{{Short description|Brother of the 14th Dalai Lama (1928–2025)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}} {{Infobox person | name = Gyalo Thondup | image = Gyalo Thondup (3x4 cropped).jpg | caption = Thondup in 2009 | native_name = རྒྱལ་ལོ་དོན་འགྲུབ | native_name_lang = bo | other_names = 嘉乐顿珠 | birth_date = {{circa|1928}} | birth_place = Taktser, Qinghai, China | death_date = {{death date and age|2025|02|08|1928}} | death_place = Kalimpong, West Bengal, India | spouse = {{marriage|Zhu Dan|1948|1986|end=d.}} | children = 3 }} [[File:Gyalo Dhondup at Yabshi Takster.jpg|thumb|Gyalo Thondup in 1948 or 1949, standing in front of a large window of the Dalai Lama's family house, Yabshi Taktser, in Lhasa. He is wearing a woollen robe and felt boots.]] '''Gyalo Thondup''' ({{bo|t=རྒྱལ་ལོ་དོན་འགྲུབ|w=rgyal lo don 'grub}}; {{zh|s=嘉乐顿珠|p=Jiālè Dùnzhū}}; {{Circa|1928}} – 8 February 2025){{Efn|1=According to ''The Washington Post'', his exact birth date is unknown. His book jacket lists his birth year as 1929. Other sources say 1928 or 1927.<ref name=":4"/>}} was a Tibetan political operator in exile. The second-oldest brother of the 14th Dalai Lama, he was his closest advisor. From 1952 onward, he was based in India. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States during its unsuccessful campaign to use armed Tibetan rebels against China.<ref name=":4"/>
Thondup helped to negotiate the Dalai Lama's safe passage to India following his escape from Lhasa in 1959.<ref name=":5" /> After US support of the Tibetan resistance ended in the 1970s, he often acted as the Dalai Lama's unofficial envoy to China and attempted to negotiate his return.<ref name=":4" />
His bestselling memoir, ''The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet'', was published in 2015. Following his death in 2025, ''The Washington Post'' said Thondup was "arguably the second-most important figure in modern Tibetan history", viewed by many governments around the world as a de facto political leader of Tibet.<ref name=":4">{{Cite news |last=Johnson |first=Tim |date=9 February 2025 |title=Gyalo Thondup, Dalai Lama's brother and towering figure in Tibet, dies |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/02/09/gyalo-thondup-dalai-lama/ |access-date=11 February 2025 |newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref>
==Early life and education== Around 1928,<ref name=":2">{{cite book|last1=Thurston|first1=Anne F.|title=The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet|date=2015|publisher=Random House India|location=Gurgaon|isbn=978-81-8400-387-1|page=16|edition=1st}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=本刊祝贺嘉乐顿珠93岁生日 |url=https://fdc64.jp/wpbnew/2021/11/12/本刊祝贺嘉乐顿珠93岁生日/ |access-date=10 February 2025 |publisher=Voice of Freedom in Tokyo |date=11 December 2021}}</ref> Gyalo Thondup was born in the village of Taktser,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Thurston|first1=Anne F.|title=The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle Tibet|date=2015|publisher=Random House India|location=Gurgaon|isbn=978-81-8400-387-1|page=11|edition=1st}}</ref> Amdo (Ping'an District, Qinghai province). He was the third child of Choekyong Tsering and Diki Tsering.<ref name=":3" /> The second of five sons, he was their only male child who did not become a monk; his father had intended for him to become a farmer and carry on the family estate.<ref name=":3" />
In 1939, he moved with his family to Lhasa after his younger brother Lhamo Thondup was recognised as the 14th Dalai Lama.<ref name=":3" /> As the family settled into its new position as the first family of Tibet, Thondup received training to become the lead advisor to the Dalai Lama.<ref name=":3" /> The Reting Rinpoche sent Gyalo to a private school for a traditional Tibetan education, and appointed Ma Bao, a Chinese Muslim, to tutor him in the Chinese language.<ref name=":3" />
