Tsundue says: "As a writer and activist for Tibet I was able to represent our voices at an international platform. For that I am happy and proud that I was able to do this."

Tsundue had earlier represented Tibet at Sahitya Akademi literary conference in held in New Delhi in 2004, and Poetry Africa in October 2005.