In 1942, at the age of 14, Thondup went to Nanjing, the capital of Republican China, to study Standard Chinese and the history of China. From April 1947 to the summer of 1949, he often visited Chiang Kai-shek at his home, ate at his family table, and was educated by tutors selected by Chiang himself.<ref name="WSJ">{{cite news|title=Gyalo Thondup: Interview Excerpts|url=https://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123510349274730343|newspaper=The Wall Street Journal|date=20 February 2009}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> In 1948, he married Zhu Dan, the daughter of a Kuomintang general; she had a degree in social work.<ref name=":3">{{Cite news |last=Jain |first=Sandip C. |date=9 February 2025 |title=Gyalo Thondup And His Place In Modern Tibetan History |url=https://thedarjeelingchronicle.com/gyalo-thondup-and-his-place-in-modern-tibetan-history/ |access-date=11 February 2025 |work=The Darjeeling Chronicle}}</ref>
==Political involvement== In 1949, before the Communist revolution of that year in China, Thondup left Nanjing for Tibet with his wife, who became known by the Tibetan name Diki Dolkar.<ref name=":4" /> After Chinese troops asserted control over Lhasa, Thondup fled by horseback to India in 1952.<ref name=":4" />
Fluent in Chinese, Tibetan and English,<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=The story of Tibet : conversations with the Dalai Lama|author=Laird, Thomas|date=2006|publisher=Grove Press|others=Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, 1935–|isbn=9780802143273|edition=1st|location=New York|pages=288|oclc=63165009|quote="From the 1950s until today, Gyalo Thondup, who speaks fluent Chinese, Tibetan, and English, has occasionally been sought out by Taiwanese, Chinese, British, and American officials in an attempt to contact the Dalai Lama. Beginning in 1946, Chiang Kai-shel groomed him for this role. In fact, young Gyalo Thondup ate his meals at the Chiang family table, from April 1947 until the summer of 1949, and tutors selected by Chiang educated the boy.}}</ref> in subsequent decades, Thondup traveled between New Delhi, Taipei, Washington, Hong Kong, and Beijing as an unofficial envoy.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |title=Contemporary visions in Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the First International Seminar of Young Tibetologists |publisher=Serindia Publications |year=2009 |isbn=9781932476453 |editor-last=Dotson |editor-first=Brandon |location=Chicago |pages=158 |quote="Gyalo Thondup... was the first officially acknowledged Tibetan to visit Taiwan since 1949. Taipei Radio announced the meeting between President Chang Kai-shek on 21 May 1950." |editor-last2=Gurung |editor-first2=Kalsang Norbu |editor-last3=Halkias |editor-first3=Georgios |editor-last4=Myatt |editor-first4=Tim}}</ref>
===Involvement with the Republic of China (ROC)=== According to his personal memoir, Thondup was personally sponsored by Chiang Kai-shek to be a special student in one of Nanjing's top universities. After first meeting them in May 1946, he visited the Chiangs' home frequently, describing him and his wife Soong Meiling as "unfailingly warm and gracious hosts" who paid for all his expenses and treated him "as a son". Both Gyalo and his wife Zhu Dan (who had spent her time at a local Baptist hospital working with children and refugees traumatized after the Second Sino-Japanese War) left Nanjing in March 1949 as the mainland fell to the Communists.<ref name=":2" />
Subsequently, the two of them joined Chiang Kai-shek and his government in exile on Taiwan for sixteen months, and Chiang gave Thondup a check of $50,000 to study abroad in the United States when he finally departed. Thondup and his wife then arrived in Washington D.C. at the end of October 1951, but Thondup decided to return to Lhasa shortly afterwards to better assist his people who were in the midst of social and political turmoil at the time.<ref name=":2" />
After rebuffing the PRC's initial offers for him to lead the Tibetan youth delegation to Beijing, Thondup was labeled by Mao's government as a traitor and had his citizenship stripped, deemed worse than a "reactionary rebel", whereupon he fled to India with his family. From there, he contacted Chiang Kai-shek, who was the first to respond to him, telling him that the ROC was "prepared to contribute arms and money...to help the Tibetan cause". Although Gyalo said he "never refused the Nationalists' help outright", he eventually felt that accepting their aid directly would complicated Tibetan aspirations for a free and independent state, and also strengthen the PRC's persistent claims that the Tibetans were being used by the ROC to undermine its sovereignty.<ref name=":2" />
After China and India's 1962 border war, the Indian intelligence chief Bhola Nath Mullik asked him to establish contact with the ROC government on Taiwan. Thondup secretly returned to Taiwan to visit the Chiangs one last time, with the Chiangs purportedly being "delighted" to see him and welcoming India's overture. After meeting Chiang Ching-kuo, Thondup traveled with deputy director Wang of Taiwan's national security to New Delhi and introduced him to Mullik, allegedly beginning a close but highly covert relationship between the Indian and Taiwanese intelligence services, one which allegedly lasts to the present day.<ref name=":2" /><ref>[https://sikkimexpress.com/news-details/gyalothondupand-his-place-in-modern-tibetan-history Gyalo Thondup and His Place in Modern Tibetan History] ''Sikkim Express''</ref>
===United States activities=== In 1951, he traveled to America and became the main source of information on Tibet for the United States Department of State.<ref name="Goldstein">{{cite book|title=A History of Modern Tibet: The Calm Before the Storm, 1951–1955|url=https://archive.org/details/historymoderntib00gold_525|url-access=limited|first=Melvyn|last=Goldstein|publisher=University of California Press|year=2007|pages=[https://archive.org/details/historymoderntib00gold_525/page/n272 236]–240}}</ref> The Central Intelligence Agency promised to make Tibet independent from China in exchange for Thondup's support in organizing guerrilla units to fight against the People's Liberation Army, an offer that Thondup accepted.<ref name="WSJ" /><ref>On the CIA's links to the Dalai Lama and his family and entourage, see Loren Coleman, ''Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1989).</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Sautman|first=Barry|title=Tibet's Putative Statehood and International Law|journal=Chinese Journal of International Law|date=1 March 2010|volume=9|issue=1|pages=127–142|publisher=Oxford University Press|quote=Indeed, after the 1962 war, B.N. Mullik, India's Intelligence Bureau Chief, told Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama's brother and a top CIA asset, that India supported Tibet's “eventual liberation”.|doi=10.1093/chinesejil/jmq003}}</ref>
Thondup helped to recruit approximately 300 fighters to be trained at Camp Hale, Colorado, who in turn trained thousands of others in the Tibetan resistance.<ref name=":4" /> In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA provided the resistance with an estimated 700,000 pounds of rifles, ammunition, grenades, and radio equipment, and airdropped them into Tibet, but their missions were unsuccessful.<ref name=":4" />
In 1959, Thondup helped to orchestrate the Dalai Lama's safe passage to India after his escape from Tibet.<ref name=":5">{{Cite news |last=Watkins |first=Ali |date=10 February 2025 |title=Gyalo Thondup, Political Operator and Brother of the Dalai Lama, Dies at 97 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/obituaries/gyalo-thondup-dead-dalai-lama-brother.html |access-date=11 February 2025 |work=The New York Times}}</ref> Thondup maintained that he did not inform the 14th Dalai Lama about the CIA's actions, out of respect for his pacifist stance.<ref name=":4" /><ref name="IE">{{cite news|title=Tibet rules out Lama links with CIA|url=http://expressindia.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19981003/27650034.html|newspaper=The Indian Express|date=3 October 1998|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131105050312/http://expressindia.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19981003/27650034.html|archive-date=5 November 2013}}</ref> To his disappointment, US support ended after the 1972 Nixon visit to China.<ref name=":4" />
===Later career=== With the permission of the Dalai Lama, Thondup met Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 for peaceful political talks, to negotiate terms for his brother's return to Tibet.<ref name="WSJ" /><ref name=":4" /> Thondup terminated the discussions in 1993, feeling them to be useless.<ref name="WSJ"/> In the 1990s, Thondup made several official visits to China, acting as the Dalai Lama's unofficial envoy.<ref name="voa">{{cite web|title=Dalai Lama's Older Brother Visits China|url=https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2002-07-02-37-dalai-66292042/541273.html|publisher=Voice of America|date=26 October 2009}}</ref>
In recent years, Thondup urged Tibetans to remain politically engaged, repeatedly stating that dialogue was the only way to achieve progress with China.<ref name=":5" /><ref>{{cite web|title=Former Minister Gyalo Thondup Says Weiqun Ignorant of Deng's statement on Tibet|url=http://www.voatibetanenglish.com/content/a-28-2008-11-19-voa3-90307287/1273508.html|publisher=Voice of America|access-date=3 November 2013}}</ref> In 1998, the Central Tibetan Administration in exile criticized Thondup for not letting the Dalai Lama know about the CIA's involvement in Tibet.<ref name="IE" /> Over a decade later, Thondup accused his sister-in-law's father of embezzling money from the Central Tibetan Administration.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/the-last-dalai-lama.html|title=The Last Dalai Lama?|first=Pankaj|last=Mishra|date=1 December 2015|access-date=15 December 2015|newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref>
==Personal life and death== Thundap and his wife Diki Dolkar had a daughter, who died in the early 1980s, and two sons. His wife Dolkar died in 1986. In 2002, Thondup visited Lhasa briefly by invitation of the Chinese government.<ref name=":4" /> His wife helped establish the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre in Darjeeling, which provided support for at least five hundred Tibetan refugees at any given time, where she worked until the day she died.<ref name=":2" /><ref>[https://darjeeling.gov.in/tourist-place/tibetan-refugee-self-help-centre/ Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre]</ref>
thumb|Gyalo and Zhu Dan at their wedding in Nanjing
In retirement, Thondup started a noodle factory in West Bengal, India. In 2015, he published his memoir, ''The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet'', which became a bestseller.<ref name=":4" />
Thondup died at his residence in Kalimpong, West Bengal, on 8 February 2025.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://apnews.com/article/dalai-lama-tibet-china-gyalo-thondup-obituary-1459f99b6cf1c342919ad195fd27fa33 |title=Dalai Lama's elder brother, who led several rounds of talks with China, dies at 97 |date=9 February 2025 |access-date=9 February 2025 |work=AP News}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=8 February 2025 |title=Gyalo Thondup, elder brother of the Dalai Lama passes away at 97 |url=https://www.phayul.com/2025/02/08/51730/ |access-date=8 February 2025 |website=Phayul |language=en-US}}</ref>{{efn|''The New York Times'' listed his age at death as "97".<ref name=":5" />}}
==Publications== * (with Anne F. Thurston), ''The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of the Dalai Lama and the Secret Struggle for Tibet'', PublicAffairs, 2015
==See also== * 14th Dalai Lama * Thubten Norbu
==Notes== {{notelist}}
==References== {{reflist}}
{{s-start}} {{s-off}} {{s-bef|before=Kalsang Yeshi}} {{s-ttl|title=Prime Minister of the Central Tibetan Administration|years=1991–1993}} {{s-aft|after=Tenzin Tethong}} {{s-end}}
{{Prime Ministers of Tibet}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thondup, Gyalo}} Category:1928 births Category:2025 deaths Category:Tibetan politicians Category:Prime ministers of Tibet Category:People from Ping'an, Haidong Category:14th Dalai Lama Category:Tibetan emigrants to India